How a couple have transformed The Heaning Estate

Since 2017 the five-acre estate near Windermere has been owned by Deb and Gez Lyon and their company Lincoln Worsley Properties. They and their building and design team spent three years painstakingly renovating the buildings - some of which date to the 17th Century -  to bring them up to the standard expected by the luxury rental market.

Last year the business saw 1,110 guests stay and the whole estate was let for 1,531 nights across all the properties which include two houses and five two-bedroomed cottages; their turnover was more than £332k, exceeding their five-year plan for the business. Yet despite its success as a holiday rental, for Deb and Gez it’s more about the passion of bringing beautiful buildings back to life. Deb said: “Whilst it is great to be full all the time we are not a low margin high turnover type of business. For us the holiday let business (on a day-to-day basis it’s managed by Lakeland Retreats) is an important part but it’s also the asset value of the property. Whatever we paid we have enhanced it enormously and if ever we were to sell we could as a going concern or parcel it off as individual properties. Either way we’d make a return on it. We don’t see ourselves as a holiday let business per se, we see ourselves as a property development company. We’d probably sell it for double what we bought it for but we love people enjoying this space so we see it as a long-term strategic asset.

“The way our model works is that the cottages are full most of the time, they tick over nicely and the Big House (sleeps 14) and Small House (sleeps six), which are a bigger investment, that’s where we make our profit. The cottages cover all our costs…when the Big House is full that’s when we make a bit of cash. It’s a nice business model to have.”

The couple invested more than £2.5m of their own money to purchase the properties before the renovation costs. “What we do is find properties that are really quite run down and turn them round, renovating them to their former glory which is what we have tried to do here,” says Deb. They have used traditional building methods, local suppliers including stone and slate from Burlington Quarry and the indoor and outdoor artworks are by Cumbrian artists.

The two main properties are often hired together by corporates, together with a hub space with its own commercial kitchen and break out rooms. Deb says: “Because I have a corporate background my instinct was that there would be potential for corporates to come here. The great thing about corporates is that it’s counter cyclical. Corporates often go away during the week for a couple of nights and in the quiet times we can accommodate them and it means our cash flow is less lumpy.” Peninsula Business Services (owned by her father Peter Done) was one of the first to hire it.

“We’ve seen a lot of people booking the Big House and the Small House together. We’ve seen corporate awaycations getting bigger and themed weekends. The Hub is great for that and we’ve had yoga and ultra running there too. Another clear trend is activity holidays… a lot of people want to maximise their time in the Lakes,” says Deb. The Cumbrian food scene is another attraction; on the estate all the guests can book a private dining experience.

Deb says: “We wanted something really special with the décor, with the finish… everything we like really. We call it a Scandi-Lakes vibe. A lot of people said not to do it as it would get ruined and we would be replacing things every year but I think people are fundamentally respectful and I wanted to provide somewhere where I would want to stay. We have combined traditional character with how we live today.

“We had stayed in lots of holiday lets that were just a bit disappointing where I literally wanted to put my Marigolds on the moment we arrived! I thought it’s a business which could be improved upon so we thought we could do a new project. I fancied a change from financial PR and Gez had finished brewing and we decided property was a good investment."

Both had some prior property experience - Deb had renovated her mews house near Regents Park in London and Gez had refurbished several rental properties in London, Kirkby Lonsdale and Barrow while working as a brewer. 

Gez says: “We knew we could add value to this place for sure. We entered the market at a good time. I was interested in reconfiguring it. We envisaged a holiday letting company initially but when we saw this it was almost a business in itself. We are pitching high but it’s such a good level to be operating at.”

Nielsen House in Staveley did the main designs for the houses and the Heaning team also work closely with Kendal-based builders BMR Group. Gez’s daughter Yasmin is the head of design at Lincoln Worsley and masterminded the flexible hub space; she is now busy transforming their latest acquisition, a property in Grasmere. She is set to become a director of the company next month.

“We had a clear idea of what we wanted but The Hub came about purely from the excavation work of putting the bay window in, but we were also thinking about the additional offering of the corporate side,” says Gez. They had setbacks along the way. When The Hub was finished they had a major flood and had to rebuild the whole thing. Opening in 2020 during Covid also had mixed blessings. “As a business we learnt to pivot very quickly, went through everything with the health and safety guys. For us from a business perspective it was serendipitous as we came on to people’s radars very quickly,” says Deb.

It’s a real family affair with Deb’s father Peter Done (he and his brother Fred set up Betfred before he went on to found his current company Peninsula Business Services 40 years ago)  a non-executive director and Yasmin joins the board this year. Gez and Deb have five children and most are involved in the business in some way. Deb says: “My family were entrepreneurial and my father always built his own businesses. I grew up with business being what we talked about around the table and I learnt a huge amount from my dad. I always worked in the family business, having Saturday jobs from when I was 13. Having a family business feels a totally natural thing. It’s part of our life. My dad is a non-executive and he’s very good at saying ‘in my 55 years of business’ or  ‘if I was in your shoes this is what I would be thinking about doing next’. Although he has no direct experience of running this sort of business he has seen everything and he gives us his words of wisdom and he is always right!”

Deb has had a long affinity with Cumbria. She grew up in Worsley, Manchester, studied at Oxford then did a masters at Manchester before going into financial PR in London, which included working for the Treasury for a while. After she had her son she moved to the Lakes to be closer to family.  “I used to come to the Lakes as a child with my parents, at the weekends we used to stay at The Wordsworth in Grasmere. I had fantastic memories. About 30 years ago my parents bought a second home and increasingly spent more time here. When my son was young I came here, almost 20 years ago, and never left. Now my dad lives about three doors away from us in Storrs.”

Storrs is where she and Gez built their home – which overlapped with buying The Heaning Estate. Gez’s background is very different to hers: he studied civil engineering and for a few years was an international fashion model for Hermes and Ralph Lauren, appearing in Vogue  and Vanity Fair. He then went on to learn the brewing trade in the Lakes and was master brewer at the Brown Horse Inn at Winster while renovating rental properties in Cumbria and studying for an MSc in real estate and property management from the University of Salford.

Gez says: “I know how to add value to properties although there’s a lot more investment into holiday letting and the staycation boom now. We jumped in at a good time. We sort of have the dream team,” talking about how they work closely with builder Jody Machell and Gez’s designer daughter Yasmin. 

In 2022 they added a five-bedroom house with two two-bedroom apartments in beautiful grounds in Grasmere to their portfolio with the intention to do another ‘Heaning’. The same year four three-bedroomed cottages on The Heaning Estate came up for sale and they snapped them up. Deb said it was a financial stretch for the business but they knew it was the right decision. Those fully renovated cottages will be ready to let at Easter and the Grasmere property, Meadow Brow, at Christmas.

The first booking for the whole Heaning Estate, including the new cottages, is from her dad’s company. “A bit of pressure, he’s the hardest taskmaster!” she laughs

In their spare time the couple are walking the Wainwrights together and Deb has just finished writing her second children’s book, which is being published in September. She wrote her first one eight years ago after completing a masters in creative writing at Lancaster University.  And the property business… any more projects in the pipeline? “This is about the only thing Gez and I disagree on. He always says this is the last one… and then he’ll see another beautiful property. If Grasmere and the cottages here go well then never say never. But it has to be the right property!” she says.