‘When I bought the castle, it was at the point of collapse’
Martin Higgins, 60, Brockham, Surrey
Where I grew up, in Brockham, everyone knew about Betchworth Castle. Every child, including me, trespassed there at least once. My parents even had a local map on our living room wall, so I couldn’t fail to notice the ruins of this early medieval castle in parkland. My mother was a keen local historian and my father was a civil service landscape architect, so we had a free pass to Historic England sites. Holidays were one ruined abbey after another.
I gained an architecture degree at university, then a master’s in historic timber-frame buildings. I worked for the National Trust, then as a local authority conservation officer in London and a historic buildings officer in Surrey. Although one of the jobs during those 20 years was to help preserve buildings, I never encountered Betchworth professionally.
The castle, possibly an iron age hill fort, had featured in the Domesday Book and includes bronze age features. King Edward I once stayed there, but it had been reduced to a “romantic ruin” by the aristocratic Hope family. Its history is fascinating. After the district council acquired it in 1955 – , they tried to pull it down. By this time, a golf course was laid out around it. But the government blocked the demolition, railings went up and, periodically, enthusiasts like my mum would plead with the council to do more. I tried to buy it several times, but got nowhere. In 2008, I decided it wasn’t good enough: I secured a meeting with the council and, when it became clear they couldn’t afford to do anything to preserve it, I said: “I’ll tell you what, I’ll buy it from you for £1 and do it myself.” They agreed instantly.
When I bought Betchworth, it was at the point of collapse and attracted 7,000 visitors a year. Last year, I estimate there were 28,000
The building was in conservation deficit – meaning the repair cost was greater than market value – but £1 provided a nominal financial consideration for me to be recognised as its new owner. On completion, in February 2012, I didn’t get the keys to the castle exactly, but I did get the key to a padlock for the railings around it. I secured conservation grants, including £186,000 from English Heritage, and council cash was allocated to scaffold the site. Years later, I admitted to my wife I’d spent £29,000 from my own pocket in match funding. We rebuilt the top 18in of the two-and-a-half storey walls, inserted a stainless steel window frame and repaired the terrace, wrecked in the great storm of 1987.
When I bought Betchworth, it was at the point of collapse and attracted 7,000 visitors a year. Last year, I estimate there were 28,000. In lockdown it was really busy, which gave me a very warm feeling. It’s hugely satisfying to see a family up there for a Sunday walk.
Locally, I’m known as the man who owns the castle; people like to drop it into conversation. I think they found the idea of buying one for £1 ridiculous, although they’re always complimentary about my endeavour.
Dorking Museum runs guided tours. I used to lead them myself, but ill health means I can’t walk that far any more. I go there every couple of weeks to ensure it’s safe and do a litter pick. There’s no income for upkeep, so volunteers, Friends of Deepdene, cut the ivy and tidy up three or four times a year.
My next challenge is to secure its future. A few years ago, on my daughter’s 21st birthday, I gave the freehold to my children but kept the liability, with a full repairing lease. My ambition is to create an endowment, passing the lease to a preservation trust to ensure its public benefit lives on. Having bought it for £1, what could be better than giving it away?
‘Astapor stormed to victory on 200-1 odds and became the joint biggest-price flat winner in Britain’
John Riches, 76, Pilling, Lancashire
View image in fullscreenJohn Riches with his racehorse Astapor. Photograph: Craig Easton/The Guardian
Astapor came to me by accident – or luck. As a kid, I’d dreamed of owning a racehorse. I listened to the racing every weekend with my mum. We’d put on sixpence cross and double (a two-part wager) with the bookie’s runner, which was illegal at the time, and I loved the excitement. At 16, I went to work as a stable lad in Catterick, North Yorkshire, earning five shillings (25p) a week with digs, and learned to ride within a week. The feeling was absolutely fantastic.
I had other jobs – at Butlin’s, window cleaning, fish hawking – then in 2001, Linda and I bought an old milk farm with a sand paddock and turned it into stables. At 65, I gained my NVQ level three at Newmarket and became a licensed trainer.
