‘Half term = Chaos’ wrote Callie Coles on an Instagram post this time last year. It was accompanied by a video of her youngest child leading a horse into the kitchen — a kitchen already populated by more children, a couple of dogs, half a dozen chickens, and Callie herself trying to make lunch amidst it all.
Chaos indeed. No wonder the video went viral, with five million people liking it. The writer and influencer’s page — with its mix of rural house renovation and family life — was already popular, but now it went crazy, going past one million followers. Callie’s family — and in particular her horse, Sparky — became famous, even earning an invitation to Highclere Castle, the house used in the filming of Downton Abbey.
It won’t be long before Sparky no longer has the run of the house, however, because the Coles family has decided to sell up. Woodley Park Farm is on the market at £875,000 through Knight Frank.
Woodley Park Farm’s kitchen seems to be missing something. Oh, that’s right! Half a tonne of horse…
(Image credit: Knight Frank)
Allowing horses into your kitchen — or your drawing room, or anywhere else indoors — is unusual, but far from unknown. Indeed, former Country Life staffer Flora Watkins is a fan, and wrote a piece about it for us a couple of years ago.
One of the anecdotes Flora shared came from a 1981 documentary called The Englishwoman and the Horse, and it directly addresses the elephant in the room: what happens should the horse decide to, ahem, ‘unload its cargo’ on the carpet?
‘House training is not something we’ve ever addressed,’ said Celia Knight, one of the interviewees, while pouring tea next to her steed. ‘I have a feeling that at the time he does disgrace himself, that will be the end of his invitations into the drawing room.’ (You can watch the whole film here.)
With that question dealt with, the other question is: would you buy a house where animals once roamed freely? If you have no problem sharing your space with a space once spared with livestock, then there is no doubt that Woodley Park Farm is a real find, at a price which seems incredibly reasonable given the amount of space on offer.
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(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)Coles and her husband Toby both worked in the equestrian industry before settling down here in 2020, a house that they spent two years renovating. Toby took on almost all of the refurbishment work himself — a job that proved to be literally backbreaking, since a mishap left him with a broken spine and forced the plans to be put on hold at one point.
The end result was worth it: a dream home in Devon, set within 24 beautiful acres of land, and featuring three properties in one.
(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)There’s the main house, with four bedrooms set over three floors, the bottom of which features the famous kitchen — where Sparky became a social media star — plus a huge sitting room and a boot room, as well as a bathroom.
(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)There’s another bathroom on the first floor, along with three good-sized bedrooms — one of which houses the staircase up to the fourth bedroom, on the second floor.
(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)Beyond the main house, there is also a converted cow byer, which the Coleses lived in while carrying out their refurbishment (they also apparently lived in the toolshed at one point, according to an interview in The Times). Beyond that is another two-bedroom building, The Treehouse, and there’s also a stable block with tack room.
(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)With all this on hand, then, why are Coles and her family moving away from a house which she has described as ‘basically the manifestation of all my childhood dreams’? It’s a question of space, not just in the house but in the surrounding areas, with Toby keen to move back to where he grew up in Scotland, where he ‘had an amazing childhood, being able to roam free,’ as he tells The Times.
(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)(Image credit: Knight Frank)Callie agrees: We just have outgrown it,’ she says. ‘We don’t fit in the house anymore. Jesse [her oldest son] has to sleep in a shepherd’s hut. It’s just too small for all these noisy big boys. I’ll miss every pebble, every tree. I’ll miss the trees a lot.’
Woodley Park Farm is for sale via Knight Frank at £875,000 — see more details.