The Times and The Sunday Times carries a wonderful feature this week, charting Amanda Barries's relocation to London: 'The actress and her wife, Hilary Bonner, have been tempted away from their rural retreat, with its swimming pool and 36 hydrangeas, and back to Covent Garden.'
A workaholic, Barrie has a confession: 'Her lifestyle in the 18th-century Oldway Cottage in rural Somerset, where she lives with her wife, the thriller novelist Hilary Bonner, has made this famous workaholic lazy. The main culprit is its alluring swimming pool, which was built for her by Bonner, whom she married in 2014, after Barrie fell in love with swimming while on holiday in the Maldives.
'“I describe this place as a playground. She [Bonner] has got her vegetable garden, we have so many flowers and wonderful views. I’ve got my swimming pool. We’ve got a field. Three of the greatest oak trees. So I really found for the first time in my life that I don’t ever need to go out of this house ever again. And I had no desire to. During Covid in particular and since, I have become very lazy.” Bonner, 76, jokes that she would come down every day from writing in the vaulted study at the top of the four-bedroom cottage, overlooking the Blackdown Hills, and find Barrie lolling in her pool, which is in a wooden cabin attached to the house.'
'You could forgive Barrie for slowing down as she approaches her 90th birthday — but the problem is, she can’t forgive herself. So the couple, who married at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, have decided they will move back to the bright lights to live permanently in Barrie’s flat in Covent Garden, central London. She and Bonner have put their stone-built house on the market for £795,000 with the estate agency Jackson-Stops.'
Oldway Cottage is indeed on the market with Jackson-Stops Taunton with a guide price of £795,000.
https://www.jackson-stops.co.uk/properties/19840658/sales/taunton
https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/property-home/article/coronation-streets-amanda-barrie-is-relocating-to-london-at-age-89-v3mlm7v9t
