There is something rather charming about how property tycoon Emma Vidler has spent her wealth restoring some of south Wales’ most forgotten grand estates and yet few know anything about her at all. Perched atop a hilly setting in the village of Michaelston-le-Pit her 52 acres stretches as far as the eye can see from her pool outside the idyllic listed Georgian-style mansion where she’s lived for 17 years.
“I had no intention at all of sharing it with anyone when I bought it,” the 49-year-old single mother-of-two from St Dogmaels said of the leafy Cwrt-Yr-Ala estate – her first high-end purchase and to this day her favourite. “I bought it purely to live here with my family and enjoy the land. It reminded me of home in west Wales with the lakes and the scenic views.”
Following the end of her relationship with the father of her 12-year-old twins the owner of the Keylet group turned to transforming her estate into a retreat for visitors willing to spend big money for a perfect hideaway. “Initially I didn’t think for one minute I’d start renovating and renting barns and carriages out here but at the end of the day these estates need to start making money. If I start thinking of ways to make money with the land then if my children want to stay here and look after it too they could afford to do that. Not that I’d ever force them into it – it’s a crazy world and I know most aren’t as mad as me for jumping into it. You certainly need to be passionate about it – it’s a 24/7 job.”
Six years on Emma has turned the estate into something literally fit for a king. With the help of her small team at Keylet she has gutted and revamped the barns, carriages, and an old dairy to create six breathtaking private properties. Film crews with budgets of hundreds of millions stay regularly for months at a time while she’s recently hosted a sheikh in her new Carriages accommodation which costs £5,000 a month. He told her it was the best place he’d ever stayed. “I was overwhelmed,” Emma beamed. “That’s the standard I want for all of Cwrt-Yr-Ala – an unbeatable offering. A lot of people who come to stay later tell me the pictures online don’t do it justice but I’d much rather that than they turn up and feel disappointed. There is nothing worse than visiting a hotel and realising the website makes it look better than it is.”
Realising her new passion for executive renovations she set up Keylet Executive alongside Keylet Student Lettings and began taking on million-pound projects across south Wales. Among a sea of beautiful properties some of her favourites have been Empire House, where she sold the first £1m apartment in Cardiff Bay, and the £4m Mansion House estate in Chepstow. Four years ago she bought the 80-acre Tredilion Park and House estate in Abergavenny where she soon plans to begin work to revamp the manor house into a 17-suite boutique hotel partly inspired by London’s Claridge’s.
“It never ends in this business once you get the bug for it,” she laughed when reeling off her to-do list. “People who come and stay at Cwrt-Yr-Ala often are shocked when they realise looking after the estate isn’t my full-time job. It is busy but I love it. For most agents it might just be about taking the rent, but these historic homes are a labour of love – with all of their quirks. When you’re taking on these old manor houses and estates unless you’re laid back they could drive you around the bend. It’s a hell of a lot of work to take on. I was out for lunch on Sunday with one of my girlfriends and my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. Something had gone wrong at Cwrt-Yr-Ala but it’s normal. I’ve got to be a Jack of all trades and a master of none.”
Emma takes a break from her life story to give us a tour of the estate. She lovingly inspects the eight-bedroom manor house where she lives and which she has recently painted a light grey. “It was so difficult to keep it clean when it was white. I think I like it but I might go back to white again.”
It’s not the only thing the property expert with a passion for interior design has done to transform the building that she found in dire need of care and which now wouldn’t look out of place in the south of France. Inside she has decorated it with marble and stone fireplaces, polished wooden floors, and antique chandeliers. “When I bought it my father said: ‘Oh my goodness – why on Earth would you want to own this monstrosity?’ He thought it was a money pit. But look at the grounds, the gardens, the potential for it to be better. I think it’s delightful and if I can make it better and hand it on then I’d be proud of that."
Life hasn’t always been like this for Emma – a farmer’s daughter who moved to Cardiff for university and thought up Keylet in 1998 from her cramped bedroom in Cathays while worrying about debt accrued from her MBA business degree. A day after her dissertation was submitted she began to make Keylet a reality – inspired by her own experience trying to rent in the city.
“I’d done a business degree but at the time I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do,” she explained. “It’s amazing how the universe shows you a direction eventually. I’m fortunate that doors have opened for me and led onto new things.
“To find a house at the time you knocked doors and met landlords. You just kept an eye out and kept asking – it was hard. You couldn’t imagine that now, could you, with the amount of estate agents around? There were one or two agents at the time – we had very few competitors. It was quite obvious there was a clear gap in the market.”
