When Kerry Jordan, 46, got divorced in 2021, she couldn’t afford to stay in West Sussex. For 10 years, she’d lived with her ex-husband in a three-bedroom, “newish” house in Fernhurst, near Haslemere.
“I separated from my husband and found I couldn’t afford anything without getting a full-time corporate job and that wasn’t something I wanted any more.”
Instead, she hired a van for a month and travelled around the UK. “I went to the western side of the Lake District and saw that you could get a house for between £70,000 to £75,000, so I started looking around there.”
She came across a three-bedroom terrace with a garden in Frizington, in Cumbria on sale for £48,000. “It was probably cheap because of where it is. It’s in a farming village and not near anywhere touristy, but it’s 20 minutes from the Lake District National Park…. I thought: ‘I’m not going to get better than this.’”
However, the property was cheap as it required a significant amount of work. Luckily, she was able to afford to renovate.
The property she’d owned with her ex-husband sold for around £700,000, and, even though they’d had a mortgage, as it had increased so much in value, Kerry was able to buy her West Cumbria home in cash.
This was crucial as she wanted to have financial flexibility to focus on her business as a commercial photographer for the pet industry.
“I wanted to have a go at having the freedom of being self-employed… Not being tied to a massive mortgage is very freeing.”
Kerry, who is originally from Manchester, moved in in September 2021. “I slept on a mattress for two months because the floor in the bedroom had been covered with MDF to cover up woodworm… The property is over 100 years old and there was a leak in the upstairs hall because the chimney wasn’t stacked correctly.”
There was also woodworm and damp downstairs, and she had to replace the entire staircase. Fortunately, she found somewhere that could build one based on a few measurements: “The staircase was delivered and the carpenter slotted it in so that saved me a lot of money.”
Where she could, Kerry tried to do things herself. “I did most of the main decorating and DIY, even though I’d never picked up a drill, barely used a screwdriver or a paint brush.”
The garden had been a big selling point for the property as Kerry has dogs, but it took her a year to remove the family of slugs that had made it their home, as well as sort out the “knee-high grass”. She also had to get a plumber in to re-route the kitchen sink as it was draining straight out into the yard.
Kerry estimates she’s spent just over £10,000 on the renovations she couldn’t do herself, with new flooring and doorways her biggest expense.
“It took two years for me to save up to get new floors. They were concrete or bare wooden floorboards, and I put down rugs over them. I didn’t want to skimp on them, and they took three weeks to be fitted properly, so that was a big expense.”
Kerry says she’d never planned to move back up north again and it took some adjusting. “I found moving back north quite hard… I knew I didn’t want to move back to Manchester.”
As well as the renovations, other things she’s had to contend with include the weather, especially the wind in Cumbria. She’s also a long way from friends and family.
“It can get lonely because my friends are seven hours away, but I would make the same decision again… I’m getting used to travelling, driving seven hours isn’t a chore – I just put on a podcast. Businesswise, I tend to travel to clients instead of them travelling to me.”
Despite not knowing anyone locally, she’s found the people friendlier. “It took a while to get used to. I have no children and my partner lives on Skye… I’m in a small village and I’ve only met a handful of people, but you feel like you’re being looked after – it’s a close-knit community.”
Kerry said it’s definitely something she’d recommend to others. “If you want to be free of a big mortgage and you can cope with not being in a set location or having a set idea of where you live, it’s very freeing not to have that hanging over you… That was the reason I made the decision – no mortgage meant more flexibility with what I did with my business.”