Be it a lake or mountain scene, a seascape or a city skyline, nothing does more to add value to a home than a beautiful view. Some property experts estimate it can actually double its value.
If you don’t believe them, just study the estate agents’ windows in Cornwall. You will see cliff-top homes at prices only multi-millionaires can afford, while similar properties inland are reasonably priced.
Yet buyers should beware – if someone builds in front of your room with a view, then your prime attraction is lost. ‘It’s extremely important to do your homework before buying,’ advises Clare Coode of Stacks Property Search. ‘Look for acronyms AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) and SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) as these restrict planning considerably and you should be safe from developments.
‘Dark sky sites and nature reserves are also reassuring, as are national parks. Better still, look at the neighbourhood development plan.’ Nearly all homes with beautiful views are expensive but sometimes – just sometimes – you will find somewhere with a price tag that’s in the same ball-park as a house in the suburbs.
We’ve consulted estate agents and scoured property listings to bring you the best properties for sale in Britain with views to die for.
Llawnroc, Porthcothan Bay, North Cornwall
Cliff-top homes in fashionable North Cornwall do not come cheap. ‘A spectacular sea view can add as much as 100 per cent to the value of a property,’ says Josephine Ashby of John Bray Estates. ‘But it’s vital that nobody builds near you, spoiling that view, so the closer your property is to the waterfront the better.’
No house is better placed than Llawnroc, standing just above the cliff path overlooking Porthcothan Bay, a classic Cornish cove that is long and funnel-shaped so that the Atlantic rushes up at high tide, making it excellent for surfing. Popular with holidaymakers, limited car parking ensures it never becomes overcrowded. Shops are limited to the friendly Porthcothan Bay Stores, but St Merryn, two miles away, has pubs, a bistro and food outlets. Built in 2014, Llawnroc itself is an ultra-cool example of modernist architecture. To capture the best views, it is an upside-down house. The sea is framed in every window.
On the market: Llawnroc is a five-bedroom, modern home for sale with John Bray (£3.8million, johnbrayestates.co.uk).
Lighthouse cottage at St Ann’s Head, Pembrokeshire
There is nowhere better to experience the wild brutality of nature than on a lighthouse promontory which explains why Victoria Bassett was so thrilled when she first visited her cottage at St Ann’s Head, Dale, Pembrokeshire. ‘We sat inside, warm and cosy, while driving rain was crashing against the roof and we felt so lovely and safe,’ says Victoria, 49, who is a primary school teacher. ‘As for the view, there were rough seas with dolphins playing and the ferry to Ireland passing close by. It was quite enchanting.’
The cottage, which is in the centre of a small terrace, needed some attention when she and her husband, James, 50, a civil servant, bought it in 2015. They smartened up the interior; the biggest job was installing a kitchen. When it was finished, they let the cottage at between £500 and £1,800 a week. The view guaranteed that they were never short of paying visitors. The family – including their three daughters – holidayed there themselves every summer. ‘The girls loved going on walks along the cliffs,’ says Victoria. ‘Some days we couldn’t open the car doors for the wind but it was worth it, just for that view.’
On the market: Victoria’s cottage 4 Trinity House, St Ann’s Head, Pembrokeshire has three bedrooms and two bathrooms and is for sale with Country Living Group (£375,000, countrylivinggroup.co.uk).
Caswell Bay, Gower Peninsula, Swansea
There is something of the French Riviera about Caswell – if it isn’t raining, that is. It’s something to do with the greenery that surrounds it so that when you approach from the west you catch first sight of the bay through a gauze of trees and hedgerows. The beach itself is a lovely expanse of sand, tailing away around the headland and topped by the Surfside café. That is the stunning view you get if you buy one of the apartments in Caswell Bay Court, an imposing building that used to be a hotel.
Admittedly the apartments are some distance from amenities – Bishopston or Mumbles, the nearest villages, are a few miles away. That doesn’t mean that Caswell locals lack a social life. It is a favourite spot for surfers and dog lovers. Dogs are banned from the beach in the summer months, and when they are allowed back in September there’s a very jolly reunion of the owners in the Surfside café.
