Why no tradition of owning holiday / country homes in the UK?

[rickyrickygrimes]

We’re currently on holiday in Iceland, out on a tour and passing lots of rural areas where there are loads of little holiday cottages - just simple wooden huts mostly with a little garden area and trees all around so pretty private and secluded without being really remote. We live in France, and there too it’s really common for a family to have a country house - usually owned by an older family member and available to younger generations to use at weekend and holidays. We used to live in NZ and again there’s a really strong tradition of families having a ‘bach’ - again usually a fairly simple wooden structure out in the bush or alongside a coast / lake (though a lot if these are not so simple anymore - nor cheap).

it just made me wonder why there’s no tradition like this in the UK? I knew one person growing up whose family had a ‘cabin’ in the west of Scotland, but they were pretty wealthy.

@Mochudubh

I don’t know anyone whose family owns a but n ben in Scotland! Do you? I grew up rural, so no one we knew needed a country place 🤷‍♀️

Here where I am in Italy lots of families have homes by the coast.
I suppose there will be multiple reasons, but apartments take up less room.
Only a really small proportion of Italian home owners have a mortgage and most don’t move “up the ladder” because they don’t really do that here, you generally just stay in the house you have.
So while in the Uk if you have available funds you might think about buying somewhere bigger, whereas in Italy if you have the funds you might very well buy an apartment by the coast.

We saw lots of these in Germany (Stuttgart) too - they are lovely. Very tidy, well tended, and clearly used as summer family places s well as for growing fruits and veg. Some had paddling pools, swings, bbqs and eating areas etc, My sister had an allotment in Edinburgh and no way would she have been allowed to develop the same kind of structures.

Larger families in the UK mean that even if one generation buys a second home, on their death it has to be shared equally between the children. So unless they’re particularly tight knit the second home is usually sold.

I’m in Italy where the population is shrinking (1.2 children per family IIRC).
At one point DC1 was the only child in an intergenerational family of (me+)5 adults with farming or fishing backgrounds and a huge emotional attachment to the land.
The family had a large fruit and vegetable plot, a quarter share in a roofless farm building and a 12.5% share in an exhausted quarry. All small stuff inherited and not claimed by DH when that person died as they were worth less than the inheritance tax. They reverted to distant relatives who already had a share.

But the houses were left to DH (only child). One was sold and one kept as our holiday home for 3 years, now rented at a government-approved price.

I got a bank draft for my inheritance and frankly I was surprised I got anything after care home costs!

We have those in the UK too. They are called “sheds on an allotment”.

It kind of depends on your interests though doesn't it. We both hate the heat and too much sun so the UK weather suits us both. We're climbers and Scotland is by far our favourite place to do that, even with the weather no always exactly amazing. 😂

We always had one growing up, lovely little 14th century thatched cottage by the sea. I have such fond memories of holidaying in it growing up, with cousins etc. A family member lives in it now, so it is still in the family but not used for holidays...sadly.

They are a little bit more than that, often more like ‘tiny houses’ than allotment sheds.

I read that part of the reason dachas were so available and encouraged in Russia even for ordinary people was because they did an effective job topping up the food supply to city dwellers during the Communist period. A good way to cover for some of the shortages.

Lack of space and money.
My US family have log cabins and my Polish neighbours have small family summer homes over there.

I think its common in many countries, certainly Spain, Italy and France.

Smaller country, much more expensive property, also people who like their comforts and wouldn't cope with a place that wasn't connected to mains utilities. Also crappy summers where you wouldn't necessarily want a place that's hard to heat.

We do camping and bitch about the discomfor instead! 😂

Can barely afford our main home

Yes - DH and his brother used to spend the entirety of their 14w summer holidays in the USSR tending potatoes etc, for food supply rather than fun. Every veg variety was cultivated for yield.

No one in my family could afford to buy another house, other than the one they live in.

Erm no, they really aren’t!

Planning laws - thank goodness for them or the coast would be nothing but endless strings of chalets -with everyone wanting a sea view.
Or all the empty hills would have some chalet / hut/ twee holiday villa half way up the hillside -wanting that great view.
Where I live there are no houses in the countryside unless they can be justified eg many acres of farmland with no farmhouse.
Other parts of Scotland I’ve noticed are not as strict eg north Aberdeenshire,Arran and are dotted with retirement bungalows.
i guess in the UK its also a high population for the amount of land.

I don't know where you'd put them really - maybe there are a few remote areas that could be summer house areas.

The summer houses in Iceland are a distinct type of property. Nobody is allowed to have their legal address in a summer house so you couldn't live there full time. I don't think there's anything like that in the UK? People have second properties but they aren't legally distinct in the same way.

I think also as you're spending such a long time there over summer it works out very feasible. My friend used to drop her young son off at the end of June to her parents at their Italian holiday home, stay a few days, and he would be there for 6 weeks with other cousins, aunts and uncles etc whose businesses closed for the entire month of August, while she worked in Switzerland. Then she joined for another holiday beginning of September to bring him home. When you put together hotel and childcare costs the family saved a fortune.

And there you have it.

This is the same in Denmark. A decent percentage of Danes own summer houses but they can only be used as summer houses. We are quite densely populated as well so maybe it's a cultural thing?

Around 30 years ago it was pretty common. Not so much now because people can’t afford it.

I was being a bit facetious. I too grew up rural on a Highland shooting estate..

I think it possibly was more common when Granpaw Broon's generation (he must be about 180 now) moved to the cities. .As the "Granpaw" generation died off the grandchildren had less interest.

The "but n ben" would likely be on an estate rather than owned outright and many estates were sold off by impoverished lairds in the 80s and 90s. The "Big Hoose" would be bought by foreign investors and the other land and buildings sold off piecemeal. A much-extended former but n ben (2 room cottage) on the estate I was brought up on recently sold for over £1M, bought by retirees from Doon Sooth.

Sad times.

It used to be fairly common amongst middle class families in the 70s and 80s, loads of people we knew had cottages in Wales or Norfolk, or even more in France. Property was way cheaper then though.

Surely it's largely driven by the weather? The prospect of returning year after year to a holiday home in wet, windy Skegness is far less appealing than one in a warmer climate. Especially when cheap package holidays mean the alternative is available to many.