So, I might not be the only one who is absolutely addicted to watching those dreamy videos of people (mostly in the US) abandoning the cities, buying some plot of land near a forest (or an old cabin to renovate) and build their dream home there away from the cities and people, make a cute little garden, live in peace… I have actually been looking into it, but (I admit I might be looking in the wrong places) I didn’t really find many plots for sale, and if so they were like on the side of the road and you couldn’t build on them.
I completely understand the difference between the US where there is literally more space than people could fill and the UK where there is anything but space/housing, but… **is something like this possible in the UK? Is there a site to look for plots like that? Is it reasonable/possible?**
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It’s absolutely feasible to have a relatively isolated space and be reasonably self-sufficient, but it’s a case-by-case basis in most of England and Wales & you just have to get lucky finding a place. In Scotland you can always look into crofting as an option: https://crofting.scotland.gov.uk/ crofts are really variable in remoteness/self-sufficiency potential but in principle they could fulfill that desire – guide here https://crofting.scotland.gov.uk/acquiring-a-croft
I’m also working towards this, best plan so far is to buy agricultural land and start a smallholding. It’s not entirely without risk, but you can maintain its status as agricultural land if you grow your own food, you’ll likely need to have animals on site to justify a residence though. To be honest, I’m also not entirely averse to the build something anyway and prove you’ve been there for enough years method. That would involve a largely below ground residence though.
Nothing technically impossible about it, but there are enough barriers to make it unattractive.
Firstly that all the ‘good’ land is either expensive or not for sale, as you’ve already discovered
Practically it is basically impossible yes.
Good blog on it [here](https://lifespacecabins.co.uk/can-i-build-a-cabin-in-the-woods/)
Our country is tiny. You can drive the county top to bottom in 10 hours.
There’s just not enough empty land to make it feasible. Plus all the land is owned and undeveloped land is either undeveloped for a reason or very very expensive.
And you’d have to jump through some serious legal hoops to build anything.
How “possible” it is mostly dictated by how much work you’re willing to put in, and how much you’re willing to go without; For almost anybody, when they realise the sheer effort it would take to live a lifestyle that would leave them considerably worse off, they abandon the idea.
Do you follow Kris Harbour? He quit his job in London and moved to Wales. He built his own house, workshop, energy needs, keeps animals, grows food, etc etc.
The entire thing from the start is documented and he gives a lot of advice and details about how it went about doing it.
https://youtube.com/@KrisHarbour
Edit: should have said, all his skills are self taught.
In my experience it appears to be very difficult/ impossible to get any kind of planning pemission on just a piece of agricultural land (in England). What is much more common is for people to buy land with an old barn on it then get permission to convert it to a residence through a thing called part q (although rule might have gotten stricker). In our experience, rural people are very switched on to what’s going on on land around them and I would never risk trying to do the stealth living for 10 years thing. You would definitely get spotted and probably reported unless you managed to strike up a good relationship with the locals.
I know some people who did something like this on one of the Scottish Islands; I think in Scotland it’s not too hard to achieve some level of isolation
We don’t really have any wilderness. Unlike the us where there are federal lands, in the U.K. Every inch of land is owned by somebody and used for something.
What TV shows have you been watching? Sounds like fun
There’s currently jobs in the scottish remote Isles one boat a week etc have a look
There are woodlands for sale, at a rate of about £25k an acre. Problem is it’s not exactly in the middle of nowhere and you won’t get any peace and quiet.
Possible, yes. Feasible/what you’d expect, no.
No, I don’t know the exact procedures to go through but my mate lives on a small plot of land next to a river in Derbyshire, he’s got a small place to live in and he has big garden parties every so often. He has a small business and spends time fishing, relaxing and occasionally travelling.
A bit, mostly because you can buy land but it’s difficult to get permission to build on it.
Also we don’t have any wilderness. It’s all owned by someone and all thoroughly explored. We don’t even have much natural forest or natural landscape left, let alone anything ‘wild’.
In short it’s hard to do in the UK, every inch of the UK is owned an cultivated, even the wild places are heavily degraded landscapes made for sheep or grouse rather than “wild”
[https://reasonstobecheerful.world/one-planet-development-policy-wales-rural-sustainability/](https://reasonstobecheerful.world/one-planet-development-policy-wales-rural-sustainability/) there’s some allowance for one world development in Wales that allows permission for low impact dwellings/lifestyle but it’s hard. There’s some books about it, but even so it’s tricky.