On the market: Astleys have two apartments for sale leasehold in Caswell Bay Court, one for £399,999 and the other for £450,000 (astleys.net).
Shoreline, Folkestone, Kent
The Shoreline development at Folkestone is the perfect place for sea-loving David Rayment to live with his wife, Marion. ‘As soon as we saw the position of the block, standing actually on the beach, seemingly within touching distance of the waves, we had to live here,’ says David, 69 and retired, who recently paid £650,000 for their new apartment. ‘It’s so fascinating to witness the power of the sea as it crashes on the shingle. Now we are really looking forward to the winter storms.’
Shoreline is a development of 84 apartments, built of glistening white, glazed bricks with distinctive Juliet balconies that give it a Gaudi-esque look. Part of the broader regeneration of Folkestone, prices start at £430,000. The Rayments are happy here. ‘It’s great for people-watching,’ says Marion, 58. ‘And there’s no better sound to wake to than the sea just yards below the balcony windows.’
On the market: Prices at Shoreline start at £430,000 and more blocks are under construction.
Sandbanks, Dorset
About 20 years ago a canny estate agent was marketing a tiny flat in Sandbanks and he had the idea of measuring up the flat’s interior and working out how much it was valued at per square foot. Eureka – the resulting sum put the place on par with Mayfair and Hong Kong. The property press got hold of the story and so was born the Sandbanks phenomenon – it was dubbed ‘the costliest coastal spot in Britain’. Prices soared and so did the number of celebrities moving to its leafy avenues, including the Redknapps, Graeme Souness and interior designer, Celia Sawyer.
Today you could spend £8million on a beach-front mansion. Harry Redknapp made a cool £4million profit on his place over the 14 years he lived here. The attraction, of course, is the sea and harbour views. Curiously, today there is an apartment for sale overlooking the harbour at a more manageable £350,000. It may not have the designer comforts of the mansions along the beach. But it has exactly the same views.
On the market: This two-bed apartment with sea views, parking and a lift is for sale with Goadsby (£325,000, goadsby.com).
Dungeness Peninsula, Kent
It was the writer and director Derek Jarman who first appreciated the bleak beauty of the Dungeness Peninsula, building a home and a garden on the shingle bank and writing a book about it: Prospect Cottage. City banker Alan Kerslake and his late wife, Meryl, followed his example when, in 2009, they bought a ramshackle fisherman’s cottage nearby. ‘We wanted somewhere to use as a weekend retreat,’ says Alan, 62. ‘As soon as we saw the cottage we loved it for its wilderness quality – it’s quite unlike anywhere else.’
The couple had no intention of ‘prettifying’ the cottage. They restored the windows and the exterior using identical materials and kept the original cladding inside. Sadly, soon after the restoration project was finished in 2013, Meryl passed away. Since then, Alan has used it less and less, letting it most of the year as an Airbnb. ‘I’ll always remember it fondly, though,’ he says. ‘The sun rises and sunsets are truly amazing. Derek Jarman was right.’
On the market: The restored two-bedroom fisherman’s cottage is on Dungeness National Nature Reserve, an area that is protected from development. It is for sale with Phillips and Stubbs (£595,000, phillipsandstubbs.co.uk).
Mount Anvil, Newham, East London
There is something very exciting about a view across the rooftops of a city. That is what attracted Leo Ping to the Royal Docks West apartment block in London’s Docklands. ‘I saw the view over the River Thames, the O2 and Canary Wharf and I had to buy here,’ says Leo, 40, a sales manager who today lives in a two-bed flat on the 16th floor. ‘The sense of being above the hustle of London was very attractive to me.’
