Cottage owners find 450-year-old secret tunnels under their kitchen

10 March 2024 , 13:52

994     0

The property in Fowlmere comes with a secret tunnel (Image: Jam Press/Ensum Brown)

A cottage with secret tunnels from the Tudor times is up for sale at £400,000.

The Grade II-listed home in Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire, has a historic underground tunnel that was likely built when Henry VIII formed the Church of England. The 17th-century cottage has four bedrooms, two lounges and a lovely garden. A hatch in the kitchen floor leads to the stone tunnel.

This long path runs from Hill View Cottage to several old houses in the village, with a small meeting room in the middle. It's thought to be the last entrance to the tunnel, which Catholics and Protestants probably used as an escape route to avoid trouble when important people visited.

The property is on the market for just under £400,000 (Jam Press/Ensum Brown)

The listing says: "This Grade-II listed semi-detached cottage offers excellent kerb appeal in a central village location, with an attractive white frontage, black paint detailing, and pretty bay windows. This period home, believed to date back to the mid-17th century, also enjoys the advantage of being sold with no upward chain and offers future owners the opportunity to update and add further value."

The house is near lots of handy places and is only a 20-minute drive from Cambridge. Right now, you can snap it up through Ensum Brown for £395,000.

London flat for rent for £1,400 a month with bed tucked away in kitchen cupboard

The path runs from Hill View Cottage to several old houses in the village (Jam Press/Ensum Brown)

A hatch in the kitchen floor leads to the stone tunnel (Jam Press/Ensum Brown)

The average UK house price went up by 0.4% in February, marking the fifth month in a row of increases, according to an index. Property prices grew by 1.7% over the year, compared with 2.3% the previous month, said Halifax. In February, the average UK house price was £291,699, about £1,000 more than the previous month.

Kim Kinnaird, director at Halifax Mortgages, said these numbers "continue to suggest a relatively stable start to 2024 and align with other promising signs of increased housing activity, such as mortgage approvals. In fact, the average price tag of a home is now only around £1,800 off the peak seen in June 2022. While it is encouraging that we've seen growth in recent months, what happens next remains uncertain."

The Grade II-listed home is in Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire (Jam Press/Ensum Brown)

"Although lower mortgage rates, alongside expectations of Bank of England interest rate cuts this year, should help buyer confidence in the short term, the downward trend on rates is showing signs of fading. Even with growing wages and inflation falling back, raising a deposit and affording a sizeable mortgage remains challenging, especially for those looking to join the property ladder, so it remains a possibility that there could be a slowdown in the housing market this year."

In the Budget on Wednesday, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced some changes to property taxes. These include lowering the higher rate of capital gains tax for houses from 28% to 24%, starting in April 2024. The government thinks these changes will make landlords and people with second homes want to sell up.

Grace Donohoe