Also the idea of a cabin in the woods is a bit of a fairy tale even from a historic perspective [https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1443225915073437698](https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1443225915073437698) Sarah Taber writes a lot about the realities of agriculture. There used to be a lot more people living on the land prior to mechanisation and they didn’t live on their own in the middle of no-where but in villages . . . that’s for a reason like pubs, milk, shops etc. . . The villages were really at risk of turning into ruins until the motor car arrived and allowed people to commute to the city. [https://youtu.be/CpaJ-nBtauQ](https://youtu.be/CpaJ-nBtauQ)
Most people now look to do it in Spain, Portugal, France where land is cheaper and there’s a lot more space. Water is the big concern in these places.
Just about, but it will be expensive and/or slow, and you will probably have shit broadband unless you bung Open Reach about £50k.
Check out Bush Radical’s cabin builds, and there’s a guy called Modern Self Reliance who owns a forest and has built some crazy stuff!
Sadly I don’t think it’s possible here at all
Closest you’re likely to get is a smallholding somewhere. It’s a pretty rough life, but they usually come with the house already constructed.
Nowhere is more than 75 miles away from the sea. But yeah it’s possible. Look at r/homestead for inspiration
The reason why this works in the US, is because the US is fucking ENORMOUS, and more importantly, EMPTY. Basically anywhere in Europe it’s not really possible to be very far from civilisation. And that’s ignoring all the other problems people have mentioned.
I moved to pretty much one of the most remote places in England, I have mains electricity, but water is from a spring, oil fired heating and the internet is point to point (ironically the local church on the other side of the valley has the transmitter on the tower), planning permission is really hard to obtain and old barns are collapsing all the time as they are refused to be converted and it’s expensive to try and maintain them, but there’s a lot of derelict old farmhouses literally falling down, they do belong to larger estates but the cost of renovating them outstrips the rental income, so the estates tend to focus on holiday lets..
However you could get one of these old farmhouses on a rent free lease as long as you do it up, estates don’t want to sell properties off but I know that they would support and encourage families that want to move more rurally.
It’s not impossible, but it’s significantly harder.
Maybe look up crofting in Scotland. AFAIK it’s the closest thing.
If you mean ‘live in a remote place with no paved road’ then it’s certainly possible. I knew a guy who lived in the middle of a 40 acre woodland in Essex – but you could still drive to a pub in 15 minutes and Braintree in under an hour. He had the whole solar power/rainwater/wood fuel thing going but it’s not exactly away from society.
If you mean ‘live in a place where you’ll go a month or two without seeing another human and be able to hunt/grow/gather/fish for all your food and chop down trees to build your cabin then no, that’s not possible in the UK.
You can have a small holding in rural Wales or Scotland and put a caravan on it, but you’ll be wanting to drive to the farm supply shop most weeks.
I knew a guy who bought an old rectory in a small village in Suffolk. It wasn’t “off grid” but with 3 acres of land he had most of his heating, and most of his root veg and fruit taken care of. No neighbours within a five minute walk. That seems like a good compromise to me.
Delivery driver – I get sent to some places that are in the middle of absolutely nowhere
Fuck knows why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to build a house somewhere only sheep and rabbits live, but if that’s your thing, Scotland has plenty
Seems easier (and probably less expensive) than buying land, building a cabin, and digging a massive hole for your shit and piss to live in
Highlands or smaller islands of Scotland
With enough money.
Could be possible in some parts of Scotland or Wales.
Definitely not impossible, we started in 1997 and completed the legalities in 2005, you need to know exactly what the words “in secret” and “completed” actually mean because I’ve known a few people fail to grasp these simple concepts
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-news/farmer-who-built-castle-hidden-7658785&ved=2ahUKEwiV_rHj-sX9AhULhv0HHV15Ak0QFnoECAwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1A4CFe8FvQqdsjd0vf7ais
Find suitable land, some land is unregistered and can be claimed but check the law on that issue, we claimed our land.
Build small and in secret, everyone that finds out will take great delight in informing the local planning authority.
Do not get the shell up and use it as a store for materials or a workshop! As soon as you stert building its only purpose is that of an independent dwelling and absolutely nothing else! Otherwise the council will claim it’s a change of use and random building to dwelling takes ten years, if you needca shed build a shed!
Compleat all the work required, yes all of it!
Start a diary and make meticulous notes and take photos of everything that happens in the next four years, keep a visitors book and get friends to sign it when they visit because you need to prove that you lived in the building for four full years after completion.
Do not start counting the four years while you live there and install services or skirting boards, after completion are the terms used not while I finish it and remove whatever I was hiding behind!
Do not find your land and immediately build a massive fence and driveway then register the plot as a b&b on Google maps so that building merchants can deliver stuff! That’s not “in secret”,
While that might seem blatantly bleeding obvious someone actually did all that after I’d explained what to do!