There are three separate apartment blocks in this Mount Anvil scheme and its main headline-grabbing feature is the running track on the roof of the latest block. It is part of the fitness and well-being ethos at the core of the scheme. Residents can enjoy landscaped gardens, a yoga studio, treatment rooms, a sauna, swimming pool and a Peloton studio. Yet you don’t have to be a rich city boy to live here. Upon completion in 2027 there will be 854 new homes, of which 262 will be affordable.
On the market: The Queens Cross development has 27 units remaining. Studios are priced from £413,000 (mountanvil.com).
Royal Eden Docks has five units remaining. Studios are priced from £378,000.
The Keld, Coniston, Cumbria
How to build a new house that matches the beauty of a UNESCO World Heritage Site? That was the problem faced by the owners of the Keld, a Scandinavian-inspired new home at the northern head of Coniston Water. The first priority was to celebrate the view: the Keld nestles in ancient woodland, with Coniston Water glistening below and the Old Man of Coniston, Wetherlam and Holme Fell forming a backdrop.
They also made sure the modern design didn’t jar with the scenery by using materials – Western red cedar, oak and Lakeland green slate – that chime with the area’s architectural heritage. Yet it is undoubtedly the view that is the star. There are Juliet balconies on the first-floor bedrooms and downstairs large doors open onto a south-facing terrace. From here you can watch the woodland wildlife nearby or, if you are more of a night-time person, gaze at the clear dark skies with views of the Milky Way.
On the market: The Keld, which has 3.5 acres of grounds, has three bedrooms and is for sale with Finest Properties (£2million, finestproperties.co.uk)
The Mount, Seaton, Devon
The children’s writer, Enid Blyton, knew a thing or two about creating the right setting for a book, and she hit the jackpot when she chose the Jurassic Coast for her tales of the Famous Five. The Mount, a substantial detached house dating from the early 1900s on the outskirts of Beer, could easily be one of the old houses the Famous Fivers visit on holiday (give or take a secret passage or two). With views over Lyme Bay from its elevated position, it’s easy to picture days of sea-faring and smuggling.
The Mount’s own gardens add to the vista. On a plot of about an acre, there are large sweeping lawns and an orchard. There is also a summerhouse (an ideal study for Uncle Quentin) and a gate onto Beer Hill leading down to the beach at Seaton Hole or across the clifftops to the Jubilee Gardens. Close your eyes and you can see the merry gang skipping down to the sands clutching ‘lashings and lashings of ginger beer’.
On the market: The Mount is a detached period home with four bedrooms and four bathrooms. It is for sale with Humberts (£1,650,000, humberts.com).
Little Claydon, Westmancote, near Tewkesbury
It’s often assumed that you have to trek up to Scotland, the Lake District or North Wales to experience breath-taking scenery, untouched by the developers. Yet just four miles from Tewkesbury and ten from Cheltenham there is a cottage for sale where it’s not just estate agent flannel to say you will be at one with nature. From Little Claydon, on the edge of the Cotswolds, you can see across the countryside to Cleeve Hill, the Malverns and even, on a clear day, as far as the Black Mountains.
It has an almost birthday-card cliché of an English country garden, with a rustic path under a rose-entwined trellis, a stream water feature and colourful borders. In the surrounding fields and orchards, you will find rare birds, bats, otters and even polecats. All of this can be viewed from the reception rooms and the bedrooms, or from the broad terrace outside the living room. Best still, the cottage is in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which means it is very unlikely to be spoilt by pesky developers any time soon.
On the market: Little Claydon is a modernised, three-bedroom cottage in Westmancote. It is for sale with Stowhill Estates (£750,000, stowhillestates.com).
Dyffryn Ganol, Llanbedr, Gwynedd
For anybody interested in serious hiking – the kind of hiking which entails packing hot drinks and protective clothing – Dyffryn Ganol, a country house on the fringes of the Brecon Beacons, is perfect. ‘I can go out of the front door straight onto the Sugar Loaf Mountain,’ says owner, Marcus Beale, 48, a lover of outdoor pursuits. ‘From the back door I am on Table Mountain.’ Marcus, who was brought up in the area, has spent countless hours exploring the Black Mountains and the Beacons. He also loves the positioning of the house itself. ‘We get the most amazing sunrises and sunsets,’ he adds. ‘And in summer when the leaves are on the trees you cannot see another dwelling.’
