Standing prominently on a leafy lane in one of Greater Manchester's most desirable neighbourhoods is Halliwell House. The grand Victorian mansion house in Hale will be familiar to many thanks to its starring role in one of Channel 4's Four in a Bed's most memorable ever episodes.
In the show, where B&B owners take in turns to rate each other's properties in a bid to be crowned best host, owner Martin Hulme caused a stir with his £500-a-night rates - which probably seemed quite hefty back in 2016. Nowadays, he charges £1,250-a-night for the full mansion, which can be hired on Airbnb.
The episode was screened all across the world, and is regularly repeated by the channel, which inevitably piques viewers' interest in whatever happened to the sprawling mansion house. Although anyone out there who IS keen to hire it out for a stay will need to be quick - as Martin has big plans for the future of the property, which was originally built back in 1899.
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For Martin is in the midst of planning a new future for the property, which stands prominently at the corner of Rappax Road at its junction with Bankhall Lane in Hale. Driving there along these lanes is a bit like entering another world - a world of impossibly vast, impossibly expensive, glass-fronted mansions behind large locked gates.
Halliwell House sits in rather refreshing juxtaposition to the modern white des-res around it though - it retains its Victorian historic grandeur viewed at the top of its long winding drive. Martin bought this property 20 years ago with acres and acres of land attached to it for £4.25m.
A keen property developer, he's gone on to build two large detached mansions by slicing off land at far ends of his boundary, and next up will be the BIG plan for Halliwell House itself. He is already well underway with the first element - building an entirely new property in what was once the pool house area sitting just beneath the mansion in its sprawling gardens.
In the new year will be the next phase of the plans - to convert his large eight-bedroom home into FOUR maisonette, four-bed properties. Walking around the property with Martin, it's clear to see just how much space there is here and how it can be reworked to become four family homes.
When Martin, 67, first moved in, he spent thousands of pounds upgrading the interiors, while retaining many of its historic details including wooden panneling, fireplaces and quirky coloured glass features. He hopes that with the plan to split it into four, it will give a new lease of life to the property.
He says: "Doing this, you give the house another 100 years of life, that's the reason for it. We will look to put each property on the market for around £1.5m."
Looking back at his Four in a Bed appearance now, Martin is refreshingly sanguine about the reaction. He admits that much of it was "scripted fantasy" to make it better TV, particularly as Halliwell House competed against other properties that were "real" B&B businesses as opposed to home hire.
He says: "I live here, it’s my home, it’s not a real hotel, so the programme I did was fantasy - but everyone elses' were real hotels so it caused a great deal of controversy, but that was the idea really.
He smiles: "There’s no such thing as bad publicity. It’s played all over the world, and I get stopped all over the world would you believe. "I might be in immigration in Perth and someone will say 'do I recognise you?' and it will be because of Four in a Bed.
"I thought it turned out fabulous. I get as much praise as I do criticism - and I quite enjoy the criticism because the way I look at it, you can improve on the criticism can't you?"
Martin first put his home for hire on Airbnb back in 2009, and has welcomed guests from all over the world ever since then. The appeal for many is the sheer size of the house - with eight bedrooms - so for larger families to stay over in the Manchester area it doesn't work out all that expensive, he says.
Martin says: "We get people from all over the world, just a few weeks ago we had nine people from Bangkok take over the house. There’s an awful lot of people in the Hale area who have family in different parts of the world, so when they come back to visit them it is an nice place to stay.
"We do whole-house stays, but occasionally we will just get one person who wants to stay in the entire place - there's nowt as queer as folk.
"We get a lot of famous people booking in, as well as footballers and football managers - we are so close to the airport here, yet just a short walk into Hale village.
"Our minimum stay is £5,000, but that's not that expensive pro rata. A lot of people might think £1,000-a-night for a hotel is a lot of money, which it is, but it's quite common now in cities like Paris, London, Miami. And Hale is that same kind of area."
Although one of the downsides of it being on Four in a Bed, is that some people leave "fake" reviews pretending they've been there. Martin sighs: "We do get fantasy people who’ve seen Four in a Bed and say they’ve stayed here and of course they haven’t. I have to check the reviews from time to time to get those sorts of things removed."
Martin, who grew up in Levenshulme, says that when he bought the property he was told that it was originally built back in 1899 by one of the owners of Manchester's Kendal Milne department store. "I presume he lived here," he says. "But there's been many famous residents here over the years by all accounts".
He says Rappax Road is known as one of the finest roads in the area because "it’s a dead end, near the village, it's a private road and there's a lot of land here."
It boasts three huge lounges on the ground floor, as well as a modern white kitchen - all boasting splendid views out to the large, mature gardens behind.
Upstairs, the bedrooms have even more splendid views out across Hale and you can see right out to the M56 on the horizon with cars whizzing along. Martin jokes: "It's good if you're having to travel that way as you can see when there's a traffic jam."
The bedrooms up here are vast - and Martin shows me how he will be to split them up to make three or four bed properties quite easily. He says he has loved living here though - and still plans to live here in one of the converted properties when it's all complete.
But in its current form, now his two sons are grown up and have flown the nest, it doesn't make sense to keep it as it is.
Outside, he takes me round the side of the house, where there's another detached cottage called the Hideaway which can also be booked separately on Airbnb for £1,500-a-week. Then it's on into the back garden where the Rappax Poolhouse project is nearing completion.
The poolhouse is where the property once had a swimming pool, but Martin decided several years ago to convert it into its own home.
The result will be a split level property, boasting floor-to-ceiling windows on the ground level, and then a huge basement that can be fitted out flexibly to the buyer's requirements.
Martin says it is likely to go to market at around £1.5mn when complete. It will also serve as the "showhome" for the rest of the Halliwell House development to show the kind of high-end specifications buyers can expect.
But people who do fancy a stay in the famous Four in a Bed house will still be able to do so until at least January. Martin says he's currently taking bookings on Airbnb up to Christmas, and December is already proving popular for family stays.
He also rents out homes he has developed across the world. He says: "I do rentals all over the place, from Marbella to the Lake District."
He has also develops properties across the UK too - most recently with major developments in Cornwall and in Northwich.
He put Halliwell House up for sale earlier this year as a complete project for £5m - so that if anyone would prefer to buy it in its current form they can, but otherwise he will progress to the project to split it into the four homes in the New Year.
Each property will benefit from a new space created in the vast basement underneath the house, as well as the spaces we can already see in the mansion house today. Martin says he aims for each property to go on the market for £1.5m.
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