In spite of the publicity surrounding Young Herriot, the new ‘prequel’ to All Creatures Great and Small due to screen on BBC1 this Christmas, a house that played a central role in the original series remains unsold after four months on the market and a £30,000 price drop.

The property, Cringley House, is one of the dozen or more three storey houses in Askrigg, Wensleydale left over from its heyday as a market town during the mid 18th century.

LtoR: All Creatures Great And Small stars Timothy Christopher, Robert Hardy and Peter Davidson.

On the market at £320,000 it is best known as Skeldale House, the vet’s surgery of James Herriot played in the series by Christopher Timothy but also starring Robert Hardy as his father Siegried, Peter Davidson as the younger brother Tristan and Carol Drinkwater as the mother Helen.

All Creatures Great and Small, which at its peak attracted audiences of 13 million, was set in ‘Barrowby’ which in the books was modelled on Herriot’s home town of Thirsk. But Askrigg is where much of the filming took place and one of the towns’ pubs, The King’s Arms, doubles as the family’s favourite watering hole, The Drover’s Arms.

The show ran for three series during the late 1970s, was revived in the late 1980s based on scripts on Alf Wight (who used James Herriot as his nom de plume) and the last episode was screened as a Christmas Special in 1990.

Like the series, Cringley House (pictured, above) is due a comeback. The property is in reasonable structural condition but it’s blank canvas; it used to contain one-bedroom flats and office space but the property now stand empty. Similar properties for sale in the town are on the market for between £500,000 and £600,000.

The selling agent, GSC Grays, says the house has several potential future uses including upgrading the property into six, one-bedroom flats; creating three two-bedroom apartments; restoring it to a single dwelling or converting it into a B&B or hotel/restaurant.

The town of Askrigg in Wensleydale, Yorkshire Dales National Park.

A commercial use is its most likely future incarnation, locals says, given that Askrigg is one of the key tourist towns within the Yorkshire Dales National Park which is visited by some eight million people a year. Also, Askrigg is just five miles from Hawes, the home of Wallace and Gromit’s favourite cheese, Wensleydale.

But fans of the TV series expecting to see more of the Yorkshire Dales in Young Herriot will be disappointed. The three, one-hour episodes are set in Glasgow and follow the vet as he learns his trade as a young man.

Thousands of children across the UK strive to earn a bit of pocket money in their spare time to buy video games, sweets or maybe fund a mobile phone.

But nine-year-old Keiron Williamson from the village of Ludham in North Norfolk has taken this to a new level. He’s earned enough money to buy a large, detached house for his family to move into.

Until March this year Keiron, his parents Keith and Michelle plus sister Billie (pictured, below) lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in the village opposite a petrol station.

Photos: Albanpix / Rex Features

But Keiron’s extraordinary painting talents, which brought him fame two years ago after his watercolours of the local landscape first came to public notice, have now begun to earn him enough money for the family to buy a £150,000 house in the village, Old Post Office Cottage.

The latest exhibition of Keiron’s paintings attracted global interest, earning ‘mini Monet’ as he is called locally, a further £106,260 after his latest 12 paintings sold out in just ten minutes. To date the child artist has successfully sold 89 paintings in five exhibitions – with all of his shows being sell outs.

Photos Albanpix / Rex Features

At the latest show held last month the most expensive of the works on offer was a £15,595 painting of Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, which Kieron painted based on photos from the internet.

His work first came on the market in 2009 when 19 of his paintings were sold for £14,000 in a sealed-bid auction.

In August last year, 33 of his creations sold for £150,000 in less than 30 minutes – and it is this money that bought them their new home.

It’s a familiar story in today’s Prime property market – a Cheshire mansion bought for £1.85 million in 2007, bull-dozed, re-built and put on the market for £5 million. Two years and a price drop later Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff has finally sold his Prestbury pile – to another sports star, footballer Peter Crouch.

Apart from the set of cricket wickets carved above the front door and a mosaic of the Ashes urn in the swimming pool, this is the type of uber-luxurious house that was built for a footballer – even though it was actually built by a cricketer.

