Beautiful architecture, charming shops, great schools, fabulous surrounding countryside, superb road and rail connections... We're huge fans of Winchester here at Country Life, and it seems everyone else is too. The Hampshire city has experienced house price growth of 9.2% in 2024, the highest rise in the country.
A home buying company called House Buyers for You has crunched numbers from HM Land Registry, finding that the average cost of a property in Winchester has gone from £463,068 in 2023 to £504,693 today. Two spots in N0rthern Ireland — Newry and Armagh — were second and third on the list of palces with highest rises, at 8.9% and 7.6% respectively, while Wolverhampton was fourth at 7.5% and Bradford fifth at 7.2%.
So what does the Winchester average of £504,693 buy you as of December 2024?
Really not that much, to be honest, at least near the city centre. Here's a £485k terrace house via Belgarum, for example.
But if you venture away from the city and head into the surrounding areas, you'll get more country life for your buck. Take this charming-looking cottage in Sutton Scotney, on the market at exactly £500k.
Quiz of the Day
1) What is the name of the inlet between Norfolk and Lincolnshire? 2) Who is said to have referred to the English as a nation of shopkeepers? 3) Which motorway connects London and Swansea? 4) What was David Bowie’s real surname? 5) What sort of tree produces filberts?
Available in any colour you like, as long as it's pink
You don't have to read James Fisher's piece on the new look of Jaguar. But if you do, you'll be glad you did.
And the word of the year is... oh, what was it again?
The Oxford English Dictionary's 'word of the year' has been announced: brain rot. Unlike most recent winners — not least 'rizz' from 2023 — it's a word with a long history, having been first recorded in in 1854 in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden: 'While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?” wrote the great American man naturalist and essayist.
The term 'increased in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024', according to the OED, thanks to its regular use to describe what happens when people devour a constant diet of TikTok videos and inflammatory Tweets. All that's left is to point out the elephant in the room: surely, given that brain rot is two words rather than one, it should be 'phrase of the year' rather than 'word of the year'? Perhaps there's a bit of brain rot floating around the OED offices...
The season of giving comes to the cinema
A nice initiative from Showcase Cinemas: make a food bank donation this Saturday and you'll get free entry to special showings of a kid-friendly Christmas film, The Magic Reindeer: Saving Santa’s Sleigh. We'd not heard of it either, but The Guardian gave it three stars — and it seems a nice way to jog people into remembering to donate at this time of year.
And finally...
Flapjacks for Dogs. Yes, really. They're made a company called Flapjackery, and area apparently gluten-free, and in a scrumptious Banana and Honey flavour.
That's it — we're all done for today
Quiz answers
1) The Wash 2) Napoleon Bonaparte 3) M4 4) Jones 5) Hazel
-
Brockfield Hall, the great Yorkshire house that's gone from Regency mansion to modern family homeBrockfield Hall in North Yorkshire is the family home of Charlie Wood and Hatta Byng, editor of House & Garden, who have transformed it since they came here in 2020, winning multiple awards in the process. John Martin Robinson reports on the restoration project that revived this compact Regency house as a modern family home. Photographs by Paul Highnam for Country Life.
-
Barbour’s heritage jackets get a floral makeover courtesy of ErdemUtilitarian outwear has taken the fashion world by storm and now Britain's world-famous wax jackets are getting in on the act, inspired by some of our greatest countryside icons.
-
Dawn Chorus: Lonely bat finds love, Britain's best sheep crowned, and the local theatres at risk of closurePlus we talk fishing with elite angler Marina Gibson and take the quiz of the day.
-
Dawn Chorus: Rent a house with a shark in the roof, red squirrels run riot in Yorkshire and superstitious planning enforcementPlus, top properties from the magazine and the daily quiz.
-
The test-tube cow, a bit of beaver bother, and the strings of Barbara HepworthPlus an Arts-and-Crafts delight in the Surrey Hills and the daily quiz.
-
The National Trust's big birthday present, and how much does a tuna the size of a motorcycle cost?Plus England's slowest roads, and the quiz of the day.
-
Dawn Chorus: The world-famous fashion icon who found global fame in her 90s, beating the January blues and our quiz of the dayToday’s Dawn Chorus spans the collections of American fashion icon Iris Apfel for sale with Christie’s and 25 years of the Serpentine Pavilion.
-
Dawn Chorus: A Traitors-style castle at the price of a Shepherd's Bush terrace, the very hungry otter, and Octopus's garden at Chelsea and our Quiz of the DayThe hugely popular BBC show Traitors and a hungry (and very brave) otter make our Dawn Chorus round-up today.
-
Dawn Chorus: The former acrobat arena you can now call home, the return of the obelisk and our quiz of the dayThe must have London property for sale with a fascinating past life, what happened 350, 200 and 60 years ago and the decorative take on Cleopatra’s Needle.
-
Dawn Chorus: How to clean a priceless chandelier, a Bohemian rhapsody for sale and our Quiz of the DayBlenheim's big clean, the best National Park pubs, Maria Callas's costumes and a beautiful, quirky house for sale — they're all in our first Dawn Chorus of 2025.
