Wealden Times | WT163 | September 2015 | Education supplement inside

Previous pages: The kitchen Above: Suzanne and her family had lived in their previous house for twenty-one years, so moving was quite a wrench
for some members of the family. “I hadn’t realised quite how much it meant to my son Alexander especially to leave the old house – but he does
like the fact that there’s room for two pianos here. And we’re so close to the church where Alexander regularly plays the organ,” she says
St Mary’s church in Goudhurst sits, a solid and
steadfast beacon, at the top of the Weald, where
it’s been a reassuring presence for the past nine
hundred years. Suzanne and Tim Stobbs’s house is
located very close to the church and benefits from the
same panoramic views out across the countryside. The
couple love walking, and from this location the Weald is
virtually their oyster. “There’s an amazing range of walks
from here,” says Suzanne, “You can wander down to
Scotney on one side and to the vineyards on the other.”
Suzanne and her husband Tim and their four children
had lived in their previous house for twenty-one years,
so moving was quite a wrench for some members of the
family. “I hadn’t realised quite how much it meant to my
son Alexander especially to leave the old house – but he
does like the fact that there’s room for two pianos here.
And we’re so close to the church where Alexander regularly
plays the organ.” Alexander is their youngest son and a
very gifted musician. He suffers from the devastating illness
cystic fibrosis, but despite this has achieved an enormous
amount. He also starred in the Channel 4 documentary ‘A
Boy Called Alex’, which showed him winning scholarships
to both Eton and Cambridge – and being a charming
and remarkable person throughout. Alexander is full of
determination and zest for life, but his life-limiting, and
ultimately incurable illness, and the treatment regime involved
in managing it, is very gruelling and means that Suzanne
needs to travel up to hospital in London twice a week, so
life needs to be organised in a different and flexible way.
Their last house was much larger than this one and had
a very large garden needing considerable upkeep too, so the
move was a practical step. It was the idyllic position that
drew them to the property. “This was only the second house
we saw. We hadn’t planned to move into an old house at all.
But it was the location, being so close to the church – and
Goudhurst is a place that I’ve always wanted to live in.”
Suzanne’s family all live further west, Tim’s as far as you can
get to the southwest – in Cornwall – so it would have made
sense to move nearer to them, but for Suzanne, the attraction
to Goudhurst runs deep. “I’ve loved Goudhurst ever since I
was a student and came hop picking here one summer when
I was 19,” says Suzanne. “I had such a wonderful time then
and said that one day I’d love to come back here to live. I
was amazed to find that all those years later, there are
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