Would it be foolish to buy a Grade II listed property with terrible energy efficiency rating?

[JaffaSnaffle]

Today, we went to view a beautiful house in a lovely village. It has enough space for my family.

The current owners had been away for the weekend, so I cannot tell if this was normal, but the house was cold. It is about 10 C here today.

There was no heating on. But it was impossible to tell whether the house was cold at any time the heating wasn't on, or if they had left heating off for days.

I am prepared for higher heating bills, but could not cope with a house that needs the heating on all the time not to be arctic.

Could I ask for people's experiences with heating very old, inefficient properties?

The energy efficiency rating for my Grade II listed house is complete rubbish, because it doesn't take into account that it is stone-built with 18-in thick walls, and therefore acts as a very efficient storage heater in winter, even just using the wood-burning stove.

It's quite possible the owners simply had the heating turned off because they were away.

This is really interesting, I had no idea EPCs were so crude.

There's a really interesting article and guide on the subject from English Heritage here

www.english-heritage.org.uk/content/publications/docs/ehwebadviceonepcsdec07se.pdf2.pdf

As far as I can see, you're best off claiming that your house is post 1900, because pre-1900, the software makes a whole load of rather odd assumptions. When we sell, I'm definitely going to stress the house's later features!

English Heritage says "The performance of the majority of the physical elements of a traditional dwelling (its walls, roof, floor, windows etc) will tend to be classified as poor or very poor. This may be because the EPC software has insufficient flexibility built into it to reflect the good performance of certain traditional elements (e.g. thatched roofs), but more often than not it is an accurate reflection of the poor thermal performance of these building elements (e.g. standard solid brick walls) compared with modern, energy efficient alternatives (e.g. insulated cavity walls with aerated blockwork)."