By 2019, I’d been keeping horses for nearly 20 years. I’d not long bought a three-year-old, Rain Cap, from Mick Channon, the ex-England footballer turned racehorse trainer. Rain Cap was highly strung: whenever he ran, he came last. He didn’t look like a great buy, so Mick offered to send a second, Astapor. There would be no charge. In the olden days, you’d hand over some pennies rather than take something for free, so I sent the lad who picked him up with a £1 coin as a bond for Mick.
I was never in it for the money – you don’t make much unless you’ve got a big name. I just like to see them run
Astapor is bay-coloured, with a white spot on his forehead. He measures 15.2 hands. The first time I took him out, on a mile-and-a-half run, he came flying to the front. When I tried him on the gallops he went like heck, and when I put someone on him, he ran flat out. I entered him in a few races. He’d done 12 when, in June 2022, I put him in a six-furlong novice stakes at Hamilton Park, Scotland. The jockey didn’t have to do a thing. Astapor stormed to victory on 200-1 odds and became the joint biggest-price flat winner in Britain. My wife, Linda, and I were watching on TV. We nearly jumped through the ceiling. We took home £3,942 for the win – not a bad return, given what I’d paid.
We’ve had other horses come and go. Astapor is one of five that we own. I was never in it for the money – you don’t make much unless you’ve got a big name. I just like to see them run.
You can’t put speed on a horse – they’ve either got it or they haven’t. There’s no magic touch, but perseverance, understanding and plenty of mints help.
Rain Cap has won four races for me now – I put a visor on him so he wasn’t scared of crowds. And Astapor came second in a race not long after his first. What an absolute bargain.
‘I wanted my own studio, and a relative mentioned the council’s Shops for £1 scheme’
Taya Hughes, 40, Wirral, Merseyside
View image in fullscreenTaya Hughes at her shop in Liverpool. Photograph: Craig Easton/The Guardian
Since moving to London from Zimbabwe, aged 17, my dream was to work in fashion. I qualified as an accountant and worked at various jobs, but I never lost that passion for design.
I got married and moved to Liverpool, where I studied fashion, art and design in college. By 2015, when I was pregnant with our second child and spending time at home with our toddler, I decided it was time to start my own womenswear brand of colourful, art-inspired clothes, Tayamika. I was eight months pregnant when I showed my first collection at Liverpool fashion week.
After the show, I went around the city’s boutiques to see if they’d stock my clothes, but no one was interested in a local brand. Meanwhile, I was getting web orders so I was putting my baby to sleep and going downstairs to make clothes day and night. I wanted my own studio. I put word out that I was looking for premises, and a relative mentioned the council’s Shops for £1 scheme, aimed at bringing a row of six empty shops in a then rundown part of the city back to life. I applied to open a clothes shop dedicated to local designers. The deadline was two weeks away. I didn’t sleep. I wrote 36 pages, including a business plan, and was chosen from 140 applicants.
Developers would refurbish the premises. I’d fund the fit-out and pay just £1 a year in rent for three years
It took years for the deal to complete. I started two more brands, one inspired by my African heritage, one for evening wear, and sold the clothes on Etsy while I waited. When lockdown hit, shop news went quiet. Then, in mid-2020, an email arrived saying renovation had begun. Suddenly, it became real.
The area was beginning to look up after years of degradation. The council had already sold off dozens of empty, rundown homes for £1 in the terrace streets behind the shops, which gave me reassurance that this would one day be a thriving community, but at this stage it was still very much a ghost town. All I could see was houses boarded up with metal. There was a record shop open, and what looked like a mobile phone repair shop. The rest of the shops had been boarded up.
Developers would refurbish the premises. I’d fund the fit-out and pay just £1 a year in rent for three years, rising to £400 a month for two years, then normal rates (between £600 and £800).
I opened Seven Streets boutique in February. Not having to pay market rent is a huge relief. I pay bills, insurance and business rates, but would have struggled to afford my own space any other way. I rotate 18 designers and our clothes look wonderful in the shop – it’s bright, with antique pink upholstered chairs and a chandelier in the centre. The community around us is thriving; there is a hair salon and Italian food store, too. People put their hearts and souls into their businesses. It is hard work, but I’m grateful every day that I didn’t give up.
‘She was a beautiful boat but had fallen on rough times’
Maya Eliza, 25, currently in Sweden
View image in fullscreenMaya Eliza and her husband Aladino in Sweden, where they are restoring a boat they hope to take round the world. Photograph: Tomas Ohlsson/The Guardian
I remember the first time I saw the wooden boat with red sails that became mine for $1 – I instantly fell in love with it.
