From a racehorse to a steamboat and a space in Sicily, it’s unexpected what you can buy for £1. The people who made the deal of their lives communicate what happened next.
Martin Higgins, 60, Brockham, Surrey
Where I grew up, in Brockham, everyone knew Betchworth Castle. Every child, by adding me, has entered at least once. My parents even had a local map on our living room wall, so I couldn’t help but notice the ruins of this early medieval castle in a park. My mother, an avid local historian, and my father, a civil service landscape architect, so we had a loose pass to England’s historic sites. The holiday was one ruined abbey after another.
I earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture in college, then a master’s degree in historic wood-frame buildings. I worked for the National Trust, then as a conservation officer for local government in London and as a historic buildings officer in Surrey. Although one of the jobs I was helping to maintain buildings for 20 years, I never met Betchworth professionally.
The castle, in all likelihood an Iron Age fort, had appeared in the Domesday Book and includes elements of the Bronze Age. King Edward I once stayed there, but had been reduced to “romantic ruins” through the aristocratic Hope family. The story is fascinating. After the district council acquired it in 1955, they tried to demolish it. At that time, a golf course was built around it. more. I tried to buy it several times, but I may not find anything. In 2008 it was not enough: they gave me an assembly with the council and, when it became transparent, there was nothing. I said, ‘I’ll tell you something, I’ll buy it for £1 and I’ll do it myself. ‘They agreed instantly.
The construction in deficit of conservation, meaning that the fixed price is higher than the market price, however, 1 pound provided a nominal monetary reimbursement to have me recognized as its new owner. In the end, in February 2012, I didn’t exactly get the keys to the castle, but I did get the key to a padlock for the bars around it. I got conservation grants, added £186,000 from English Heritage and council money allocated to build the site. Years later, I admitted to my wife that I had spent £29,000 out of my own pocket on matching funds. We rebuilt the most sensitive 18 inches of the two-and-a-half-story walls, inserted a stainless metal window frame and fixed the platform, destroyed by the wonderful typhoon. of 1987.
When I bought Betchworth, it was about to collapse and attracted 7000 visitors a year. Last year, I estimate there were 28,000. During the lockdown, I was busy, which gave me a very warm feeling. It’s incredibly satisfying to see a circle of relatives up there for a Sunday walk.
Locally, I’m known as the guy the castle belongs to; People like to leave it in the conversation. I think they think it was ridiculous the concept of buying one for £1, although they are complete compliments for my efforts.
The Dorking Museum organizes guided tours. I used to run them myself, but my poor physical condition means I can’t walk as much anymore. I stop there every two weeks to make sure I’m okay and make a messy decision. There is no source of income for maintenance, so the volunteers, Friends of Deepdene, cut ivy and clean 3 or 4 times a year.
My next challenge is to secure their future. A few years ago, in the case of my daughter’s 21st birthday, I gave full ownership to my children, but kept the liabilities, with a full lease. true to ensure the sustainability of its public good. After buying it for €1, what can be better than providing it?
John Riches, 76, Pilling, Lancashire
Astapor came to me by a twist of fate, or by luck. As a child, I dreamed of owning a racehorse. I listened to the races every weekend with my mother. partial bet) with the bookmaker broker, which was illegal at the time, and I enjoyed the excitement. I learned to ride a horse in a week. The feeling is definitely fantastic.
I had other jobs, in Butlin, window cleaning, fish peddling, and then in 2001, Linda and I bought an old dairy farm with a sand pen and turned it into stables. At 65, I was given my point 3 NVQ at Newmarket and has become a qualified coach.
In 2019, he had had horses for almost 20 years. It wasn’t long ago that he had bought a three-year-old rain cap from Mick Channon, the former English footballer turned racehorse coach. Rain Cap was very nervous: every time he ran, the last one came here. It didn’t seem like a smart buy, so Mick showed up to send a moment one, Astapor. There would be no charge. In ancient times you gave a few cents rather than take anything for free, so I sent the guy who came here to pick it up with a £1 coin as a deposit for Mick.
Astapor is berry colored, with a white spot on the forehead. It measures 15. 2 spans high. The first time I took him out, in a kilometer and a half running, he came to fly forward. When I tried it at a gallop, it went like hell, and when I put it on, it ran all the way. He committed him in some races. He was 12 years old when, in June 2022, I put him on a six-stadium rookie picket line in Hamilton Park, Scotland. The jockey had nothing to do. Astapor won at odds of 200 to 1 and has become the co-winner of Britain’s largest flat prize. My wife, Linda, and I were watching TV. We almost jumped over the roof. We won £3,942 for the win, not a bad gain, considering what I had paid.
We’ve had other horses come and go. Astapor is one of the five we have. I’ve never been there for the cash – you don’t earn much unless you have a big name. I just like to see them working.
You can’t put speed on a horse, they either have it or they don’t. There is no magic touch, but perseverance, understanding and a lot of mints help.
Rain Cap has won 4 races for me now: I put a visor on him so he won’t be afraid of crowds. And Astapor arrived here in a race some time after the first one. What an absolute bargain.
