Home truths (From The Northern Echo)

Home truths

10:13am Thursday 4th March 2010 in

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Build a New Life in the Country (Five, 8pm); Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man (BBC3, 10.30pm)

NEVER mind maintaining your three up, two down semi. What if you’ve got a Grade I-listed Jacobean mansion suffering from a serious case of neglect?

The answer is to send for Ruth Watson and her Country House Rescue cameras.

Her first mission is Plas Teg, the aforementioned mansion in Flintshire, North Wales, which has remained virtually unchanged since it was built in 1610.

For much of the 20th Century, the building suffered a serious case of neglect.

It lay forgotten and derelict with no roof, trees growing through its centre and pigeons in residence.

In 1986, interior designer Cornelia Bayley fell in love with it and snapped it up for £75,000. She left her Notting Hill home and poured everything she had into restoring the property.