The bargain of the Millennium: 19th-century three-bedroom cottage up for auction at £139,000

Everyone loves a bargain. It's in our nature to enjoy the prospect of getting a sliver of extra value for our hard-earned money - it's like a bonus cherry on top of that something sweet and tantalising which you were already committed to paying for anyways. But when it comes to life's more important purchases - cars, football players, a new six-pack of underwear - bargains are fewer and further between. Enter: this eye-poppingly good-value 19th century cottage up for auction with a starting price of just £139,000...
Bran CottageBran Cottage
Bran Cottage

The United Kingdom is quite an expensive place to live. According to Numbeo, the average price per square metre of a central city flat in the UK is the 16th-highest in the world and the eighth-highest in Europe, and for a country with a population of 70,000,000+, we're a relatively small island nation where geography is concerned. Homes are an Englishman's castle, but the Englishman increasingly has to have a bulging wallet to get beyond the drawbridge.

With the average house price in this country sitting at around £230,776, anything below that is ostensibly a win. When the prospective home in question is also beautiful, ready-made for some TLC, and carried within its walls an air of homely loveliness, you have a property which peaks some serious interest. Bran Cottage is just one of those houses.

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A 19th-century stone cottage with original features, including beamed ceilings and wonderful stone archways, the house is not large and ostentatious, but understated and cosy. It's a pocket-rocket of a home: clean-cut, warm-looking, and classically English. And it's up for auction.

Located in Upholland in Wigan - which coincidentally was once home to Casualty actor Ian Bleasdale and Richard Ashcroft, lead singer of The Verve - the house was built in 1848, making it older by one year than Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill, father of the substantially more famed Winston. Once a blacksmith’s workshop, this three-bedroom house is a beauty.

From the large entrance hallway with exposed feature walls leading through to the lounge with a Victorian-style feature fireplace, exposed brick wall and archway, wooden beams, and feature glass panel, it has serious character. How many other homes have stone archways between the living room and the open-plan kitchen, I wonder? More to the point, how many have such a feature and could be yours for £140,000...

Upstairs, the landing boasts exposed brick walls and loft access, while the master bedroom has large fitted wardrobes. Two more bedrooms await, overlooking the paved courtyard at the rear of the property and a gated side-garden, although if we're talking nature, check out Beacon Country Park, which is barely a stone's throw away and which has over 300 acres of rolling countryside with wildflower meadows, woodland, picnic areas, and children’s play area, as well as a golf club and café.

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Even more excitingly, the house is to be sold by conditional online auction by SDL Auctions in partnership with Miller Metcalfe ending at noon on Tuesday, 21st May. Get your gavel or whatever auction people need and grab yourself a potential humdinger of a bargain.

Bran Cottage is to be sold by conditional online auction, ending at noon on Tuesday 21 May with a minimum starting bid of £139,000. For viewings and further information, please contact Miller Metcalfe on 01942 466079 or email [email protected].