I had grown up near Vancouver in Canada, and gone to Quest University in British Columbia. I was 18 and I’d often escape exam pressure by taking a walk around the harbour. As a teenager, I’d learned to sail and read a library book about a girl who circumnavigated the globe. I had an ambition to do the same. Being around the boats kept me in touch with the dream.
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On one of these walks, I saw this beautiful 26ft boat. I stared at it for so long that a nearby boat owner asked if it was mine. When I answered no, he explained that it had been neglected. It’s common practice, in Canada, for an owner to post their contact details in the window so I jotted down the email address and messaged that night, offering to help maintain their boat if they might let me sail it on weekends.
Five days later, the reply came: “She’s yours. You can have her for $1.” I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do next. I thought for a while. The dream was being handed to me for a dollar, and if I said no I knew I’d regret it. I agreed, found somewhere affordable to keep her and started fixing her up at weekends.
I never met the people I bought my boat from, but when I first went aboard, I found $3 left on a shelf. It paid for itself and so much more
Friends would keep me company and my dad, a marine engineer, helped me fix the engine. She was a beautiful boat but had fallen on rough times; the tarps protecting her from the elements had blown off and her varnish was peeling. After a year, I went out on day trips, often taking a friend, sailing to my parents’ home and back, or discovering the islands and protected bays off the Pacific north-west coast. I did overnight trips too.
Owning her was transformative. The growing sense of confidence, responsibility and autonomy guided me gracefully into adulthood. That little boat became the bone structure for the rest of my life.
The summer after university, in 2017, I took a job on a tall ship in the Mediterranean and met my husband, a boat-builder. It’s not often you meet another young boat owner, and we soon planned a future together, travelling Europe. You can’t ask a wooden boat to wait for you, so I sold my little boat, for $1,500, and began my next adventure, aboard his. We’re in Sweden at the moment. We’re renovating a second boat that we hope will take us around the world one day, and I make films about our work and voyages.
I never met the people I bought my wooden boat from, but the funniest part is, when I first went aboard, I found $3 left on a shelf. It paid for itself and so much more. It changed everything for me.
‘I chose a €1 house perched on a hill in a beautiful town in Sicily. It had been abandoned for 15 years’
Danny McCubbin, 57, Mussomeli, Sicily
View image in fullscreenDanny McCubbin outside the house in Sicily that he bought for €1. Photograph: Mimi Mollica/The Guardian
In 1998, aged 33, I moved from Brisbane, Australia, to London. I fell in love with England and travelling across Europe – particularly Italy, where the sense of family, the food and the weather reminded me of home. I’d envision a life there. I started working as a PA with Jamie Oliver as he launched his non-profit Fifteen Foundation and, through work, forged links with a programme in Italy where they rehabilitated young people through food.
When I left Jamie in summer 2019, I wanted to apply for Italian residence and had the idea of buying one of many vacant homes being sold for €1 by small Italian towns needing to boost dwindling populations. I planned to turn it into a social project, but keep England as home, and blogged about my plans on social media. A TV production company approached me to be part of a show they were developing, following six Brits doing the €1 house thing. I chose one perched on a hill, in the beautiful town of Mussomeli, Sicily. It had been abandoned for 15 years. There was one bedroom, a small kitchen and a toilet on the landing.
In November 2019, I realised I was in love with Mussomeli and wanted to make it my home, but when Covid hit, the TV show was cancelled. During the pandemic, I worked in community kitchens in London. Sicily’s poverty was exacerbated by Covid and the impetus to feed a community there grew. I knew I had to go before Brexit completed, so on 7 December 2019, I got on a plane with a one-way ticket. I knew one person – the estate agent who sold me the €1 house, which was uninhabitable. The roof was leaking, there was no heating or bathroom, and the abandoned houses on either side had contributed to external damage. It was suspended in time. I rented another property to live in, 10 minutes’ walk away, for €300 a month, and went to the €1 house every day, lit a fire in the oven and planned a future.
