A SECOND HOME can be one of those things that seem a good idea at the time but turn into a burden, a bit like when Coleridge’s ancient mariner decided to go albatross-shooting and ended up with a seabird necklace. It is easy when sitting on a train between an alcoholic and the thump of gangsta rap to dream of that cottage in the country with roses round the door, but unless the second home is within a short drive you are never going to visit it every weekend. If it takes half a day to get there, you will live in it for only a few weeks of the year — and at peak times, when you would get the most rent, you would want to use it yourself.

What you need is the benefit of home ownership, without the expense of having an empty house for most of the year or the kerfuffle of finding tenants. Philippa and Sebastian Hughes think they have the answer. Having developed four outbuildings on their Dartmoor farm into cottages, they decided that, instead of selling them as full second homes or renting them out, they would sell quarter-shares in them.

Essentially, each building would be sold to four people, each having the right to live there for three months. If a group of friends bought all four quarters of a house, they could divide the year between them, but if the quarters are bought by strangers there would be a fair rota to ensure that everyone could use their cottage for a couple of weeks in the school holidays.

“Yachts have been sold like this for years,” Sebastian Hughes said. “If you have a share in something, rather than just being a tenant, then you are going to take better care of it, so it suits us better. If we let the cottages for, say, 44 weeks of the year, then that would mean 44 different groups of people, 42 of whom would be lovely but two would be right little . . .”

He interrupted his expletive to say that he had had interest from people who find it can be a bind leaving homes unattended. “A woman with a second home in Dittisham (near Dartmouth) said that she loves Devon but could not live there for more than two months,” he said. “Whenever she saw stories about storms in the West Country, she would worry about her house. She always has to spend a couple of weeks when she is here maintaining the house. Splitting the ownership of the house would remove that burden.”

The Hughes family bought the 500-acre Holwell estate, in the middle of Dartmoor, last year. It had been in the same family since 1901 “but they had not looked after it since 1978”. Sebastian’s family are Devon farmers but he wanted it as much for the conversion potential of the stables, piggery and barns.

“I love farming but, to be honest, it is not going to educate my children,” he said. Having started to develop the buildings as holiday lets, he hit on the idea of selling them. “Hound Tor”, “Rippon Tor” and “Hay Tor” have three double bedrooms each, while the former cart barn, now “Honeybag Tor”, can sleep ten. For a service charge of £2,000 a year, he and his wife will manage the cottages and prepare them for the owners, even cooking a meal for when they arrive after an eight-hour traffic jam on the A303.

And it is not just the houses that come divided into four. The Hugheses are also keen on allowing owners to divide machinery, transport, even horses four ways to spread the cost.

“People tell us that they prefer to own part of a horse or bicycle and keep it down here than just rent one when they arrive,” Sebastian said.

Owners will be allowed access across the 500 acres — “you can walk all day without seeing a road” — and nature-lovers will enjoy the rare breed stocks on the farm, including belted Galloway cattle and the only breeding lapwings on Dartmoor. There is also an ambitious plan to save the Dartmoor pony. “They are the only animals on the moor that eat gorse, so we desperately need them,” Sebastian said. “Since foot-and-mouth their numbers are down from about 5,000 to 500 and the red-sock brigade have started to complain about the gorse tickling their ankles. We have 65 ponies now and are trying to breed them.”

Obviously with a private project like this, a lot of work has had to go into sorting out the legalities for joint ownership. The homes will be freehold and can be inherited like any other property, but the Hugheses have insisted that if anyone wants to sell their quarter they should offer it to the other three quarter-holders first.

Council tax will be divided between the owners, but stamp duty is more of a concern if people want to buy more than one quarter of a house. Even the most expensive single quarter-share is only £165,000, but if someone buys two quarters they will have to pay 3 per cent tax on them rather than two lots of 1 per cent.

There is one problem, Sebastian admitted. “We can’t get any reception for mobile phones out here and there is only one analogue landline.” Sounds more like a blessing.

Quarter-shares are for sale through Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01392 214222. £115,000 to £165,000

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