Brooksby Station House              Back to main page

Our house was built in 1846 as the station for Brooksby Hall. It is a listed building, but before we bought it, it had been used as a pig farm, part of Brooksby Agricultural College.

The trains still run; we still have a platform, but it is fenced off from the track..

In the garden there are various interesting things to play on, that we have made ourselves, like the castle:

Our bit of the River Wreake where we try out our new canoes..

We have a number of animals, including poultry, sheep and goats, a cat and a dog. There is plenty of wildlife.

 Here are Thomas's baby goats, last October. They are a bit bigger now, but just as friendly. Their names are Debbie and Flora. Debbie is the one with the toggles.

The garden here is 2 acres or so of rough  paddock and trees. The sheep and goats do their best to keep the grass down, but we don't use a mower very much, or a strimmer, so there are a lot of nettles. The house has been converted from a railway station by ourselves, in a very DIY manner, using lots of recycled materials salvaged from skips etc. The garden used to be a pig farm, and still retains a lot of the old pig buildings ( used now to store the canoes).

If you are fastidious, you won't like our place at all. If you like things to be neat and tidy, and houses to conform to the TV image , you'll be disappointed. If on the other hand you think more about people and getting on with living, and if you like getting by on very little ( most home educating families know about this as they have sacrificed at least one income in order to give their kids a family education), you will like the freedom our place gives. We have no neighbours, so we can have a camp fire and a sing-song without disturbing anyone. Its a great blessing not to have to conform, but we apologize in advance if you prefer things to be a bit neater and tidier; we don't intend to change, though!

The sound you may be able to hear is a recording by Hugh Wright of "the 4965 Rood Ashton Hall steam train passing through Melton Mowbray station prior to the day's Harringworth 125 Shuttles on 25th August 2003. The many passengers eagerly awaiting the train's arrival cheer as it runs through the station into a siding whilst a service train is allowed through." ( from vintagetrains.co.uk). The train came through Brooksby on its way to Melton. The normal trains running through here are less romantic, and sometimes noisier, although significantly less polluting!