Cathy Armstrong and Rowen Matthews are settling into their new home with spoodle Dixie after the sale settled last week, and they plan to have it open to the public again by late May or early June.

Ms Armstrong said their first step would be to offer a couple of B&B rooms, and open the licensed cafe-restaurant from Fridays to Sundays and for special bookings.

After a bit of reconfiguration of rooms and bathrooms, they will offer more accommodation, as well as artist residencies and workshops.

“We have lots of exciting plans,” Ms Armstrong said.

“We’ve actually only recently married - almost a year ago - and we had a dream from the time we met that we’d find a place where Rowen could paint, I could cook and we could offer accommodation.

“Our search was not really an exhaustive one: Little Kickerbell found us.

“We were looking at something else for a while, but it wasn’t quite right.

“We saw this place, fell in love with it ... and thought it was the perfect spot for what we wanted to do.”

The property’s previous owners John Cockburn and Sue Stone now live in Murrurundi and are renovating the old Tatts Hotel into a family home, accommodation and shop.

Ms Armstrong said she and Dr Matthews were most recently from the Blue Mountains, but she’d started school at Tamworth and had family at Gunnedah.

“There’s definitely a sentimental connection and many memories of visits to Gunnedah and starting school in Tamworth,” she said.

Dr Matthews was a longtime art educator at the University of New England “and has been long connected to this part of the world”, she said.

She runs a catering business called Kinship Kitchen and is also an award-winning jam maker under the brand Princess Pantry.

Ms Armstrong said she wanted her restaurant’s food to be “interesting and a response to what people would like”.

“I’d also love to showcase as much local produce as I can.”

Ms Armstrong said the couple were both “at a place in our lives where we want to be settled and really connected to the community we’re living in”.

“We just absolutely love that house … Sue and John did a great job of restoring it and left it beautifully for us, and we’d like to build on what they’ve done and put our own little stamp on it.

“Everyone we’ve met has been incredibly friendly and down-to-earth; it’s lovely.

“Life seems a lot less complicated here.”