The Radford family will be spending the Christmas holidays together in their impressive 10-bedroom Victorian home in Morecambe, Lancashire.
While it may be a bit of a squeeze for Britain’s biggest family to live under one roof, they have managed to fit 19 of their 22 children into their home.
Sue, 49, and her husband Noel, 53, bought the former care home for £240,000 back in 2004 and have managed to fit in their ever-growing family since. Currently, 19 of their kids live in the home including Chloe, 25, Jack, 23, Daniel, 21, Luke, 20, Millie, 19, Katie, 18, James, 17, Ellie, 15, Aimee, 14, Josh, 13, Max, 12, Tillie, 10, Oscar, nine, Casper, eight, Hallie, five, Phoebe, four, Archie, three, Bonnie, two, and baby Heidie.
While eldest children Chris, 31, and Sophie 26 have now moved out, the family will be enjoying Christmas together under their huge roof. Here is a look inside the Radfords’ house.
Rooms and sleeping arrangements
Anyone who steps inside the Radfords’ home is greeted by a massive colourful storage unit full of coats and bags. There are also rows upon rows of shoes – with mum Sue confessing there is “stuff everywhere”.
“Anyone that comes in the house who hasn’t been before laughs at this shoe storage,” said Sue. “As you can image we go through lots of them [shoes].” There are loads of photos, certificates and medals on the walls throughout the house. The living room has high ceilings and a giant brown leather corner sofa, which almost takes up two walls and can fit 10 kids.
The dining room has a super long table, 14 chairs and two high chairs. While the kitchen, which has a granite-top island in the middle, has a whopping 20 cupboards and drawers to store enough food to feed all those hungry mouths. So where does everyone sleep?
One of the girls’ bedrooms is on the first floor, featuring four single beds lined up in a row which have the initials of the person they belong to above. Next door is a small room with a bunk bed which belongs to two of the younger boys, Josh and Max.
Daughter Chloe has her own large bedroom, while Mille and Jack also have separate rooms in the basement. The basement is home to the laundry room with a huge 18Kg washing machine, which is most definitely needed in a house of more than 20. Luke, Daniel and James’ bedroom has bunk beds and a space to play video games, while Hallie and Phoebe share a bedroom with two small beds.
On the top floor is Sue and Noel’s room and their large bathroom, which is often used by the kids when queues form in the second floor bathroom and downstairs toilet. Opposite their master bedroom is another of the boys’ rooms where Oscar and Casper sleep, while in the corner are two cots for the babies.
Who pays rent?
Only two of the kids have moved out of the family home, meaning some are still living there as adults. But they don’t get a completely free ride as the eldest children pay a small amount of rent to their parents. “Us older ones do pay a little bit of board, granted it’s not a lot but I am trying to save up for my own house at the moment,” explained Chloe, who is the oldest of the couple’s children living at home.
Sue added: “We’ve always said if you want to buy somewhere, rent is dead money so we would rather you saved that money up and stayed at home for a bit longer. But me and Noel believe they should pay board, if they are earning we’ve always been brought up to pay board.”
Lockdown garden transformation
Lockdown had been particular tough for the Radford clan with all the kids stuck inside, but Noel and Sue had plenty to keep them occupied – from endless home-schooling to massive Friday night takeaways. They managed to keep the kids entertained by turning their garden into a play haven.
They ditched the real grass to stop the kids bringing mud into the house – replacing it with an artificial lawn that Sue can vacuum. The kids absolutely loved the water play area featuring inflatables a paddling pool and a hot tub. The parents have even built their own pub in the garden, as well as an outdoor cinema.
Epic makeover
The Radfords underwent an epic makeover and had scaffolding erected around the property so they could replace the old windows, get a new roof and have a new room fitted. Something they had been “waiting years to do”.
“I really miss living in a brand new build house, but you don’t get the character that you get with these houses and I do love it,” Sue said. The couple also called in a decorator and discovered the wall would need to be re-plastered after Noel left a gaping hole in it while trying to decorate.
Sue showed the damage on her Instagram page, saying: “This is the thing when you have an old house, guys, the walls fall apart.”
Moving plans
In a new episode of 22 Kids And Counting, which aired on Channel 5 earlier this year, the family prepared to move into their new country mansion. But the mother-of-22’s dream of moving her gigantic brood into a £850,000 secluded farmhouse came crashing down when the chain collapsed, and the sale fell through.
Speaking on the show, as reported by Daily Mail, Sue said: ‘We are just really gutted we are not going to get that country life. It has been quite difficult. Absolutely gutted. You know when you had your heart set on something, all these plans, hopes and dreams and then it’s just shattered?”
While Sue’s dream is shattered, her current 10-bed Morecambe home of 11 years, which is where the family will continue to live, is still a luxury digs, with the Victorian property coming with a hot tub, free standing bathtub, and outside bar.
Break-in terror
Back in 2021 the Radfords were left shaken when intruders tried to break into their home. Their sheepdog Lola alerted them to the attempted burglary – with two men trying to come in through the basement bedroom.
Sue said she ran down and turned the light on and saw two burglars running away, with one pushing the other into the car before driving off with the car doors still open. She said at the time: “I said ‘Thank God for Lola’ as she knew something was going on.”
During one of their YouTube Q&As shortly after, they were asked if they wanted to move because they no longer felt safe after the incident. “This is to do with the fact that somebody was in the garden and tried the windows a couple of months ago,” said Noel. “But since then we’ve had security cameras fitted so we feel quite safe..
Sue added: “We have a good security system now, but before that we didn’t. There were quite a few things that had been bothering us.”
How they afford their house
Sue and Noel famously rely on their own bakery business and do not claim any benefits apart from Child Benefit. When asked if the family were rich during a Q&A on their YouTube channel, Sue said: “Absolutely not, we’re definitely not secret millionaires.
“To me rich would be having the big mansion, the flash cars and quite a few hundred thousand in the bank, to me that would be rich but we are not that.” They get some money through brand partnerships on social media, but their main source of income comes from their family-run pie business. The Radford Pie company, which is located near their family home in Morecombe, Lancashire, serves fresh, healthy pies to customers across the UK.
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On their website, they state: “We have owned our own lovely bakery since 1999 which is how we manage to provide for (and feed) our huge and expanding family as well as for the local people of Heysham and Morecambe. “We have set up our on-line pie shop so we can share our very popular pies with you all. We’re a real family business with both myself and Sue working at the helm along with some of our children to help us.”
Family breadwinner Noel has been a baker for 25 years, working his way up from trainee to manager to owner across several bakeries. Noel’s job is to ensure the smooth running of the business and creating new pie recipes, while Sue oversees all the orders coming in and going out and acts as “chief taste tester” when she doesn’t have her hands full with the kids. But they’re not the only members of the family involved in the business as they’ve roped in some of the kids.
Daughter Chloe, who has worked in the bakery shop for five years, is the next generation of artisan pie maker and makes suggestions for delicious new recipes. Meanwhile Daniel takes orders, prepares the pies for delivery and makes sure everywhere is spotless after a day of pie-making.
They company did expand to cater for online orders made from around the UK, but they were devastatingly hit by the pandemic. 22 Kids and Counting has touched on the financial troubles the family had last year as their successful pie business faced closure due to lockdown. Disaster struck when the bakery had to temporarily close its doors when Noel contracted coronavirus , so they lost takings during that time.
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