Town & Country

Lawrie and Nicola Watts upped sticks and moved their extended family from the fast-paced city to an idyllic farm, and have never looked back

- Penny Botting

Moving to a 550-acre farm with outbuildings in a beautiful part of the Southeast would be a fantasy for most people but, for Nicola Watts and her family, the dream came true. ‘We were living in a London semi with three young children (Tom, now 22, Hannah, 20, and Kitty, 17) but my husband Lawrie and I started to look for somewhere bigger,’ recalls Nicola. ‘We wanted a place within half an hour of a mainline station to London, with a friendly village community – and horse-riding opportunities.’

They thought that was an impossibility but, remarkably, there was a way to achieve it. ‘This plot was being sold with the main farmhouse and multiple other properties so it was much too big just for us. But, as it turned out, my parents were able to invest in the farmland, my sister and her family bought one of the farm properties, while friends from London also purchased a house as a weekend retreat.’