As the months passed and prices went up, renovation quotes for the €1 house skyrocketed to €28,000
I launched a crowdfunder to turn the house into a community kitchen and raised over £24,000, mostly from the UK. Builders were in short supply and, while I waited to find someone who would renovate it, I got the community kitchen off the ground in an empty shop space in the town square, which I rented for €150 a month. With volunteers, we began distributing meals to families in need. Local nonnas taught us to make pasta, and we started cooking classes for kids.
As the months passed and prices went up, renovation quotes for the €1 house skyrocketed to €28,000. I decided to use the crowdsourced money to grow and establish the town square operation as a charity, The Good Kitchen, and sold the house back to the agency for €1. I had lost nothing, but gained a community – and the kitchen I dreamed about.
An Argentinian family bought the house and turned it into an artist’s studio. I sold my flat in London and bought myself a house, for €8,000, near the kitchen –property is far cheaper in Sicily. Today, the charity has eight board members and delivers 100 meals a week. Every Thursday, I go to the wholesale fruit and veg market for a car-load of surplus produce that we use to cook vegetarian Sicilian dishes, like caponata.
The hardest thing has been learning Italian through a Sicilian dialect. I live a simple but beautiful life among people I might otherwise never have met. I still smile each time I walk past the €1 house that brought me here.
‘With her art deco saloons, the steamship was once a showpiece, but she hadn’t worked since 1984’
Captain Dan Cross, 48, Widnes, Cheshire
View image in fullscreenDan Cross on his 1903 steamship. Photograph: Craig Easton/The Guardian
When I was eight, my parents bought a 17ft river cruiser and put it on the River Weaver, near our home in Cheshire. We would go up and down at weekends and spend summer holidays on the water. The Weaver was still a commercial river and I was fascinated by the big ships.
In college I worked on a passenger boat, and at 19 became a deckhand on the tugs in Liverpool, working up to mate, then captain. I never wanted to spend months away at sea. I got married and, a few weeks after our son was born in 2004, found myself the owner of the Daniel Adamson (the Danny) – a 1903 steamship with a history so important she’s on the National Historic Ships register in the same category as the Cutty Sark.
I knew a bit about her, having seen her on display at what is now the National Waterways Museum in Ellesmere Port during those summer holidays. With her art deco saloons, she was once a showpiece, but hadn’t worked since 1984, when the Manchester Ship Canal was on its arse and someone in head office decided she wasn’t worth the money to maintain. She was loaned to the museum, but became a target for vandals and arsonists. The hull was corroded, water needed pumping out and all her mechanics needed restoring.
I first captained her with passengers on the Weaver in September 2016. There were people lining the banks to see her. I felt immensely proud
When a friend and I heard the Danny was destined for scrap in February 2004, we turned to an enthusiasts’ site, Tug Talk, for information. A deal had been done with a local scrap man, and she was to be towed in four days. We agreed something should be done. Within hours, I was at the Ship Canal HQ with a letter offering to tow her for free. Forty-five minutes later, the port director and head of engineering were asking how much I’d buy her for. I emptied £4.85 out of my jeans pocket and they took £1 on the condition I got her off the canal and out of their hair. I left wondering: “What now?”
A chain of phone calls and online communities started up. Within 24 hours, enthusiasts, business people and a mate with a berth and a soft spot for canals turned up to form a trust with the aim of getting her to the dock. Someone put up £2,500 for insurance, a surveyor signed her off as water-worthy, and people began offering services and materials cheap or for free. Over the next decade we grew a band of volunteers and cash grants, and restored her steam engines, pumps and hull.
We had a vision for her to carry passengers again, and in 2015 won a £3.8m National Lottery grant for a full, year-long restoration in the Birkenhead shipyard where she was built. We trained up a crew and I first captained her with passengers on the Weaver in September 2016. There were people lining the banks to see her. I felt immensely proud.
Now we do 40 passenger trips a year and private charters. The most rewarding thing is that local engineering students come on board to learn, and we host mental health workshops and sessions for children who have fallen out of mainstream education. They love the story of something uncared for and destined to be destroyed being brought back from the brink.
This summer, I was awarded the Merchant Navy Medal for Meritorious Service for the Danny’s restoration. I never, for a second, expected a gong.
We didn’t want this to be a vessel that was polished up and put in a museum again. I want it to reach people. When we hit the stage where so many people want to come aboard that we’re turning them away, I’ll have had my £1’s worth.
