Matilda Kennard Troughton, 54, went looking for a house in Spain as a way to get some peace and quiet and now shares her large underground home with animals and couldn’t be happier
A British woman who ditched the rat race to go and live alongside bats in an 11-century cave in Spain says the lifestyle suits her perfectly.
Matilda Kennard Troughton, 54, went looking for a house in Spain as a way to get some peace and quiet after a career as a furniture and giftware wholesaler which saw her constantly travelling to Asia for work. She took the plunge after visiting Alicante one winter: although she didn’t like the crowded seaside area, the country still appealed to her so she sold her house in Cornwall, moved to Spain and started house hunting.
While looking for country homes she stumbled across her cave after stopping by chance at a small town in the Granada region, inland from the busy coastal areas. After viewing a few local properties Matilda said the estate agent took her to one place that he himself hadn’t seen yet. “We made our way through a valley and dropped down a track to a large yard with what looked like a garage door leant up against the hill,” Matilda recalled. “The keys arrived by tractor 20 minutes later, a tiny old man opened up the door and that was it, I fell in love with the place.”
It took three months to renovate the 11th-century salt warehouse which was carved out of the rock. A local building team did all the basics like the flooring, electrics and fitting the bathrooms and kitchen plumbing, Matilda told the Mapping Spain website. The 245 square metre property is more space than Matilda needed so she lives on the ground floor and laves the first floor for the bats which inhabit the cave.