The snowdrops are emerging around the Estate, especially on the sunny bank. Although we wouldn’t normally see them until February the warm weather has tempted them out earlier than normal. Did you know there are over 1,000 varieties!?
The warm weather has also been accompanied by rather a lot of rain, making the land around Overbury rather soggy. Please do bear this in mind if you are driving around the Estate. Try and keep off the verges and avoid damaging the beautiful villages.
Also, now is the time to start planting those bulbs. The gardening team have been working very hard to make sure we have some wonderful displays around the village next year.
As is in the New Year we have been setting out some of our ambitions for 2016.
Manor Farm, Conderton is going to be one of our big projects. We will be renovating this beautiful Farmhouse into a short-let/holiday property, which will sleep around 16. To do this we will be renovating the whole house and building an extension so the lucky people that get to stay there have somewhere wonderful to eat and to see the gorgeous views of the Orchard and beyond.
We have just had a really productive meeting with the building Surveyor, Allister who will be helping us, and Mark Derwent who will be working up the design of the garden so we can firm up our plans ready to start work in the spring. We will be blogging about this project so watch this space for updates…
We have all being working hard on making sure the Old Village Shop is working well, as well as putting the final touches to new signage. We now have all four top floor rooms rented out to fabulous businesses (more details on our website) and bookings in the downstairs rooms are going well. Please do remember us if you need to arrange a meeting or want some quiet time with super-fast broadband to work on that project! Click here for more information.
Out on the Estate we are having a war on our Ivy. Ivy in the right place is a wonderful habitat for all sort of wildlife, from bees to insects to birds. See more here: http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/species/ivy
However in the wrong place it can cause all sorts of damage to the walls or roofs it is growing against. We have had a concerted effort over the past few weeks to tackle some of worst areas of ivy. If you have some growing up your cottages walls please do try and cut this off and stop it damaging the mortar.
before 
after
The building team are, busy as ever, starting to look at the painting schedule for this year, finishing off 52 Dormay Cottage, one of our latest refurbishments and now on to repair the roof at Darkes Barn, which has sadly seen better days. We have erected a rather fabulous scaffolding which means that rain or shine the boys can carry on working!
So as we see January drawing to a close we need to plan ready for February… Norlands and Manor Farm to progress, Lettings to organise, (watch our website – some lovely properties coming up) but first of all Burns Night in the Village Hall on Saturday. Let’s hope it’s a great success.
Is there something at Overbury you are interested in? Do let us know and we can tailor our blogs accordingly.
Here’s to a happy, successful and action packed 2016.
