Just a few miles from the Scottish border near Newcastleton, the three-storey property is part of a Victorian country house and sits in 15 acres of grazing and woodland.

Jo and Alistair Everett moved there with their children Aaron, now 25, Katie, 20, and Tom who is nearly 19. Jo is an ambulance service technician and Alistair works as a policeman.

He said: "It was built around 1880 as a hunting lodge then was extended with part of our house in about 1910 or 1920.

"So we have some of the original house and some of the extension. I think our main living room area was maybe the original billiards room because it has nice flooring."

Despite being just under half of the original hunting lodge, West Kershope House is still a sizeable property. It has a huge sitting room -30ft by 19ft - large hall with utility and store off, large kitchen and a conservatory.

On the first and second floor are five double bedrooms, a bathroom, shower room and storage. Period features include cornicing, dado rail, pitched pine floor and panelling, picture rail, bay windows, cast-iron stove and tiled fireplaces.

Alistair said: "An old colonel called Green bought the house, split it in two and we have the west house. The huge living room been great for entertaining over the years. That’s a really outstanding feature, it’s a smashing room.

"Since we moved in we’ve revamped the flooring, made downstairs all hardwood flooring, put in a new Rangemaster in the kitchen and updated the shower room.

"It was the outside that struck us when we came here, the land was a major selling point for us.

"There’s seven acres of grazing and eight acres of woodland - we put in an extra two stables as we came here with five horses originally, one for each member of the family to ride out.

"Kershope Burn is a 10-minute walk from the house. The beauty of it is that I was born in Scotland and Joanne in England and we’re 10 minutes from the border.

"The fishing rights on the Kershope Burn run for two miles along the border and we have the rights on the English side. Kershope Burn runs up into Kershope Forest.

"We don’t particularly fish ourselves, it’s more of a spawning river and a tributary of the Liddle. I don’t know for certain if the young salmon come down this way but there are certainly brown trout spawning further up the burn in the ponds."

Alistair and Jo hadn't known the area before they moved although he spent time in the Hawick area when I was younger so knew the Borders generally were an attractive area.

"Where we are now is 30 minutes from Kielder Park in Northumberland and 45 minutes from the Lake District so it’s ideal for day trips and there’s lots of walking and cycling in these areas too. We’re 20 minutes from Longtown and about half-an-hour from Carlisle.

"The view from our house is lovely, open country and hills, just unspoilt. The nearest shops are three or four miles away in Newcastleton, all your facilities are there and our kids went to school there.