Yahoo Finance Find a buyer for P.E.I. replica castles and earn a cool $10,000
It was an anglophile’s labour of love, and now it’s for sale. But the absence of offers has real estate agent Allan Weeks turning to social media to scare up potential buyers for his unique property on beautiful Prince Edward Island.
Weeks, who is also a farmer, owns Woodleigh Replicas, a collection of miniature British castles and mostly medieval homes set on a park-like 20-acre (8.1-hectare) property about a 20-minute drive from Summerside.
Weeks owns Woodleigh with his brother, and posted an offer on his Facebook page promising $10,000 to anyone who could make a customer referral that resulted in a sale. The post, which went up a week ago, has been shared more than 2,000 times, according to CBC News.
Turning to social media was his son Tayler’s idea, Weeks told Yahoo Canada. The recent graduate in marketing from St. Francis Xavier University told his father it would give the listing a wider audience. And it’s worked, Weeks said.
“The social media really beefed it up,” Weeks said in an interview, adding there’ve been inquiries from as far away as British Columbia. “I have a couple of showings on the weekend.”
The eventual buyer would be acquiring a property with a fascinating history.
The replicas were built by Col. Ernest Johnstone, a First World War veteran, and his son Archie, who fought in the Second World War.
The pair wanted to give Canadians a taste of British heritage without going overseas, Weeks said. Because P.E.I. has no granite, the Johnstones made weekly trips over to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to collect stone from riverbeds there.
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Woodleigh first opened in 1957 as a tourist attraction but the Johnstones kept adding buildings, which would eventually include a replica of the Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Anne Hathaway’s cottage, Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop and Dunvegan Castle in Scotland, where the Johnstones had their roots.
The buildings that dot the property are miniatures but that doesn’t mean they’re small, said Weeks. The Tower of London, for example: ““That building’s more than 20 feet high. The walls around it are probably seven feet high.”
Woodleigh was popular for fairs, highland games
Woodleigh was a popular venue for weddings, medieval fairs and highland games. But attendance was declining and the last owner, whose health was failing, closed it in 2008. The Weeks brothers bought the property in 2009.
“We had a plan to reopen it,” said Weeks.
That was shelved when Weeks had a heart attack the following year. Another heart attack in 2012 caused them to put Woodleigh back on the market. A portion that includes the Johnstone family homestead has been sold, Weeks said.
The initial asking price of $299,000 for the remainder sparked little interest, prompting Weeks to cut the price to $239,000 and put it on social media. Considering that amount might buy you a closet-sized condo in Vancouver, it makes Woodleigh seem like a relative bargain.
The property, which has an ocean view, has been rezoned from commercial to residential and is pre-approved for subdivision into 18 residential lots. However, expressions of interest so far have been from people who want to reopen Woodleigh as an attraction and Weeks said the zoning could be converted back to commercial to facilitate that.
Still, the idea of building a home amid the replica castles might tempt someone, especially if they have kids who could live out their online fantasy games in the real world.
