It was my dream home – it has a magical quality to it and it stands so well. I would get such a sense of pride driving in and when the security lights came on, I would think, ‘My God, this is my home’.

Beverley Robinson is talking about Braeside House, which she and her husband Neil bought in a sought-after area of Hexham 37 years ago.

It’s one of the large period properties on Causey Way and although the young couple really couldn’t afford it, Beverley had set her heart on it.

She’d known it from childhood as her parents Derek and Joyce Clay lived further up Causey Way and were very friendly with the owners of Braeside, local vet David Tordoff and his wife Frances, while Beverley was a babysitter to their children Callum and Andrew.

She says: “I so loved the house, it was near my parents who looked after our children a lot and I said to my husband, ‘This has been my dream house since I was a little girl. I babysat there and passed it every day. Is there any way who can buy it?’

“We hummed and hawed, I was 27 and Neil was 31 and to buy a house like this at that age was a huge undertaking, incredible.

“But my husband was a successful local businessman and although at first he said it would be too big a stretch, he came back that day and said, ‘I’m going to buy it for you but we will not have carpets, we won’t have any wardrobes’. although we did have the furniture from our previous house.”

“When we bought it was one of the happiest days of my life, apart from marrying and having my three boys. It is such a happy family house, it’s just the feel of the place.”

Neil, a local entrepreneur who passed away last year, owned a garage business – now Arnold Clark on Corbridge Road – a marketing business and was also a property developer. He and Beverley moved into Braeside House with their boys Paul and Steven, with third son Mark soon joining the family.

It is a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house with large reception rooms, family room, external office and garage.

Beverley recalls: “The first thing we did was put a gate in the side of the hedge so my little boys, who were three and four then, could run up to Grandma and Grandpa’s and didn’t have to go out the main gate on to Causey Hill.

“We built a big new kitchen, extended a very small family room and added on a downstairs bathroom, which was so convenient for the children. It is now a wetroom.

“We converted the loft and now there is a massive space the size of the whole house which the boys used as a playroom.

“Sadly my husband developed MS so we extended one of our two garages and added a bathroom. It could have been a granny flat eventually or teenage flat but Neil had that as his office. We enclosed the outside porch and extended the sitting room and dining room so they were well over 25ft.”

The garden of Braeside House is large, open and very private and with the porch opening on to a patio was the scene of many parties thrown by the Robinsons.

“Neil was president of Hexham Rotary Club, as was his father John Robinson, who owned the family business Robinson and Cowell. My father was also president of the Rotary Club,” Beverley says.

“He has passed away now, as has David Tordoff, but Frances is well and lives in Hexham and her granddaughter Georgina is my hairdresser. And my mum is now 91 and looking fantastically glamorous.

“My favourite room in Braeside House is the large family room at the back of the house. We put in a three-piece suite and television. Neil and I would sit there and the boys would snuggle down. I so loved the house – anyone who lived there couldn’t not miss it.”

Braeside House, Causey Way, Hexham, is for sale at £500,000 from Rook Matthews Sayer.