Flintoff bought the plot in October 2007 from ex-Fulham football manager Mark Hughes and after fights with locals and an initially refused planning application, he was able to knock down the existing property and build a six bedroom mansion akin to others on one of the UK’s most expensive streets, Withinlee Road, AKA Footballer’s Alley.

The house was designed for Flintoff family life and includes a large pool plus a smaller one for their three children. It also has a luxury gym and home cinema but the Flintoffs never lived in their made-to-measure home. Instead, they turned their attention to the dizzying heights of Dubai and their Cheshire mansion has waited patiently for two years for a buyer.

Despite being in Prestbury – the centre of footballer land (the Rooneys, Ferdinand and Tevez all live nearby) – Freddie wasn’t bowled over with offers for his £5 million pad. And only after changing estate agents, dropping the asking price by £500,000 – the price of a decent size house to most – plus the luck of footballer Peter Crouch moving Clubs, has the house finally sold.

Crouch is transferring from Tottenham Hotspur to Stoke City and moving up North with his new wife, Abbey Clancy and their six month old daughter and we have no doubt the house will suit the star couple’s needs perfectly, model Abbey will surely love the huge walk-in wardrobe (pictured above) and the WAG neighbours.

Dragon’s Den star Hilary Devey is selling up her Staffordshire home for £2.2 million, saying filming commitments for the hit BBC2 series prevent her spending much time at the property.

Devey, who is a publican’s daughter from Bolton, is the ninth dragon to join the programme and made her fortune in the world of freight distribution with a company she founded in 1996. Her personal style and tastes, though, are a world away from fork lift trucks and rumbling HGVs, particularly when choosing places to live.

The twice-divorced 52-year-old has been spending less and less time at at her home at Rangemore Hall, a large early-19^th century pile to the west of Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire in opulent surroundings that reportedly include a chandelier in the kitchen. She also owns an apartment in London as well as villas in Morocco and Spain.

Rangemore Hall, of which Devey occupies the largest wing, was built in the 1850s by the Bass brewing family to replace an earlier but smaller structure. An additional and Italianate wing was added during the late 1890s to accommodate King Edward VII, who paid a visit in 1902 and it’s this that Devey owns. She bought the property 2007 and has described it as being “over the top, like me”.

If this sounds up your tree lined drive and you fancy discussing the latest Dragon’s Den episode with your neighbour then Rangemore Hall’s Ewing Wing is up for sale at £895,000 and offers the sort of glamorous interior style (pictured, above) and views of the surrounding countryside as Devey’s home.

Want to buy a home overlooking the sea? Then any estate agent will tell you that whether it’s in the UK or overseas, expect to pay a premiumof up to 20% despite the risk (in some areas) of coastal erosion. But a seaside home that’s different in almost every way may soon be on offer, if billionaire dot com entrepreneur Peter Thiel (pictured, bottom) can get his latest big idea off the ground.

Thiel, who is the founder of online payment firm Paypal, has sunk (sorry, invested) £700,000 in a plan to create a floating island (pictured, above) not governed by the rules of any country.

The structures will reportedly have a displacement of 12,000 tons, be diesel-powered (so not that green) and initially be home to approximately 270 people. By linking the islands together they could grow to eventually support millions.

Thiel plans to anchor the islands in international waters making them therefore exempt from jurisdictions covering taxes, regulations, building codes, welfare requirements and weapons restrictions.

In 2009, a 3D design competition was held to help people visualise what these sea-bound communities may look like and the winning entry by Hungarian architectural cum graphic designer András Gyõrfi is described as a ‘recreational resort’, complete with grass, trees and a large communal swimming pool.

But what at first looks like a floating apartment block is in fact a experiment in creating a new society – which Thiel hopes can be achieved on the islands. Prices for properties have yet to be released, but despite it’s utopian aims, PrimeLocation.com thinks they won’t cheap.

