Swailes, 37, a former army officer, has spent much of his time searching for building materials since parting with £550,000 at auction last December to buy Seahouse, a rambling and largely ruined old house set in one acre of land on the Northumbrian coast. He has also learnt how to mix cement, but admits he hasn’t got his “hands as dirty as he wanted to”.

Swailes’s house, 3 miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed, is one of the 237 properties — the overwhelming majority uninhabitable — that have featured in the Is it Worth It? column of Home since the section was launched in September 2001.

More than 85% of them — including buildings as diverse as “the most haunted house in the Shetland Isles” (bought at auction for £20,000 after going on sale with a guide price of £1+), a Northumberland lighthouse, a former MoD bunker and hundreds of barns the length and breadth of the country — have been sold.

Most have been acquired by owner-occupiers like Swailes, people who want a property not just with rural views, but one they can restore and on which they can put their own stamp.

Others have been bought by the growing army of amateur developers who have turned their backs on city-centre buy-to-lets in favour of tumbledown cottages, mills, redundant barns and piggeries to convert into a profit.

Swailes, who now works as a security consultant to private clients in the Middle East and television companies planning jungle expeditions, is project-managing the restoration of Seahouse.

Built as a family home in the 19th century, it had been converted into three parts and let out. Swailes hopes to have turned it back into a five-bed house by Christmas, and has already moved with his wife, Sarah, and daughters Ellenor, 5, and Isabella, nearly 2, into one of the wings. Despite the scale of work required, he expects to keep within his £150,000 budget, but reckons he might end up with “economical carpets”.

More than 540 miles away in Cornwall, Bernard Bevan, a retired engineer from Dorset, is putting the finishing touches to a derelict former mill and barn that featured in these pages in May 2002.

Trungle Mill, set in 11 acres in Angarrack near Hayle, went to auction with a guide price of £150,000. Bevan secured it for £275,000 after a wave of interest forced the auctioneers to change the venue for the sale from the village inn to the local rugby club.

Two weeks later, Bevan, who says he “didn’t want to live in a ready-made property”, was living in a caravan on site. He began by gutting the interior and drying out the property, before putting in a dampcourse and moving water pipes. The house now has three bedrooms and a fourth in the attic with a sloping roof that is perfect for his grandchildren.

The costs have soared, though. The initial estimate by the agent of £20,000, would not, in Bevan’s words, “even cover a kitchen”. He has already spent close to £200,000, and is considering selling in the autumn, but is yet to have the property valued.

Profit has been the main motivation for many buyers. The Windmill at Ferryhill, set in 1.35 acres of beautiful countryside eight miles from Durham, was featured in October 2004 at £180,000.

Explore Property

• Buying & Selling

• New Homes

• Overseas

• Interiors

• Investment

• Gardens

• Cool In Your Code

• Specials

Times recommends

• Analysis: frustration for everyone - except investors
• Spanish property: why it's crunch time on the Costa del Sol
• Buy-to-let: professional investors cash in on the credit crunch