Online House Hunter: Counting on Scrooge

A four-bedroom detached house in Malton

BRITAIN is celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth and one town in North Yorkshire deserves a big pat on the back for realising years ago that any connection with Dickens was a chance to celebrate this great man – and share that with thousands of tourists at the same time.

Malton in the district of Ryedale has its own Charles Dickens Society and has one connection that should have other towns drooling: offices in Chancery Lane were the model for Scrooge’s counting house in A Christmas Carol – and remarkably the offices still exist.

One might have expected the holders of tourism’s purse strings in the area to have got down on their knees and daily thanked the great man for this gift but one gets the impression that it’s largely the enthusiastic efforts of the local Dickens Society keeping this literary link open. Dickens has a number of other links with Malton. He was a good friend of local solicitor Charles Smithson and was a regular visitor to the area.

Malton is the next town north-east of York on the A64. It’s also nicely placed for a commute to Scarborough or leisure trips to the coast or North Riding Forest Park. The A1(M) is under an hour away and there are of course good rail links from York to other parts of the UK.

The BBC/Land Registry puts the current average house price at £208,645 (the UK average is £160,384). As that price suggests, there are some very above average homes in the area. The annual change in house price is down 7.8 per cent – and the quarterly change down 12.3 per cent but I’d sound my usual warnings about relying on ‘average’ prices based on small sales figures.

The house pictured is on the market for £344,950 and has a beck mill running along one of its sides. Despite its mellow timeless look, it was only built in 1996. There are four bedrooms.

More traditional, is this one-bedroom terraced property for which offers in excess of £100,000 are sought. It has a modern-fitted kitchen and modern-fitted bedroom.

Below are links to the Independent property search engine for Malton and surrounding towns. I’ve also included some links to Malton itself – and of course its Dickensian links.

USEFUL LINKS:

• Independent property search engine
• Homes for sale in Malton
• Homes for sale in York
• Homes for sale in Scarborough
• Ryedale House Prices
• Ryedale District council
• Ryedale Council Tax bands
• Charles Dickens (Malton) Society
• Malton Tourist Information
• Dickens 2012

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