If you have ever watched the TV show Location, Location, Location and wondered what sort of homes the duo who present it own, then we can reveal all – including both of them having a taste for a double life.

Kirstie Allsopp – the bubbly foil to the more considered and softley-spoken Phil Spencer – has been talking to a local newspaper in her adopted county of Devon about her property portfolio, as many people like to call multiple home ownership now.

The Honourable Kirstie Allsopp (she is daughter of the sixth Baron Hindlip) has three homes which she’s amassed with the help of millionaire property developer partner Ben Anderson.

Her first and best known is a six-bedroom holiday cottage in Welcombe, North Devon, bought for £300,000 in 2008 with her partner and his business partner William Montagu Wentworth-Stanley.

It’s a holiday home-cum investment property and is available to rent for £2,000 a week plus it’s also featured in her recent TV show Kirstie’s Homemade Home during which she did up the dilapidated cottage for £23,000 and learned 15 crafts along the way, including iron mongery. The property is also used by Ben’s former wife Theresa for holidays too.

But the couple’s main home is in a highly desirable slice of London between Notting Hill and Holland Park. It’s a two-storey apartment within a modern block and is where the couple are based most of the time. Their two children, Bay Atlas and Oscar Hercules, go to school in the area.

But their largest property is Broadhembury House in the picture-perfect, thatch and whitewash village of Broadhembury near Honiton in Devon.

It, like Kirstie, has titled connections and was built by Julius Drewe in the early 19th century – a man who believed he was descended from aristocratic Norman blood.

And so to Phil. He is only one house behind Kirstie, we can reveal. His main family home is a Victorian semi in Wandsworth, London to be found in a group of roads known as the ‘toast rack’ for the shape they make on the London A-Z. He also has a holiday home in Kent which, in the past, he has said he struggles to afford but loves as it’s only an hour and 45 minutes from the ‘hamster wheel’ of London.

Whenever Primelocation has been shopping in around Knightsbridge in recent years it’s been obvious that something big was cooking within the huge construction site on the junction where the Brompton Road, Sloane Street and Kensington Road converge, slowly replacing a drab office building.

Richly relaxed: The lounge of One Hyde Park's £140 million penthouse apartment

From its early days the name of designers Christian and Nick Candy were headlined as the stylists behind the project, which soon had a name, too – One Hyde Park – as well as the involvement of architect Richard Rogers, best known among other things as the designer of Channel 4’s striking HQ near the Houses of Parliament.

But what has really made this apartment development famous are the prices being demanded for its properties. As early as February 2008, when the site was still rubble and diggers, prices for the largest of the penthouse apartments were being reported as in excess of £100m and while the housing boom continued sales were healthy – Nick Candy claimed to have sold properties worth £767 million in the first phase and, after the lull that followed the near collapse of the world banking system, more last year pushing up the total to a billion.

High expectations: The front of One Hyde Park, from which residents have views of Hyde Park, Knightsbridge and Harrods,

So for the people who have already bought here, or those that may be considering it, what’s on offer? The 86 apartments within the site are best described as super prime and are within four blocks or ‘pavilions’ all with spectacular views over Hyde Park, Sloane Street, Harrods and the London skyline.

The complex, which is being operated by hotel chain Mandarin International, includes a private cinema, 21m swimming pool, saunas, steam rooms, squash court, gym – and at the less prosaic end of the luxury market, a golf simulator, wine cellars, library, 60 on-site staff and their own Rolex shop.

Million pound menu: the dining room

Such luxurious surroundings mean even the smallest, one-bedroom apartment starts at £6.5 million – as much as a five-bedroom detached house a couple of miles away in the richer suburbs of the capital – and rapidly rise to £140 million for the most expensive penthouse apartment, although this hasn’t stopped some of the world’s richest people buying, including the prime minister of Qatar.

Prince William and Kate Middleton

We know about the engagement ring, the proposal and that the wedding itself is happening sometime next summer, but what we’re all still waiting to find out is where Prince William and Kate Middleton will make their marital home.

