Thursday 18th January 2024. Here is an awesome TOWER with FULL Planning Permission to turn the magnificent Manx stone water holder into an impressive home. The £230,000 price tag is “handsomely high” in our humble opinion. Time for a price haggle? Do bears relieve themselves in woods? A big yes on both haggle and poo
. Though that planning permission was a lot of hard work and adds a lot of value. Plus this is the Isle of Man where even the ice-cream van guy has 38 directorships of “tax efficient” companies who pay resident Manx folk £5,000 per director! Compton McKenzie’s Whisky Galore meets Sire Frederick Badwinne of Rotten Bank of Global Recovery Spivs. Best we say least about banks 
. Fortunately the Isle of Man is a proper island with a brilliant community. As a courtesy, if you are a ferry-louper, we recommend you study the Manx Parliament and law as it differs importantly to UK mainland law. We can’t buy this tower as none of us has any hair left and someone has to do the climbing 
up the tower thingy utilising elegantly woven golden hair as your rope ladder. Without further ado, and for our intrepid Bulletineers, we attach some tasty photos and plans for your towering topic of the day. If you want to phone the estate agent to arrange a viewing, here are their details: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/120742088#/
Clive Mumford moved back to Scilly to run the family business in 1984
“The shop hasn’t changed, but the reading habits of the public have. No longer is print king,” Mr Mumford said.
“The sale of newspapers has declined radically, and people tend to get all their news online. So it is a job to make a living now with newsprint. Those days are gone.”
It has been far from an easy to decision to sell the shop, along with the adjoining home he shares with his wife Avril.
“It is as if I have disregarded everything that my forebears did, but I have got no option – simple as that,” Mr Mumford continued.
“People just don’t read newsprint anymore. Our sales are dropping drastically, so I have got no option.”
His three daughters live on the island but have their own careers and don’t feel able to take on the business, and his wife has played a key role in keeping the shop running.
Mr Mumford also had a successful journalism career on the mainland, working at the Western Morning News, the South Wales Echo and the Western Evening Herald – but he gave it up to take on the family business full-time in 1984.
He said: “Invariably Scillonians who spend a lot of time away, in the end somehow always come back. And this was the case with me – after 35 years away I came back.
“I wanted to make sure the business continued in the family.”
While working on the mainland he continued to edit the quarterly magazine, the Scillonian, a role he continues to fulfil to this day.
The magazine will turn 100 in 2025.
Running a newsagents on an island where there are frequent travel problems presents unique challenges, and they often receive four or five days’ worth of newspapers at once.
Scilly’s longest running publication The Scillonian is still edited by Mr Mumford and he is keen for it to continue until 2025, when it will be 100 years old
One regular customer of note was former Prime Minister Harold Wilson who had a holiday home on St Mary’s, and is buried there.
Speaking to the BBC in 1987, Mr Mumford recalled a time when they had to ration newspapers for visitors, due to the poor weather causing delivery problems.
He told the programme: “We had to ration the papers for visitors when we didn’t have many because of the weather. On one occasion a customer asked for several papers, and I told him he was only allowed one.
“He said it was preposterous and how he had been all over the world and never treated in such a discriminatory fashion…. ‘When I get back to Esher, I am going to see my MP who is a great friend of mine, and protest very strongly about this’.
“And just at that moment in walked Harold Wilson with his haversack and pipe, and went to look at the bookshelf.
“So I said to this chap, ‘Don’t fool about with backbench MPs, why don’t we go straight to the prime minister… Mr Wilson’, and he turned around and the man shot out of the shop, he fled.”
Original owner Charles Mumford died in 1909 when a gig boat he was in sank while attempting to salvage a grain ship that had been wrecked off the islands.
It left his widow to run the shop, while also caring for Clive’s father, who was aged one at the time.
Clive’s grandfather who founded the business, and his father as a baby
Originally located mid-way down the main street, it relocated to its current corner position in 1924 when the Duchy of Cornwall rebuilt much of the row.
Jason McLean. Born: January 1963. Died: 13th March 1965
Tuesday 16th January 2024. We make best efforts to answer: “What price is a sea view worth?” This is one of the most frequent topics of interest from Unique Property Bulletin readers. As a research example we are looking to the south of the U.K. We love the Isle of Wight. as it is from here that in 1997, our Unique Property Projects bought the old ferry MV Southsea. that beloved island ferry taught us much and directly led, 15 years later, to the successful recovery from the scrapyard of TS Queen Mary and the charity born from the tapping of the very keys on this very old, clockwork computer keyboard. Apologies, that was a slight digression. Though an apt sidebar, as one of the favourite pastimes at a beech hut is to “watch the ships go by.” Though it is a guilty flaw with Unique Property Bulletin, that our crew of mischief makers, cannot help but “go buy the ships that pass by.“ Digression over. So what price is a sea view? Well anecdotally, given that the beech hut link below has only three brick walls and no toilet, with nothing much in the form of amenities: made WORSE by the fact this, like many beech huts/chalets are LEASEHOLD, means you will never own the structure! Worse. You will have to pay £1,000 RENT, each and every year.All for nothing but a concrete bunker (above ground). It is fair to say you are really only buying a sea view. All other creature comforts you have to bring with you. Ergo, the sea view in this instance is estimated at £47,000. A better place to be is the person who arranged this property transaction many years earlier! Some imaginative person bought this bland block brick building and now has six very useful forms of income (£300,000 in capital increase LEASEHOLD key-money and £6,000 a year income). The building and arranging beech huts/chalets is how you build your own unique property financial nest egg. Having written this somewhat unflattering narrative about beech huts and cabins, we have to confess to being beguiled by these places. Our MD shared the lease of a beech chalet in Felixstowe when he worked in London. There can be something monastic… plain, simple, contemplative and very enjoyable about these sea view garden-sheds! Though it amazes us that there are hundreds of thousand of beech huts all around the U.K. Some sell for daft money. A quarter of a million pounds for a shed that retails at B&Q for £500 quid. Anyways, on an anecdotal basis, back when Bronto~Sore~Russ 
was a young nipper, the estate agents would say: “a sea view added £10,000 onto a property value”. Nowadays, it is more like £47,000. Or to be more accurate, the neighbours/fellow owners of these beech huts quoted £50,000 as the general amount expected. So there you have it. A totally unscientific feature on “What price is a sea view worth?” All the best, Calum (Russ is off today at a family matter). Sea Hut/Chalet: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137955419#/
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For today’s Unique Property Bulletin recommendation (and please remember we are NOT estate agents, just eccentrics who share details of unusual homes and …
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