One bridge, a tree-lined driveway and a house on a hill added up to a fine kind of lifestyle in Tom Coomber's book. It turned out he wasn't the only one who liked how those odds stacked up here, a mere five minutes north of Warkworth.
The man who lived here previously also had the vision of a bridge, a picturesque driveway and a house when he bought this land. Then he went one better all round. He put in two bridges across the river that flows down from the Dome Valley, planted the swathe of soaring pine trees that somehow missed the cut for sale as Christmas trees and built the two houses up the hill at the end of the driveway with its poplar trees and daffodils.
It's a story that Liz Coomber still loves to share eight years on. Together with Liz's widowed mother Helen Bollons, they've adored life here as the keepers of this land and owners of the houses that were built in 1995 and 1997 respectively. Liz and Tom moved into the larger, first-built house in 2006 and this is the only home -- and bespoke tree house -- that their son Taylor (7) has ever known.
The Coomber's four-bedroom house is a grown-up version of the smaller three-bedroom house; from the profile of the exterior cladding and the curved bay windows in each lounge to the layout that has the bedrooms and bathrooms in a separate wing directly off the front-to-rear open plan living areas.
