Brynmelin for Sale

I bumped into a friend while out shopping who told me that the home of Richard Booth, King of Hay, has just gone on the market, so I looked it up on Rightmove.

When I first came to Hay, I lived at Brynmelin - we lived in the Annexe, at the top of the house, and basically acted as the Booths' servants - cooking and gardening mostly, and looking after their various animals.  They had horses then, and bantam chickens we called The Matildas, after Matilda de Braose and all the other Queens and Empresses of the Middle Ages called Matilda - we called the cockerel William, after William de Braose.  

There were peacocks - we called them Darius and Roxanne.  Roxanne once went missing and was found several days later admiring her reflection in the plate glass window of Rising Sun Cottage.  My husband Allen was planting peas in the vegetable garden once, and when he looked up, Darius was following him along the row, eating the peas as he planted them!  

There were pigs that we fattened up for the freezer, and there was Monty the lurcher (full name Montolieu, after the book town Richard set up in France), and two cats.

Here's the house, in the days when Richard Booth's uncle owned it, and now:

A few things have changed since we lived there - there's now an array of solar panels on the roof on the other side of the house, for instance.  I was amused to see the description of the Annexe now includes plumbing for a washing machine on the second floor landing.  Our bedroom was the top right window in the picture, and our toilet was downstairs right by the tower - we could measure the distance on the OS map!

We also noticed, after some time living there, that there was a square space between the Annexe kitchen and the entrance hall which seemed to have been boarded up.  It wasn't boarded up very securely - when we investigated, we discovered the lift shaft which is mentioned in the sale details.

The garden is big, and includes an orchard, and the sale includes 20 acres of land, including woodland, most of which is rented out to local farmers.

It's on the market at 1.3 million pounds, and there's a note in the sale details saying that the King's shop on Castle Street (now occupied by the poppy appeal which can't open because of lockdown) is also available for sale separately.