It's a breeze!

Enterprising Rick and Jennie Grieve take running their five-acre Windy Ridge in their stride, from producing home-grown pork to breeding sought-after pedigree puppies. Emily Bevan e-meets them

- Emily Bevan

From the front, Windy Ridge looks like a traditional English chocolate box cottage. Wisteria climbs up the façade and across the protruding triangular porch roof, while shrubs in the garden cast shadows across the paved path that leads to the front door. Towering oak trees are evident behind the house, rising up to meet the azure sky on this sunny day. It is a quintessentially English scene, but there is far more to this cottage than first meets the eye.

The house might appear diminutive, but once inside it’s like that wardrobe into Narnia, one room leading into another and then another… The original front part of the house, which is characterised by smaller rooms and lower ceilings, dates from the 18th century — a 6ft-deep well in the front garden predates the property — but a large extension, which isn’t visible from the front, was built in the 1990s.

The property, which is listed, moves effortlessly between the old and the new. Oak beams feature throughout, original fireplaces add character, and the walls are adorned with homely touches. Glass doors in the sitting room bathe this part in light, and allow views out over the patio and perfectly manicured lawn right up to those oak trees looming on the horizon. The property boundary comprises around 1,500m of trees and hedges.

Windy Ridge’s owners, Rick and Jennie Grieve, ooze the same natural warmth and charm as their home. The husband and wife duo are friendly and welcoming (via Zoom, for this is the Covid-19 lockdown period, after all) and they buzz with enthusiasm as they tell me all about their Berkshire abode, its five acres and their smallholding journey which started in August 2016.