The house is situated a few miles from Crickhowell with its high street full of independent shops and the foodie haven of Abergavenny. It is an imposing country house, with light, spacious reception rooms and over two acres of landscaped gardens – a comfortable base after a day spent on the mountains. ‘This is my family’s home and I was brought up here,’ says Marcus. ‘I’m buying a house just a mile away. I couldn’t countenance moving out of the area.’
On the market: Dyffryn Ganol has five bedrooms and is for sale with Fine and Country (£1,250,000, fineandcountry.com).
Thorngrafton House, Bardon Mill, Northumberland
Northumberland has some outstanding countryside and none is more dramatic than that near Throngrafton House, Bardon Mill. In the immediate vicinity the house has its own paddocks and ancient woodland. In the background there is a glorious expanse of open countryside leading to the North Tyne Valley and Beltingham, frequently visited by the late Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. Thorngrafton House is a classic Georgian farmhouse with bright, well-proportioned reception rooms. The five acres of grounds are currently home to a menagerie of donkeys, rare breed sheep, pigs and goats but the property lends itself to a number of uses.
‘It could be used as an equestrian property,’ says estate agent Ryan Eves. ‘Alternatively, it isn’t far from Hadrian’s Wall, which attracts thousands of tourists every year, so a buyer could introduce glamping in the grounds. That incredible view would be sure to attract a steady flow of visitors.’ Although you get a sense of the house being remote it is, in fact, quite centrally positioned in Northumberland. The Lake District is within easy reach; Hexham is 11 miles away and Newcastle thirty.
On the market: Thorngrafton House has five bedrooms and is for sale with Finest Properties (£900,000, finestproperties.co.uk).
Dutch barn, near Wantage, South Oxfordshire
South Oxfordshire may be less fashionable than the neighbouring Cotswolds but parts of it are equally beautiful. The countryside around the Dutch barn conversion at West Henney, near Wantage, for example is a revelation. ‘From the back there is open country for miles,’ says estate agent, Sarah Turner. ‘There are woods to your right, framing fields growing crops, with The Ridgeway in the distance. It’s lovely and you also get more house for your money here.’ The present owners rent out some of the farmland. For any new buyer wanting to make income from it, more land is available for sale.
A main selling point is the house itself, a 3,000 square foot, four-bedroom barn conversion, all wood and glass with a curved roof and underfloor heating. Built in 2018 it is very high spec, with an entertainment patio looking out over ‘that’ view.
On the market: The Dutch barn West Hanney, near Wantage, is for sale with Stowhill Estates (£1,650,000, stowhillestates.com).
Compass Cottage, Abersoch, Gwynedd
A harbour scene, a seascape or snow-capped mountains all make eye-catching pictures but when you capture the three of them in one shot then you have something special. Yet that is the view from Compass Cottage, Abersoch, North Wales. From the house itself you overlook the harbour and the clear waters of Cardigan Bay, leading on to the green of Llanbedrog Headland with the mighty peaks of Snowdonia in the background. Little wonder the cottage does so well as a holiday let, bringing in an average gross income of £35,000 per annum in recent years.
Compass Cottage is one of the oldest stone-built properties in Abersoch. It was formerly a fisherman’s cottage, although in 1964 it had a two-storey extension added. Today its most appealing feature is the raised terrace leading off from both the living room and the dining room – an ideal spot to simply sit and have your senses assaulted by the stunning vista opposite.
On the market: Compass Cottage is for sale with Beresford Adams (£1,750,000, beresfordadams.co.uk).
