The house is cheap and easy to maintain, giving the couple plenty of time to spend working on their garden and new vegetable patch. They have planted native woodland, an orchard and a wildflower meadow on their plot; Horton is building a sauna in the garden and the couple are enjoying walking and sea swimming.
“The house is no longer a worry, although the barn always was,” says Szota. “We don’t worry about the windows, the roof or the bills at all.”
‘We don’t have to worry about money’
However, an unexpected decision to downsize sometimes comes from a place of difficulty.
The Beckwith family moved from their four-bedroom house in west London to a smaller, more modern house in Kent because of a medical crisis. In 2022, Anthony Beckwith, then just 49, suffered a stroke.
He and his wife Gemma had been living in their family home, a semi in Hayes, for a decade by then, with their two children, now 19 and 22.
Making ends meet was hard work. Gemma, now 47, had three jobs, as a childminder, cat sitter and cleaner, and Anthony, now 53, worked overtime as a lorry driver to meet their mortgage bill, which was around £1,600 a month.
“Anthony couldn’t work for a year, and although he still got paid, we were worried about money and what would happen if one of us got ill again,” says Gemma. “The children had both left school and were working and we decided that the best thing to do was to move.”
