It started with one house for £12,000
Yip Ward and Paul Mappley at their home(Image: Paul Mappley/SWNS)
A couple who couldn’t afford to buy a house in the UK bought an entire French hamlet for £26,000.
Yip Ward and Paul Mappley, both 52, were living in a caravan in Tunbridge Wells when their friends offered them a chance to buy the property in Normandy. They went out to visit the home in Normandy and bought it straight away for £12,000 – funded by selling their belongings, including an old tractor of Paul’s.
Since then, the couple have snapped up the adjacent buildings and now own seven cottages, two barns, a workshop, a cider press, two traditional bread ovens and various other outbuildings – all for £14,000. They began restoring the hamlet building by building in 2020 and have now spent around £100,000 so far – completing the original cottage, which is a holiday rental, alongside a horsebox they brought from the UK that is “booked out”.
Restoration work
They have made their dreams a reality through fundraising efforts by their followers on social media and are set to have their second cottage complete by summer 2027. The pair reckon they have saved more than £100,000 doing the bulk of the work themselves with the help of builder friend Ian, 62.
Yip said: “People always say how did you find the village and it’s not that we were looking, it was a chance meeting with a friend who had got a place and was selling it. We definitely see it as the planets aligned.
“We went and sought out a wreck that had been abandoned 30 years ago and pieced it together. We’re really cracking on now.
“We say to ourselves we can’t believe this whole place is ours. Coming from where we come from, I don’t think the gratitude for being here will ever run out. It blows my mind.”
How they got started
The sellers had changed their minds about the property due to the huge amount of restoration work that needed to be done when they offered it to Yip and Paul. With the rules in France meaning they did not need to hand over the entire sum for eight months after purchase, they set to work during Covid, earning money through their jobs as landscape gardeners to seal the deal.
They even documented their restoration journey and appeared on Channel 4’s ‘Help! We Bought A French Village!’. Husband Paul said they were now in “full restoration mode” after working for years to transform their hamlet, called La Buslière.
He said: “I can’t express to you enough that, apart from cottages one and two, the other three cottages were covered, the whole roof in ivy. They were literally being swallowed by nature.
“We’re saving so much money doing it ourselves. We’ve got a friend we met here; he’s been in the trade for 47 years in building restoration and stuff.
“We knew of him and in 2019 he did repairs on cottage one. He did the roof repairs, minor works and then we didn’t see him for four years and he, unbeknownst to us, was watching our YouTube channel.
“We had a massive two-tonne roof thing that needed to come out as it was rotten on one end. We didn’t have anyone, machinery or money and we were sharing on YouTube saying ‘we don’t know what to do’.
“He saw this video and arrived one day and said ‘come on boys let’s get this beam out’. For the first six months he worked for no payment.”
Earning money
The couple are now able to pay Ian £1,000 weekly through the money they earn on YouTube.
Paul said: “We have five people turning up every single day to donate things – they bring bits of furniture or materials for the roof. I can’t tell you what a community we’ve built somehow.
“Every week we’re donated £400 worth of materials for free we can use. All of this saves us so much money.
“For example one side of the roof of cottage three was really bad and we were quoted £13,000 to fix it and we did it for £2,000 because we did it ourselves.
“We saved £11,000 just on one side of a roof. Take that per cottage doing it ourselves, that’s £22,000 per cottage, seven cottages, which is instantly saving us over £100,000.”
The couple plan, once they have all been restored, to try out and live in every single cottage in their hamlet.
Yip said: “People say ‘once all seven cottages are done you’ll rake it in’. That’s what a capitalist would say.
“We don’t want it to be a metropolis. Every single guest who stays here says they can’t believe how quiet it is.
“There is no light pollution, it’s a fantastic place and we don’t want to ruin it with seven cottages populated with people. The other buildings we’ll turn into workshop spaces.
“We’d like to do summer fairs here and markets. Once a month we’d like to do an outdoor cinema and do pizza making – we have two original pizza ovens.
“There won’t be things like TVs in the cottages. There won’t be UPVC windows. It’s an exciting, amazing place and we want to make sure people are transported back.”
You can follow Paul and Yip’s restoration journey on YouTube @helpweboughtafrenchvillage.