So far, it seems most likely the royal couple will put down roots in a house that the Prince of Wales has been building on his Harewood Park estate in Herefordshire, a farm he bought back in 2000 in border countryside between Monmouth and Ross-on-Wye.

William’s father is reportedly in the process of spending between eight and nine million pounds turning the once run-down estate into an eco-farm, including the creation of a ‘green mansion’ in an undisclosed location within its 900 acres of rolling countryside that is said to be earmarked for William’s – and now Kate’s – use.

The property – which is under construction – is a restored and enlarged six-bedroom farmhouse that’s also a model of environmental friendliness and will include a reed-bed sewage system, wood chip boiler, solar panels and walls lined with insulating sheep’s wool.

The really good news is that Ross-on-Wye locals are likely to welcome their new royal neighbours with open arms, according to Richard Butler, owner of the local Richard Butler Estate Agents, who says the property is worth in excess of two million pounds and is of a “phenomenal size”.

“It would be very good news for the area,” Butler says.

“Once it’s finished, it will probably be one of the better, if not the best properties of its style in the whole of Herefordshire.”

For the past year or so during their ‘extended courtship’ William and Kate have been living in a secret location on the island of Anglesey while William does a three-year stint as a search and rescue helicopter pilot at RAF Valley. The property, which is a whitewashed farmhouse, is being rented for £750 a month and very much off the beaten track and has access to a private beach.
 
Melfyn Williams, chairman of the Wales-based estate agent The Property People, says the island’s locals would also dearly love to the see the couple make their permanent home in Anglesey.

“It’s a lovely part of the country, it’s got sandy beaches and rugged mountains and is close to where Prince William is currently working.”
 
The Harewood Park estate won’t be the couple’s only likely address. When staying in London William and Kate will have an apartment in Clarence House to use as well, not to mention Kate’s parents’ place in Bucklebury, Berkshire, where until recently a bedroom had been set aside for her use.

Too many for sale? How can there be so many homes for sale but no buyers?

After this blog last month started a healthy debate both here and on Twitter, let’s take it to the next level. House price analysts say a glut of homes on sale and falling numbers of buyers are causing small price drops now, with perhaps more to come.

But if people buy and sell at the same time, as most surely do, why are demand and supply out of line?

The mismatch
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors says in mid-2007, before the credit crunch, estate agents typically sold 45% of their stock every three months. That fell to 15% in mid-2008 before rising to 30% early this year.

But now, with more homes on sale, the sale-to-stock ratio is back down to 24%.

Exploding a myth
This increased supply suggests that in reality selling and buying do not necessarily happen simultaneously. There is a small but important time gap.

Research by Santander says 1.1m homes in Brtain were put on the market in the year to  August but did not sell, often because would-be buyers could not get a mortgage.

Some estate agents say that as a result, more sellers now wait to find a purchaser before registering as buyers themselves to avoid spending time and energy finding a dream home only to lose it because they cannot sell their old property.

“Supply and demand balance over time but there’s always a lag, never an exact balance. A year ago there were more buyers but fewer homes, so prices rose. Now it’s the reverse” says Lucian Cook, research guru at estate agent Savills.

In addition the new-build sector, which slumped in 2008 and 2009, is recovering and adds 120,000 new properties on sale per year without creating new buyers.

Dying, divorcing but not buying
A further factor is probate sales; elderly owners die and their properties are sold by relatives who already own homes – so they inherit the proceeds and do not buy. Land Registry figures show that in 2007 some 7% of deals were probate sales. But now, with home sales halved but death rates static, they account for 15% of the market.

There are also 120,000 divorces a year. Analysis by Savills shows that in a third of cases the couple sell their home and, at first, each person rents before buying later.

In the past these ‘sell-but-not-buy’ figures have been balanced or outweighed by first time buyers, who purchase with nothing to sell. But tougher mortgage conditions and average deposits rising to £35,000 mean FTB numbers are 50% of the level in 2007.

Let’s see if that starts a debate.