Even The Butler Was Poor

There was once a pupil at Eton who had to write a short story about being poor, the opening lines of the essay were something like, "They were a poor family, the father was poor, the mother was poor, even the butler was poor.....". It's probably apocryphal but I suspect Mark Field MP would concur with the sentiment:

Many people who buy a second home outside the capital as an addition to a small London base do so not because they are enormously wealthy but precisely because they are not.

It is virtually impossible even for many of those earning multiples of the average national wage to trade up the property ladder in the capital. For those with growing families, the only option is often to buy a [second] house with garden outside London

Via Mark Wadsworth.