For sale: Britain's most bizarre garden
Friday, 29 July 2011 2:21 PM
A garden which could well be describe as the weirdest in Britain has been put on the.
Measuring just 30ft wide but three quarters of a mile long, it could conceivably take half an hour to walk to the end and back.
The quirky garden, along with the two-bedroom cottage that sits at one end, is now on the market for £340,000.
The house – called The Gables and located in Alne, North Yorkshire – was formerly a railway worker’s cottage and the garden formed part of a now disused private railway.
The current owner is 73-year-old former postie Ian Topham, who retired to the cottage with his 71-year-old wife Barbara nine years ago.
He told the Daily Mail: “The track ran from nearby Easingwold, went through Alne and joined the main London-to-Edinburgh East Coast line a few miles away. But the tracks were taken up after the Second World War and soil was put down.”
The garden has been divided into a number of distinct areas, including a seating area, a barbecue area and a wildlife area, all surrounded by flowerbeds and a vegetable patch. There's also a recently planted rose garden, two paddocks and an old railway goods carriage which once housed goats.
Mr Topham told the Mail that he was reluctantly selling up after suffering a stroke last September. He told the paper: "There is a lot of mowing involved. And the hedge is three-quartesr of a mile long. It's like painting the Forth Bridge – once you've finished, you need to start again."
The property – and its usual garden – is being sold by estate agent Barry Dinner.
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