Rake Farm, Glaisdale, North Yorkshire
Who doesn’t fantasise about being part of one of those feel-good, picturesque northern dramas – All Creatures or Heartbeat perhaps? As a setting you would need something unspoiled and jaw-droppingly beautiful. You would find that in Rake Farm, Glaisdale. Situated in the North York Moors National Park, the view is a green backcloth of picture-perfect fields and farmland. The River Esk, teeming with salmon, is nearby and the farm comes with fishing rights for a 300-metre stretch of it. Even the farm buildings seem to belong to a better, more wholesome age.
The farmhouse is solid stone and Grade II Listed and its holiday cottage is known as Paddy Waddell’s Rest – a sitcom waiting to happen. Little wonder all this is being marketed as a ‘lifestyle buy’. ‘Rake Farm could be an equestrian property or a hobby farm with an Airbnb in the cottage,’ says estate agent, Peter Illingworth. ‘It’s a place to enjoy the good life, to slow down and just absorb those countryside views around you.’
On the market: Rake’s Farm has three bedrooms and more than six acres of land. It is for sale with Peter Illingworth (£1,170,000, peterillingworth.co.uk).
Ben Y Craig, Millbeck, Keswick, Lake District
Where do you get the best view of mountains and lakes in the Lake District? The architect, Sir Percy Hope had a simple answer to that question when he built his home, Ben Y Craig in the village of Millbeck in 1931. Surrounded by trees, this imposing country house is situated on the slopes of Skiddaw and its main outstanding feature is its upstairs terrace. Built for entertaining, from there the woodland is beneath your feet and there are breathtaking views of the surrounding fells and Derwentwater.
The interior also makes the most of the spectacular setting. Large sash windows flood the rooms with natural light and ensure the views are a constant presence. This is living on a grand scale, with two staircases (one for staff, don’t you know), high ceilings and decorative fireplaces. Yet always the eyes are drawn back to ‘that’ view of the fells and the lake.
On the market: Ben Y Craig is for sale with Finest Properties (£2,750,000, finestproperties.co.uk).
Seawood House, Lynton, North Devon
There is a Georgian splendour about Seawood House. Stand on the terrace and it’s easy to imagine well-to-do families of generations past taking in the view across the Bristol Channel towards the South Wales coastline opposite. From the 1880s they would have had the excitement of jaunts up the cliff side on the Lynmouth Funicular Railway which runs beside the house. From the terrace you can actually see into the carriages as they rise and descend. Although it has been modernised, inside the Grade II house is laden with period features, retaining the essence of its Georgian past.
It has eight large bedrooms, each with an ensuite as well as a three-bedroom self-contained apartment. It has obvious potential as a hotel, especially as it is close to the North Walk, part of the South West Coastal Footpath. Built within Exmoor National Park, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, visitors who tire of exploring the moors can return to the terrace and, like their Georgian forebears, witness the weather blowing in from Wales.
On the market: Seawood House, situated adjacent to the top of Lynton is for sale with By Design (£1,250,000, bydesignhomes.com)
Wild Thyme, New Polzeath, North Cornwall
The modernised bungalow of Wild Thyme overlooks popular Polzeath beach, which changes with the seasons. Visit in mid-July and it is like a scene from the American Pie films, teeming with beautiful young people clutching their boards and heading into the surf. The waves break from far out to sea and beyond them you will make out the dramatically named Doom Bar, where so many ships have perished and the lush farmland on the opposite side of the Camel Estuary. Out of season the beach is a favourite with hikers, treading the coast path around to Daymer and John Betjeman’s church on the golf course at St Enodoc.
Further along the estuary, opposite Padstow you come to Rock, much loved by the mega-rich, where sweary chef Gordon Ramsay has a home. Wild Thyme itself has the look of just another seaside bungalow. Yet inside it has undergone a dramatic renovation. Now it has four bedrooms and an open-plan living/dining room with a log burner. It is all very seaside chic but the thing that makes this house special is seen from the windows. It is the view.
On the market: Wild Thyme is for sale with John Bray (£2,250,000, johnbrayestates.co.uk).