After four years you will then want to start the process of getting a legal development certificate, this is when you’ll discover exactly how petty and spiteful your local planning authority actually is, they will tellmyou outright lies and make no end of threats and quite possibly caution you because they will have a full on emotional breakdown and make you believe you have broken the law, just remember the law is on your side but the burden of proof is entirely on you and reasonable doubt will not be enough, irrefutable proof is what you need to gather and to win you need to start as soon as you have completed the work to make your home.
Yes it’s a fiasco and a bit stressful, but the land was free and the 2 bedroom bungalow cost £2500 in total to build, we kept all the trees and built under them and even today you cannot see the house on Google maps satellite view.
Yes, because I’ve just done it. Granted it was my old family home that hadn’t been looked after in decades, but it’s mine.
You can get lost in Scotland.
There a ton of small villages in the countryside that basically feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere. Try Wales, it’s the cheaper option but has lots of beautiful countryside.
It’s feasible if you’re suitably rich to begin with.
There’s a reason almost all of these dreams involve someone who used to work in “finance” or some other incredibly well paid job.
They’ve built up a bunch of money doing that, then sold their incredibly expensive house in London and can now buy a suitable piece of land, with the correct permissions. Then pretend to be eeking out an existence living off the seven carrots they’ve managed to grow.
Very few people manage to do it with few resources.
Dreams are for the rich.
Basically every single square inch of this tiny country is owned in some way or another.
There is no ‘wilderness’ here. The closest thing we have to wilderness is forests that don’t have dog walking/cycle tracks running through them.
You can’t really just buy an isolated little plot of land somewhere and build a cabin. Watch a few episodes of grand designs and you’ll see why
I currently live in a city in Canada and know a few people who have done this. All of them regretted it and were back in 6-12 months. Everyone likes their own space but to feel totally isolated only works for very few people, especially if you are someone who wasnt raised out in the sticks.
I went with some friends once to a bit of forrest that someone was leasing off a farmer. They set up a caravan etc and were living quite happily in the middle of a forest miles from everyone
Sort of.
Most common way is probably to buy some land and set up a rural/agriculture based business which you can sensibly argue requires somebody be on site 24/7, then apply for planning for a new dwelling on the site with an agricultural tie condition.
…an ag-tie basically requires that whoever lives in the property has to be employed full-time in the agricultural sector.
If your business goes snudge and you no longer work the land then you’ll be required to sell your house to somebody actually working in agriculture. So yeah there is some risk involved in this approach.
I’m pretty sure it is unless you have obscene sums of money
Yes in Scotland you can get close to that. North West Scotland is infact extremely remote.
Take a road trip up there and have a look, people build houses and cabins up there now you just have to buy a piece of land.
Weather’s a bit wild and you will be 2 hours from a hospital but if that’s what your looking for!
Scottish highlands would be a suitable place, but you can’t go round shooting wildlife for food.
How about a halfway house sort of thing…my good friend ex Military and ex Firefighter suffers from PTSD moved to a tiny village high up in the Northeast of Scotland and spends his time walking the hills and beaches, we encouraged him to get a dog and he’s the happiest he’s ever been, every day he posts pics and theres even one or two of him smiling
I literally just want to buy a field that is about half an acre or an acre but just can’t find one for sale. Do enjoy browsing https://www.woodlands.co.uk [https://www.woodlands.co.uk] but want a field not woodland. Plus the price…
Not impossible in England, but very hard. Somewhat more possible in Scotland Wales and NI.
I’ve just moved back to the city (Norwich) after just over two decades in the sticks. Much happier! Also, living off grid and growing all your own food is almost impossible unless you work 24/7 and have a a fuckton of skills.
A friend of mine bought an old holiday cottage with her husband up in Scotland, nearest neighbour is about 3 miles away, place looks like Narnia in the winter, they are living that dream.
Northern Wales 🤘
There is a YouTube channel of a guy in the UK who’s doing this I can’t remember what it was called. He’s built a log cabin and a workshop on a plot of land he probably paid quite a bit of money for. He obviously had quite a good job before he went off the grid. But he is living fairly off the grid believe he installs hydroelectric systems for people after making one for himself.
Yes. But.
It’s more likely to be a long term lease rather than ownership.
Anything you built or bought would probably be off grid, no electricity water or sewage (and no access for a septic tank lorry).
The highlands or central wales are your best bet.
Alternatively caretaker jobs do come up for remote or semi-remote locations….and you may have luck talking to a farmer who has land and is looking for help (for example looking after the pheasants)
There’s plenty of nature areas in Mid and North Wales and I also often see lots for sale. It’s not completely off the grid, but you can definitely choose a more secluded lifestyle. Not sure to what extend you can actually be self-sufficient, but I’m sure with some creativity you can get far. Wales is also stunning so not a bad idea to entertain yourself with.