Ella Plumb and her husband, Gerry, decided to leave their London (Chorleywood) lives in 2005, giving up conventional jobs and monthly salaries, and settling into the countryside of West Cornwall. Now, instead of the daily commute, they spend every morning walking their two Scottish deerhounds on a nearby ancient common, from which there are spectacular views of the Atlantic coastline.

What they had decided to buy was an old miller’s cottage, together with a watermill, granary and piggery, built around a courtyard and surrounded by four acres of land. Set within a small wooded valley, the property is reached via a bumpy farm lane and feels miles from anywhere, though in fact it’s little more than a stone’s throw from Penzance. The house, of late Georgian vintage appears older, needed only a small kitchen extension, and conversions of the piggery into Ella’s studio and the granary into Gerry's.