IN THE 1930s, when a fleet of retired railway carriages was sold off, a batch ended up as holiday homes along the Cardigan Bay coast. Most were absorbed into bungalow-esque structures over the years. But one has just been painstakingly restored to its original proportions by Greg Stevenson, the proprietor of Under the Thatch, a holiday lettings company that rescues unusual period buildings in West Wales. “It’s a bit of Arcadia; who wouldn’t want one?” he enthuses of his acquisition.

Stevenson, an architectural historian, who presents the S4C television programme Y Ty Cymreig (The Welsh House), came across the train coaches during the course of a programme. He asked for first refusal if anyone was selling, and last year a woman called and the chocolate and cream Edwardian train compartment was his for £91,000. The Aberporth Express, as he calls it, is 60ft long and stands a few dozen feet from the clifftop, an excellent dolphin-spotting position. “I would have bought a train door in this location,” says Stevenson, 33. As it was, he bought three quarters of a carriage with a huge extension tacked on the back. And a resident ghost, apparently, that strokes sleepers’ faces.

Although it is his favourite property it was his most stressful restoration. The bill spiralled from £20,000 to £50,000 and he had to project-manage from Patagonia, where he was filming. “I decided to knock down the lean-to and rebuild the back wall of the train. It was difficult technically because it’s got curved ceilings and walls.” The upside was discovering more original features than he’d expected; the floorboards, for instance, and the words “Lavatory for use of sleeping car passengers” stencilled on a door. The carriage now includes two sleeping compartments off the original corridor, which was clearly engineered for skinny, bag-free travellers. It has been fitted with reproduction travel posters and leather trunks. “I’ve got about a third of the house I bought – and devalued the plot in many ways – but I don’t regret it,” he says. In fact, he has his eye on another one.

With 18 properties in its portfolio, Under the Thatch has grown rapidly since 2001, when Stevenson left a PR job in Aberystwyth and sold his house, a terraced stone cottage. He then embarked on a mission to rescue vernacular buildings before they they were lost to cement and plastic windows. The once common thatched two-room cottages that dotted the West Wales landscape are now rarely seen, he says.

The venture began when he did up a cow-shed attached to his next home and, to pay for the work, let it out for holidays. “It was full from day one.” Then, in 2003, he purchased a cottage in the next village for £15,000 and spent £80,000 restoring it. “It was listed and structurally dire so a lot of people didn’t want to touch it. We were spending more money than the value of the property but we didn’t care.”

Under the Thatch properties have to be “architecturally significant, unusual or interesting” and in a great location. The ethos is to buy only derelict or nonresidential buildings so as not to remove starter homes from the housing stock.

He finds most through word of mouth but, with a mortgage limit of just £150,000, old cottages are becoming too expensive. That’s why he has added a quirky element. “I like pioneering things that haven’t been protected – tin buildings, prefabs, railway carriages, gypsy caravans, 1970s cabins.”

Stevenson dismisses the assumption that cottage restoration is a game solely for specialists. “You’ve just got to read about it and do it. It isn’t rocket science to restore vernacular buildings using homemade techniques.” Under the Thatch: www.underthethatch.co.uk

FACTBOX

The small number of transactions in Wales can produce short-term fluctations in market data, making discerning long-term trends hard. The most recent Halifax house price index, however, shows Greater London prices are now 1.8 times those of Wales, down from 2.5 times five years ago.

The fastest rising prices in the first quarter of this year were in South Wales, in the Vale of Glamorgan, up 21 per cent in a year, and Blaenau Gwent, up 20 per cent.

Prices in Gwynedd, northwest Wales, were down 1 per cent and Ceredigion, in mid-Wales, dropped 2 per cent over a year.

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