What are Quadrants?

Property by Rupert Bates

The Field Magazine - October 2005

that is spread throughout the year rather than confined to the summer season should sit well with the protectors of the National Park.

It is an intriguing proposition. Get four family members together, perhaps made up of three generations, allowing the children to run riot in the summer but giving the grandparents some peaceful weeks out of school holidays, and the investment seems sound.

There is an Enid Blyton 'Famous Five', or in this case 'Famous Four', feel about Holwell, a working farm one mile from Widecombe-in-the-Moor. Home Counties trophy wives with high heels, a fear of bantams, upset by the noise of geese and who think a Dartmoor pony is a champagne cocktail need not apply. Treat the saddleback pigs with respect and do not be surprised to se a drystone wall builder hand-rearing a runt piglet with goat's milk.

As the Quadrant Quarterhold’s (management company) press release states: 'It is a fantastic place for children as they can roam free, ride, cycle and fish in the brook. The owners can also buy home-reared pork from the farm and the children can collect fresh warm eggs from the chickens for breakfast.' For further details you presumably contact Julian, Dick, Anne or George.

You can even have a quarter share in a horse, which can be looked after in livery on the 500-acre estate, and shooting is planned too. The cottages are granite built. Three of the properties have three bedrooms and one has five. 'Well-behaved' pets are welcome, as long as the dog is called Timmy.

As well as a herd of Dartmoor ponies, other rare breeds on the farm include pedigree English saddlebacks, a herd of belted Galloway cattle and breeding lapwings.

Philippa and Sebastian Hughes know all about service and hospitality as owners of the Holne Chase Hotel, 10 minutes’ drive from the estate cottages, where there is fly-fishing on the Dart.

If you choose the management option and an annual service charge, you or your guests can arrive for your stint in your quarterhold property and there will be fresh flowers, beds made, a full fridge and even the cork drawn on a bottle of claret for your first night. What about lashings of ginger beer?

Owners who do not use all the allocated three months a year may let them to clients, but Hughes is keen to discourage large-scale commercial lets. Three months holiday a year? Chance would be a fine thing.

We want to preserve the spirit and integrity of the estate and the concept of the quarterholds, said Hughes. A whole cottage can be purchased by one buyer, rather than four. But the owner would not be allowed to become a permanent resident.

Even if you can afford a whole property as a second home you have the worry of the upkeep and whether it is being looked after, which is why fractional ownership can make total sense.

Friends and family pooling resources and working out who takes which weeks is all very well, but if the owners of the fractional freehold are strangers, traditional British reserve kicks in. You may not even need to meet the other owner, although there will be annual general meetings to attend, but the desire to know your fellow investors could be hard to resist.

Quadrant properties are yours for as long as you want them, unlike timeshare where you are buying set weeks for a set number of years. You are free to sell at any time, although first refusal will go to the other quarter share owners.

The interest so far has come mainly from London couples after that idyllic escape, as well as those of retirement age.

You sense a real determination to make this work. It could either prove a spectacular success, driving forward the concept of fractional ownership throughout the UK.