Opening her first agency with half a dozen students helping her in Salisbury Road Emma remembers queues building outside from the off. “We were inundated. Groups of friends used to sit in the office for hours waiting for our little yellow bus to come and pick them up and take them around to all of the houses. We were open sometimes from nine in the morning until 10 at night and people were still queuing. It was a funny little business – I still laugh when I remember the students running in to sign for a house. Sometimes there were arguments between the students – it was so competitive. We quickly outgrew the office and I had a traditional handshake with the owner of an old printing works down the road opposite the Mackintosh Pub where the student lettings office still is today. He’d been in business for more than 50 years there and it was wanted by a few others so we were lucky he was a man of his word. Then we really were right in the heart of student town and things went from strength to strength.”
The business expanded again in 2008 with a new premises in Cardiff Bay at the site of the old Baltimore Arms Pub, which is now run as the base for Keylet Executive. “It was a rundown pub and took a lot of work,” Emma recalled. “When I got the keys on the first day we opened someone came in and said: ‘Half a Guinness please love.’ I said: ‘I am awfully sorry – the pub closed a year ago.’ They thought we were reopening it. He said: ‘Oh, that’s a shame.’ I’ll never forget that.
“The business continued to do well for years. But nothing stays the same does it? As we have said there is an agent on every corner now and I wonder where we’d be if we didn’t decide to diversify into the executive market. You can never afford to be complacent in business. Having realised the opportunities that could be had from purchasing and renovating our own properties it seemed the obvious thing to do – and I’m so glad I did it. Take The Carriages that we’ve just renovated – I’ve recently rented that out to one person and they were an absolute delight. Whereas if I was renting a huge HMO out to 10 students it might not be the case. They’re having fun – I understand, I was the biggest partier of the lot at uni – but it’s a lot less stressful on the executive side in terms of those issues than with the students. People who stay at Cwrt-Yr-Ala often just want to put their wellingtons on of an evening and walk their Yorkshire Terrier.
“There was a gap in the market for people who are on a longer visit and don’t want to stay in a hotel, want privacy, want to be picked up by their chauffeur, and don’t want people above or below them. We’re offering an experience where they can come with their suitcase and everything is here for them. We do the cleaning weekly, we can provide catering if they want it, and even a babysitter too.”
She enjoys walking around the estate and bumping into visitors. “It’s funny some of the comments I’ve had over the years. One of the funniest – which I don’t know whether it was a compliment or insult – was: ‘I’ve seen you’ve been procrastinating all evening. I’m trying to work out whether you’ve got a rich father or have won the lottery.’ I did have a chuckle before telling him: ‘Neither. Nothing exciting – just hard work.’
“Many people ask how I put up with having people walking around my house but it’s not like that. It’s nice to share this part of the world and all the beauty it offers. It’s a large space and they all have separate entrances – I could almost forget there were people here. They’ve all been lovely. I’ve never had any issues.”
Our tour of the estate is accompanied by a gentle hum of workers tending to the land. “I project manage on all of the projects we’ve got and they do give me some stick,” Emma said of her team of labourers. “Roughly we’ll have at least five people working on the estate at any time. From April to October we have one person just on the mower – and everyone wants his job.”
Will she ever call it a day on new projects? “I think I’m quite hard on myself and I often think I’ve not done enough and feel as though I could have done more – especially at the start of a new year. I’m not sure I’d even consider myself successful. I think if you’re programmed like that it’s almost impossible to get out of. I’ve worked since I was 16, in hospitality before property, and I don’t really know any different. Being content isn’t something I’m naturally good at. To be content with your lot is an amazing quality. Since university it’s just been going from one home to the next. I guess I don’t know any better really. My mind is always thinking about what is coming next. I’ve lived by the mantra ‘I’m only as good as my last deal’ for my whole career.
“This year I really want to make as much progress as we can with the boutique hotel and work on the estate at Tredilion. We are also planning to begin work on building 16 luxury apartments above the Cardiff Bay branch.”
She envisages Tredilion will look like a scene from Downton Abbey once complete. “I want to put the character back into the manor house and make it a perfect retreat. It’ll be a different type of offering. We bought it in 2018 and were excited to get going but the pandemic meant we couldn’t submit any planning applications. It’s been a nightmare really. As well as the hotel we’re looking at creating some luxury cabins. It’ll feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere but it’ll come with plenty of grandeur. I want it to feel olde worlde with high ceilings. It’ll be a perfect spot for weddings with a block of stable apartments there too. There’ll be nothing like it in Wales – it’ll be the best of the best.”
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