Historically important home for sale

Tuesday 5th August 2008, 12:05PM BST.

It must be very satisfying to take a large historic home of faded grandeur and restore it to its former glory – and that’s just what Mike and Ann Coombs did.

It took them five years of painstaking work, and boy did they do it in style! View the photo gallery below.

Woodbury

Woodbury, 3 School Road, Coalbrookdale is Grade II listed property which was built by the famous Darby family, originally to house the factory manager of the Coalbrookdale Company.

It was overhauled in the 1890s and in 1946 it was converted into two apartments. It stayed in the ownership of the Coalbrookdale Company until the 1970s.

It was once an imposing, and obviously historically important home, which stands in a wonderful elevated position, but by the time the Coombs bought it it was “an absolute wreck”.

The solid brick home had no heating or insulation and it looked like it hadn’t been touched since 1946.