'You know when you see something that you think is going to change your life and you have this sudden feeling in the pit of your stomach and you think "I've got to do everything I can to try to achieve this" but you also know that the odds of achieving it are incredibly low? That's how it felt taking on Creake Abbey,' says Diana Brocklebank Scott.

'I had that feeling of enormous anticipation and excitement, but also complete fear because I had no idea how we were going to do it.'

Diana worked in finance in London, but had grown up in the countryside and dreamed about giving her children the same sort of outdoorsy childhood which she had enjoyed.

Diana Brocklebank Scott. Photo: Beth Moseley Photography Having fallen in love with Norfolk, particularly Blakeney and Morston on the coast, Creake Abbey leapt out of the pages when she was reading Country Life magazine one day.

'I had expected it to already be sold, but it had a number of issues that were putting people off,' she says. 'My husband and I were foolish enough to think that we were young enough to outlive the issues, so we broke our backs to find ways to borrow, mortgage, sell everything else we had to buy it and we moved to Norfolk in 2003.'

It became a labour of love lasting more than 20 years.

'What we took on in the end was quite run down but very beautiful,' she says. 'Broken flint barns and a wonderful farmhouse. We are so privileged to live on a site with this incredible scheduled ancient monument - there's a special atmosphere about it.'

Creake Abbey. Photo: Beth Moseley Photography Set in a tranquil valley, the ruins of Creake Abbey, which are cared for by English Heritage, date from the 13th century.

In 1206 Sir Robert and Lady Alice de Nerford established the small chapel of St Mary of the Meadows at Lingerescroft, bordering the River Burn, which still flows through the farm and past the abbey today. In 1217 they founded the Hospital of St Bartholomew there and when the it embraced the rule of St Augustine the........

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