Taya Hughes, 40, Wirral, Merseyside
Since I came to London from Zimbabwe at the age of 17, my dream was to paint in fashion. I graduated as an accountant and painted a variety of jobs, but I never lost that fondness for design.
I got married and moved to Liverpool, where I studied fashion, art and design at university. In 2015, when I was pregnant with our momentary son and spending time at home with our toddler, it was time to launch my own colorful, art-inspired womenswear logo, Tayamika. I was 8 months pregnant when I presented my first collection at Liverpool Fashion Week.
After the show, I went to the cutting shops in the village to see if they had my clothes in stock, but no one was interested in a local brand. During this time, I received orders online, so I would put my baby to bed and move on to making clothes day and night. I looked for my own studio. I said I was looking for space, and one parent spoke about the council’s Shops for £1 programme, aimed at reviving a row of six empty broken shops in a then-run-down component of the city. I implemented to open a clothing boutique committed to locals. Designers. The deadline in two weeks. I didn’t sleep. I wrote 36 pages, added a business plan, and selected from 140 candidates.
The deal took years to close. I have two other brands, one encouraged by my African heritage, one for evening wear, and I sold the garments on Etsy while waiting. When the closure came, the news from the store fell silent. Then, in mid-2020, an email arrived saying the renovation had begun. Suddenly, it came true.
The region was beginning to recover after years of deterioration. The council had already sold dozens of empty, run-down homes for 1 pound on terraced streets and shops, which assured me that it would one day be a thriving community, but at this point now, it was still a ghost town. All I could see were houses with metal barricades. There was a record store open and what appeared to be a mobile phone repair shop. The rest of the outlets had been closed.
The promoters would remodel the premises. I would finance the installation and pay £1 a year in rent for 3 years, increasing to £400 a month for two years, and then the general rates (between £600 and £800).
I opened the Seven Streets store in February. Not having to pay the market rent is a huge relief. I pay bills, insurance, and business fees, but otherwise I would have had trouble going to my own area. I photograph 18 designers and our clothes look stunning in the store: it’s bright, with antique pink upholstered chairs and a chandelier in the center. The network around us is thriving; There is also a hairdresser and an Italian grocery store. People put their heart and soul into their businesses. It’s hard work, but I’m thankful every day that I didn’t give up.
Maya Eliza, 25, lately in Sweden
The first time I saw the wooden boat with red sails that became mine for $1, I immediately fell in love with it.
I grew up near Vancouver, Canada, and went to Quest University in British Columbia. I was 18 years old and escaped the stress of exams by walking around the harbor. As a teenager, I learned to navigate and read a library e-book about a woman who had traveled around the world. I had ambitions to do the same. Being around the boats kept me in touch with sleep.
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On one of those hikes, I saw this beautiful 26-foot boat. I watched it for so long that the owner of a nearby boat asked me if it was mine. When I said no, he explained that he had been neglected. Unusual practice in Canada for an owner to display their touch data in the window, so I typed in the email address and sent a message that night, providing help to their boat if they let me sail on weekends.
Five days later, the answer came: “It’s yours. You can have it for $1. I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do next. I had an idea for a while. The dream was given to me for a dollar, and if I said no, I knew I would regret it. I agreed, found an affordable position to keep it, and started sorting it out on weekends.
Friends kept me in the company and my father, a naval engineer, helped me fix the engine. It was a lovely ship, but it had sunk in hard times; The tarps that protected her from the elements had been blown off and her varnish was peeling. After a year, I took day trips, took a friend, sailed to my parents’ space and back, or sought out the protected islands and bays in the Pacific. Northwest coast. I also did night trips.
Own it transformative. The growing sense of trust, duty, and autonomy guided me gracefully into adulthood. This little boat has become the bone design for the rest of my life.
The summer after college, in 2017, I took on an assignment on a tall ship in the Mediterranean and met my husband, a boat builder. It’s not that you meet another young boat owner, and soon we plan a long trip together, traveling around Europe. You can’t wait for a wooden boat to wait, so I sold my little boat for $1,500 and started my next adventure aboard his. We are in Sweden right now. We’re renovating a momentary ship that we hope will one day take us around the world, and I’m making films about our paintings and our travels.
I never met the other people I bought my wooden boat from, but the funny thing is that when I got on board, I found out there was $3 left on a shelf. It paid for itself and much more. It replaced everything.
Danny McCubbin, 57, Mussomeli, Sicily
In 1998, at the age of 33, I moved from Brisbane, Australia to London. I fell in love with England and traveled around Europe, especially Italy, where the sense of family, food and time reminded me of home. I applied as a PA with Jamie Oliver when he was part of their non-profit Fifteen Foundation and, through work, I joined a program in Italy where they rehabilitated other young people through food.
