Four years ago we moved from an ex-council house of the late 1940s vintage into a recently-build eco-house in West Wales. We spent years before the move looking at houses for sale in West Wales and drew up a features-list to try and inform our looking - aspects we felt the newly-bought house should have.
One of these features was "a good performance with energy use" meaning good heat retention, efficient heating & other energy systems; and somewhere from which we wouldn't have to drive a lot. Another was, "an Arts & Crafts style house from between the wars".
There are some very nice looking A&C houses around West Wales. Some have been very well preserved and enhanced. All of them have terrible heating problems, because of the way they're made (low heat retention) and because of often antiquated heating systems (oil, propane bottles and wood burning being prevalent, as there's little mains gas supply out west).
The house we bought looks like one of Al's "boxes" from the outside, being a wood-framed rectangular building clad in cementitious board with multiple vapour and heat barriers between the inner plasterboard walls and the outer cementitious boards. Inside, everything is classic Arts & Crafts of various British styles, a lot of it made by me. The views through the large windows are also superbe. The garden is large and another true living space in the warmer months.
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So, no regrets at not having chosen a classic A&C house. No regrets especially about the ability, in the eco house, to be always warm at no cost at all. The solar panels & batteries, along with an inherited FiT tariff for half of the solar panels mean we are paid to use electricity rather than the other way around. And the house is all-electric, from water-bore pump to heat pump to cooking to car charging.
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Nostalgia for chocolate box top houses of pretty traditional aspect is understandable, in our culture. But highly impractical. And expensive to buy and run.
Cugel