A video about a woman who fell in love with the “magic and beauty” of an abandoned home in the English coastal countryside has gone viral on TikTok.
The clip was shared by Danielle Raffield (@raffield.home.and.design), a 44-year-old product designer in Cornwall, a county in the southwest of England. It has amassed over 801,000 views since it was shared on April 13.
Text overlaid on the video says: “25 years of watching this house, dreaming of being its human!” as the video shows a view of a seaside home perched against a lush green landscape under a bright blue sky in West Cornwall.
Raffield told Newsweek: “I’d often walked past or sailed past the house. It has such a gentle charm—it was impossible not to notice her. Although she was run down, there was a magic and beauty in her form and features. How can you not dream about a house by the sea with a turret [a small circular tower]?”
One unexpected email from a property agent, two viewings, “some serious stress and one auction later,” Raffield and her partner became the new owners of the dilapidated home.
A closer shot of the exterior of the house in the video shows a wall of greenery crawling up towards its boarded-up windows. “She needs a lot of work…but has a view dreams are made of,” the overlaid text continues, as the clip reveals a sprawling coastal view through a window.
The viral post comes as the median spending on home renovations in the United States was found to have increased by 60 percent between 2020 and 2023, rising from $15,000 to $24,000, according to a 2024 report by Houzz, a home design website. In the UK, median spending on home renovations increased by 13 percent between 2020 and 2023, rising from £15,000 to £17,000, according to the 2024 UK Houzz & Home Renovation Trends Study. This growth reflects a steady rise in renovation investment, though it is more modest compared to the 60 percent increase observed in the United States over the same period.
‘A Bit of an Enigma’
Raffield watched this house from afar for years, wondering who lived there, as it slowly became more and more run-down. The house was originally part of a local estate that leased it out until it was sold in the 1980s to a family from Oxfordshire, a county in the southeast of England. The home belonged to that family until Raffield and her partner became its new custodians.
Raffield said: “The family was a bit of an enigma to the local community and very seldom seen so it’s hard to understand why it fell into such a poor state of repair, but many of us had watched it from afar wondering why.”
The couple attempted to make contact with the previous owners over the years and they nearly gave up after hearing nothing back. But to their surprise, one day, while they were on vacation, the couple received an email “from an agent that knew us, saying he had been instructed on a property and thought we should see it,” which turned out to be this home.
“It was a stressful experience trying to get everything in place for an auction process but by some miracle everything came together, and my partner did the bidding whilst I bit my nails nervously,” Raffield noted, without revealing the price at which the home was sold.
The new homeowner said the house comes with some “serious structural problems” and is suffering from a “concrete cancer called mundic block,” so the renovation is “going to be more intrusive than we’d hoped.”
Their goal is to save as much of the home as possible, while restoring the parts that can’t be saved to their original style and form. “In the end it should be a seven-bedroom house, a room for every child,” she said.
Raffield, who is the co-founder of Tom Raffield, a design firm she owns with her ex-husband, said this abandoned home in Cornwall is her second renovation project. Her first one was a Grade II-listed cottage she renovated with her ex-husband, which was featured on the Grand Designs television show in 2016.
Her latest renovation project is a “very different project and a totally different style,” she noted, adding, “I’ll be working with my wonderful partner Daniel Witter to create our forever home.”
“It’s the second time round for both of us and an amazing chance to create a home for our many children…and hopefully one day for our grandchildren too,” she said.
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