Fed up with your three-bed semi? Do you yearn to own a sprawling property empire, including castle, ruined abbey, private harbour, slew of houses and a luxury hotel complete with tennis court and outdoor swimming pool?
Perhaps you’ve always hankered for your own railway, riding stable with private menage and an entire parade of shops?
If so, your dreams could be about to come true.
Because for just £230,000 you can have the lot — including three churches, a couple of pubs, a cricket club, windmill, lighthouse, endless vehicles, goodness knows what else and more than 700 model tenants.
Bondville in Bridlington, Yorkshire, is going up for sale for £230,000 after its current owners spent eight years looking after its model villagers
A tiny marina sits by a sprawling castle, with churches, an abandoned abbey and all manner of other buildings nearby – but they’re all a twelfth of the normal size
Owner Jan Whitehead (pictured) and husband Tim have owned Bondville for eight years and have maintained it with the help of maintenance manager Bob Bunce (pictured) , but now they’re looking for new owners
The proof is in the detail at Bondville, where even the smallest flowers are painted and beaming ready to be seen by visitors
There’s just one catch.
Every brick, tile and pane of glass is a twelfth of the normal size.
Your entire empire fits cosily into a single lush acre on the ‘posh’ side of seaside town Bridlington, in what used to be a public car park.
Oh yes, and your ‘model tenants’ are actual models that need painting and carefully arranging across your exquisitely landscaped kingdom.
The village of Bondville, often referred to as the ‘Little Britain’ community on the East Yorkshire coast, is up for sale. It has a 23-year lease, a full-size tea shop, a gift shop and it attracts thousands of visitors each year who flock there between Easter and the end of September (after which the falling leaves apparently ‘rather spoil the effect’).
Bondville has gained the name as gained the nickname ‘Little Britain’ from the community on the East Yorkshire coast
Time has alll but stood still for the past four decades in Bondville, new owners would be taken on the village on a 23-year lease
For £230,000 you can buy Bondville, an acre of land that was once a public car park, but now is home to a sprawling village with 700 model residents
Thousands of visitors flock to Bondville, near Bridlington, between Easter and the end of September, after which the falling leaves apparently ‘rather spoil the effect’
As luck would have it, owners Tim and Jan Whitehead — who are selling up after eight years — insist experience is not necessary.
‘You just need to be practically minded, hard working and happy to lend your hand to everything — painting, glazing, electrics, varnishing and gardening, pruning all the miniature trees into shape,’ says Tim, 64, who previously worked in the motor trade.
He and Jan, 55, didn’t have a clue when they took over. In fact, they snapped up the village on a whim when a buy-to-let they’d been trying to purchase fell through and, the very same day, Tim saw it pop up in the estate agent’s window.
‘I couldn’t resist,’ he says.
Tim Whitehead says the new owner of Bondville doesn’t need experience with model villages, just ‘hard working and happy to lend your hand to everything’
The Yorkshire Post bus pulled up in Bondville Model Village, Bridlington, which is now up for sale for £230,000
Of course he couldn’t. The detail is superb — the tea rooms, the unisex hair salon with gossiping ladies under the driers, the hard-fought cricket match where the home team are always just a single point ahead and the robber forever running down ‘Letsbe Avenue’, with the police in hot pursuit.
It was all ‘rather tired’ when they bought it. But through trial and error (‘it was quite a learning curve’) and a lot of help from the original model makers who built it in the late 1980s and live nearby, the Whiteheads got it back to its former glory.
But running an entire village is hard work and Tim is coming up to retirement.
So earlier this year they took the painful decision to pass on the whole village to someone younger, with energy, vim and vision, who’ll bring Bondville into the 21st century.
And, who knows, perhaps finally let those poor cricketers break for tea?