Until the pandemic struck Anna Rice had been thoroughly enjoying life in London.
She and her partner, Alex Hayton, both 39, certainly seemed to have things sorted. They had fulfilling jobs, plenty of friends, and a great house to live in with their daughter Olivia, now six.
In spring 2020 Anna was preparing for the birth of their second child, James, now two, when the world went awry.
In those early, anxious days of lockdown the couple began shielding but — worried about who would take care of Olivia when Anna went into labour — they decided to decamp to south Cornwall, where Anna’s parents are based.
“After I had the baby we couldn’t go straight back to London, because of lockdown, so we stayed in Cornwall and that really changed things for us,” said Anna. “When we did come back London just didn’t feel like home anymore, even though we loved our community in Herne Hill where we lived. But for some reason we did not settle. We realised we would like to be somewhere closer to Cornwall, with more green space on the doorstep.”
The couple toughed it out until the autumn of 2021, when Anna quit her job working in sustainable travel. Alex, engineering manager for a tech company, was by that point working remotely.
They decided to test the waters by putting their five-bedroom Victorian market, which they had bought in 2018, on the market. Within less than a day they had received and accepted an offer of just over £1.5 million.
Then the couple began househunting in the glorious Georgian city of Bath, where they had lived briefly in their late twenties, and which they hoped would offer them the perfect mix of urban and rural.
In April last year they bought a five-bedroom 1920s villa in Combe Down, set on the hillside overlooking the city centre. It cost slightly more than their London home had fetched, but the children are thriving in their new environment and love tearing round the three quarters of an acre garden with its fruit trees, vegetable patch, and pond.
“People have been really friendly,” said Anna. “Our neighbours are from Brixton, and we have already met three couples from Herne Hill — this London exodus thing really does seem to be true.
“Our daughter is very energetic and in London she was always running out into the road or out of Brockwell Park with me chasing after her shouting: “Stop!”. Here there is just a bit more freedom for the children.”
Anna and Alex hope their decision is future-proofed as their children get older too, since Bath’s city centre, with its shops, cafes, restaurants, and culture, is only a short bike or bus ride away. This means Olivia and James will be able to have the kind of independence to go out and about which country kids, reliant on lifts from the folks to get about, lack. It also means the family don’t need a car.
“I do want to stress that I do still really love London,” said Anna. “But for us, for now, this has been absolutely the right choice.”
