Tidswell Cottage Spacious Leisure Isle home

Tidswell Cottage is a single-storey brick house on Tidswell Avenue behind a white picket fence, and its distinguishing feature is overhead: vaulted ceilings with exposed wooden beams running through the living space and on into the kitchen.

You come at it across a lawn with a mature tree standing on it. Parking is on the property and the entrance is your own. The house is low and wide rather than tall, and that vaulted roof is what buys the height back inside.

Under the beams

The lounge sits beneath the beamed ceiling with a large window onto the garden, armchairs and a coffee table arranged under a round wall mirror. A daybed and television take one corner, and a second sitting area opens to the hallway and staircase. The kitchen carries the same vaulted ceiling, with fitted cabinets, a gas stove, a dishwasher and a window onto the side yard.

Two rooms and a sofa bed

Two bedrooms sleep four. One has a double bed with a yellow accent armchair beside it, the other a double with blue curtains. Beds are the extra-long sort and linen is provided, and a sofa bed takes the overflow. The two bathrooms are unfussy: a tiled shower stall with a small window, a sink and toilet in the other.

The covered veranda

A covered veranda runs along the house with a dining table and patterned blue cushioned chairs on it, which is where meals end up whenever the weather allows. There is a braai, a garden and a terrace, and board games indoors for the days it does not.

Around Tidswell Avenue

The lagoon shore is a walk away, with a paved path along a fenced waterside park and the town across the water. Reed beds, estuary wetland and forest are all within reach. Steenbok Nature Reserve is free and open at all times. If you would rather breakfast were made for you, there are places that do breakfast.

Right size for

A couple, or a family of four, wanting a quiet house with unusual ceilings and a veranda to sit out on.