VILLAGE GREEN

Their first glimpse of the Old Vicarage in the Somerset village of Weare reminded Trish and Jeremy Gibson of a scene from the Hammer House of Horror. ‘It looked very grim,’ laughs Trish, ‘with masses of dense shrubs right up against the house and a lot of blank lawn, as well as a tennis court surrounded by a hideous chain-link fence.’ In spite of that, the couple ‘felt an immediate pull’ and relocated here from north Cornwall in 2013, to be near their family in Bristol.

The overgrown Victorian shrubberies, thick, dark hedges and towering Wellingtonia might