Offers over pounds 99,000 through Slater Hogg & Howison (01563 540313).IN YE olde times, Coach-House Cottage, which is near Oakham, in Rutland, used to have horses clattering through what is now the entrance hall, which boasts a reclaimed brick floor.Appropriately, the utility room has a stable door opening onto the rear garden. There is a newly decorated formal lounge, which boasts double doors opening onto the garden, and an L-shaped family sitting room The house has parking space and a burglar alarm. No 5 is a two-storey house with two bedrooms and two bathrooms and has its own enclosed garden at the back.Parquet flooring runs from the reception hall, through the dining area to the kitchen, which is fitted with colour-washed green units. A paddock of just over three acres is available separately.
THE STABLES, on the Coodham Country Estate, just off the A77 from Ayr to Glasgow, were converted into eight courtyard homes in the early 1990s.

The price guide is pounds 190,000 through Chappell & Matthews (01275 333199). There are two bedrooms, a 14ft by 13ft kitchen, a shower room and bathroom, and a double garage with workshop and store room above. Equine table manners were impeccable, for the building was then the coach house and stables to the farm across the road. To take advantage of the view down the valley to the Mendip Hills, the main sitting room was sited on the first floor, although there is another on the ground floor. First-time buyers purchase a two-bed house, then buy a three-bedroom house nearby.”.

THE OWNER of The Coach House in the splendidly named village of Nempnett Thrubwell, 12 miles from Bristol, is fond of telling guests that she used to keep her horse in the dining room. And even when properties turn over, neighbourhoods remain stable: “This is very much a family area. Eighty-foot gardens are the norm in the better areas, and even in St Helier 40ft gardens are common “The schools have good reputations,” says Ms Brooks. Ms Brooks reports that these solid, if undistinguished, houses are about 90 per cent privately owned.A high proportion of Morden houses are detached or semi-detached and have garages.