You know you don’t want a red-brick executive home. You want a property that’s a little different. Like a village church or a pub, or even a lighthouse, former cinema, railway station, second world war bunker, or maybe even a tree house.

But how do you find one? March into a high-street estate agent and announce: “I’m looking for something a bit unusual,” and you are likely to be met with a dramatic sigh and an offer of a Victorian terrace “with unusual aquamarine decor.”

Traditionally, the property auction has been the source of the unusual. The Olfords bought Droxford station at an auction in their pub. Rural auctions will turn up the village cricket pavilions and barns ready to convert; urban auctions can include the former pubs and water towers. The website www.propertyauctions.com has information on most main auctioneers. For a subscription fee, Choices Investment Acquisition and EIG Group offer information on upcoming auctions.

You could also hunt down some properties yourself by looking through the lists of historic buildings at risk maintained by English Heritage and Save Britain’s Heritage. Owners of such buildings may be willing to have somebody take them off their hands to heap love upon them. There may be a small charge to consult the lists. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings compiles a regular list of properties for sale.

Church conversions are especially popular, and lists of those for sale are kept by the Churches of England and Scotland.

There are also agents specialising in a particular type of property. Pavilions of Splendour markets listed properties (and has a good portal to specialist craftsmen on its website). Alternatively, Railproperties sells everything from disused stations to converted carriages to entire branch lines, marketing, for example, Dent station in Cumbria, officially the highest in Britain.

The Unique Property Organisation has recently marketed a Ministry of Defence nuclear bunker in Cambridgeshire, a Victorian water tower with planning permission to convert into a four-bedroom home in Kent, and a cave in Yorkshire, which, in 1770, was turned into a four-floor home by a rich weaver.

If you stumble across a property you love and it is empty, you can trace the owner through the Land Registry; or company 1st Locate will do it for a fee (£13 if the property is registered with the Land Registry, £150 if it is not).

Then the real work begins: the restoration. Your two best contacts will be the Guild of Master Craftsmen and the Federation of Master Builders.

The cost of renovating an old property can be huge, but there is help in the form of possible grants — Funds for Historic Buildings maintains a database of suitable sources.

Finding, buying and converting or restoring something unique is usually a long, expensive haul. But the rewards are equally special.

SOURCES

The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, 020 7377 1644, www.spab.org.uk

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