When I left Jamie in the summer of 2019, I looked into applying for Italian residency and came up with the idea of buying one of the many vacant homes sold for €1 through small Italian towns that needed to spice up the declining population. I had planned to turn it into a social project, but keeping England at home, and I wrote a blog about my projects on social media. A TV producer approached me to be part of a screen they were developing, following six Brits doing the €1 slot. thing. I chose one perched on a hill, in the beautiful town of Mussomeli, Sicily. It had been deserted for 15 years. There is a bedroom, a small kitchen and a bathroom on the landing.
In November 2019, I knew I was in love with Mussomeli and wanted to make it my home, but when Covid hit, the TV screen was cancelled. During the pandemic, I worked in network kitchens in London. Sicily’s poverty has been exacerbated by Covid and the impetus to feed a network there has increased. I knew it had to happen before Brexit was over, so on December 7, 2019 I took a one-way plane. I met one person, the genuine real estate agent who sold me the space for €1, which was uninhabitable. The leaky roof, there was no heating or bathroom, and deserted spaces on both sides had contributed to external damage. It was suspended in time. I rented some other assets to live in, a 10-minute walk away, for €300 a month, and went to the €1 space every day, lit a fireplace in the oven, and planned a future.
I started crowdfunding to turn the space into a networked kitchen and raised over £24,000, mostly from the UK. Builders were scarce and, while waiting to locate myself to renovate it, I took the collective kitchen out of an empty room in the town square. , which I rented €150 consistent with the month. With volunteers, we started distributing food to families in need. The local grandmothers taught us how to make pasta and we started cooking categories for the kids.
As the months passed and costs increased, house renovation quotes of €1 skyrocketed to €28,000. I used crowdsourced cash to expand and identify the operation of the town square as a charity, The Good Kitchen, and sold the space back to the firm for €1. I hadn’t lost anything, but I gained a net and the kitchen I dreamed of.
A circle of Argentine relatives bought the space and turned it into an artist’s studio. I sold my flat in London and bought a space, for € 8,000, near the kitchen; real estate is much cheaper in Sicily. Today, the charity has 8 board members and delivers one hundred meals a week. Every Thursday I pass to the wholesale fruit and vegetable market by a car full of surplus that we use to cook Sicilian vegetarian dishes, such as caponata.
The most difficult component was learning Italian through a Sicilian dialect. I live an undeniable but charming life among other people I would never have met otherwise. I smile every time I step beyond the €1 space that brought me here.
Captain Dan Cross, 48, Widnes, Cheshire
When I was 8 years old, my parents bought a 17-foot river speedboat and installed it on the Weaver River near our home in Cheshire. We went up and down on weekends and spent summer holidays on the water. The Weaver is still an advertising river and I was fascinated through giant ships.
At university I worked on a passenger ship and at 19 I became a sailor on tugboats in Liverpool, opportune time and then captain. I never sought to spend months at sea. I was married, and a few weeks after our son was born in 2004, I found out he owned the Daniel Adamson (the Danny), a 1903 steamboat with such an important history that it is listed on the National Register of Historic Ships in the same category as the Cutty Sark.
I knew her a little, having noticed her display at what is now the National Waterways Museum in Ellesmere Port this summer holiday. It was on his butt and someone at headquarters made the decision that the cash wasn’t worth keeping. It was loaned to the museum, but has become the target of vandals and arsonists. The hull was corroded, the water needed to be pumped and all its mechanics needed to be restored.
When a friend and I heard that the Danny was destined for scrap metal in February 2004, we turned to an enthusiast site, Tug Talk, for information. An agreement had been reached with a local scrap metal broker and she would be towed in 4 days. We agreed that anything had to be done. Within hours, I arrived at Ship Canal headquarters with a letter that allowed me to tow it for free. Forty-five minutes later, the port manager and chief engineer asked me how much I would pay for it. I took £4. 85 out of my jeans pocket and they took £1 on the condition that I take it out of the canal and out of her hair. I left wondering, “Now what?”
He started a chain of phone calls and online communities. In less than 24 hours, enthusiasts, businessmen and an officer with mooring and weakness for the canals came forward to shape an agreement to take him to the dock. Someone put £2500 for insurance, a surveyor declared it water worthy, and other people began providing reasonable or loose facilities and materials. Over the next decade, we formed an organization of volunteers and donations of money, and restored their steam engines, pumps, and hull.
We had a vision to bring passengers back and in 2015 won a £3. 8 million grant from the National Lottery for a full one-year recovery at Birkenhead Shipyard where it was built. We formed a team and I first ordered it with passengers on the Weaver in September 2016. There were other people queuing up at the benches to see him. I felt immensely proud.
We now make 40 passenger trips a year and personal charters. Most gratifyingly, local engineering academics come to learn, and we organize workshops and sessions on intellectual aptitude for young people who have dropped out of conventional education. They love the story of anything. that is taken care of and is destined to be destroyed and brought back from the edge of the abyss.
This summer, I awarded the Merchant Marine Medal for Meritorious Service for the recovery of the Danny. I didn’t expect a gong for a second.
We didn’t need it to be a modified shipment and put back in a museum. I need him to touch other people. When we succeed at the level where so many other people will need to get on board that we reject them, I will have gotten the price of my £1.