YOU CAN spend years searching for that little gem of a property to do up, especially in “honeypots” such as the West Country.

So imagine finding not just a house but a whole tiny village crying out for renovation. And what’s more, the place is a time capsule of medieval and later stone cottages, abandoned but intact, nestling in acres of their own land on a clifftop overlooking the sea.

That is what happened to Philip Bradby, and he wasn’t even out looking. Sounds like a dream? A busman’s holiday actually. Bradby is a property developer but just cannot resist a crumbling old building, even on a day off.

“I was on holiday near St Ives and was just driving along a tiny lane when I saw a farmer nailing up a homemade ‘Farm for Sale’ sign. I stopped to have a look, but never intended buying anything,” says Bradby.

An hour later he had shaken hands with the farmer, John Berriman, on a £1 million-plus deal to buy a collection of buildings and about 50 acres, with no guarantees as to what planning consents might be forthcoming.

“It was all in a terrible state, with loads of concrete blocks and rusting tin roofing. But underneath the mess I could see these fantastic old granite cottages just a couple of hundred yards from the sea. I got excited and agreed to buy them there and then,” he says.

The place is the tiny settlement of Trowan, less than a mile from St Ives. It traces its roots to the Iron Age, and was said to have been a bustling village in Victorian days, home to miners from the Consul tin mine and farm labourers. It had its own manor house, blacksmith and its own parson. When the mine closed, villagers turned to dairy farming, bottling their milk for the surrounding villages. I’d never heard of Trowan, and nor had Bradby until he stumbled on it in summer 2003. “There aren’t even road signs to take you there,” he says.

But D. H. Lawrence, who was living at nearby Zennor when he was writing Women in Love in 1916, certainly knew the place. He described it as “a tiny granite village nestling under high shaggy moor hills, and a big sweep of lovely sea, lovelier even than the Mediterranean”. That sweep takes in the South West Coast Path, Porthmeor Beach, and spectacular sea views out to the Godfrey lighthouse, which was made famous in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

Bradby, a 36-year-old property lawyer turned developer, is a director of Mango Homes, which specialises in restoring historic buildings and turning them into contemporary homes. Mango got going only in 1999, but last year it scooped much bigger developers with bigger budgets to win a Best Residential Development Award from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors for its very first project.

This was the conversion of the derelict Mayroyd sawmill into ten contemporary townhouses in Mango’s home town of Hebden Bridge, between Leeds and Manchester on the edge of the wild moorland of Brontë country. The first houses at Mayroyd Mill were flying out off-plan at £260,000 and the final ones were fetching more than £400,000, which indicates a developer with a sure touch.

Mango now has two more mill conversions under way at Hebden Bridge and the nearby village of Pecket Well. “We only do historic properties, and when you see them derelict you want to put them back to some use. These kinds of buildings only come up by luck. So Trowan was too good to turn down. There won’t be another like it in Cornwall,” says Bradby.

The Berriman family bought Trowan for £2,100 at a sale in St Ives in 1930 and had farmed there ever since. It has been described as one of the oldest working landscapes in the world. “It dates back to when God was a boy,” says Bradby. Now the manor house, known as Trowan Veane, and 11 cottages are being restored by Mango using a team of local craftsmen. The two-bed and three-bed properties — to be completed next year — are all being renovated in traditional materials with blue slate roofs, exposed granite walls, slate and timber floors and open fires.

A condition of consent is that all but three of the cottages must be used for holiday accommodation and not as permanent residences, although they can still be used throughout the year. Such is the lure of a country bolt-hole by the sea or a river that seven have already been sold. Prices for the remaining cottages are from £265,000 to £435,000. “Trowan is special and we want to leave it looking like the timeless little hamlet it was years ago,” says Bradby. “We are trying to keep cars away from cottages, so there will be one small car park hidden behind hedges. There will be no aerials and no sheds.”

Was he taking a risk buying without detailed planning consents? “You’ve got to take a bit of a punt,” he says. “We often buy without the right approvals and then go back to the planners with our own ideas. A lot of the value is in seeing opportunities with buildings that others have overlooked.”

More recently Bradby bought a derelict waterside warehouse without even visiting it. “A friend who was buying it but had to drop out e-mailed me a photograph. It looked fantastic, so we bought it.” So the next punt will be for new offices, bars and restaurants in the Abbey Warehouse in Penzance.

www.mangohomes.co.uk. Hebden Bridge 01422 845615 or St Ives 01736 791953

CORNISH CREAM

CLOSE to the river in the cathedral city of Truro, a large and elegant two-bed flat is for sale for £295,000 via Lillicrap Chilcott (www.waterfrontandcountryhomes.com 01872 273473) in the recently restored Newham House, above left. The Grade II listed Georgian property has been split into just four units, and has 10ft-high ceilings, private gardens and large communal grounds.

A few miles from St Ives, near Portreath, Lillicrap Chilcott is asking £550,000 for Basset House, below left, a four-bed stone pile in the grounds of the 700-year-old Tehidy Park. It comes with its own 2½-acre private garden, lies just a 15-minute stroll from the sea and a 25-minute drive from Truro.

Over the border in Devon, Christopher Bond (01409 254238) is auctioning Waldon Cottage, a three-bed house at Bradworthy, near Bideford. It needs a total renovation and is tucked away in its own gardens by the River Walden. Guide price for the August 4 auction is £160,000. It last changed hands — also at auction — in 1909, when it went for £65.

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