Mum-of-two ditches family home to live in 'hobbit' tent for £300 a month

A mum-of-two ditched her family home to live in a handmade 'hobbit' tent in the countryside for just £300 per month.

Jessica Rost, a 55-year-old artist, first embraced a nomadic lifestyle five years ago when she moved into a converted Ford Transit van. She initially kept her two-bed family home as her two children, now aged 25 and 27, lived there “on and off” between going to university and starting work.

She then started making bender tents – shelters made from woven branches or metal that are bent in a dome shape – as part of her work as an artist, and decided to make one for herself to live in.

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She moved into her first bender tent in Blackburn in 2021 and since 2022 has lived in a seven-metre by five-metre tent in the Cheshire countryside featuring five windows, a gas cooker, carpeted floors, a flower pot fridge, wireless internet access and even a bath on wheels.

Jessica keeps her monthly expenses to around £300 by growing her own food, all while sharing her home with the occasional spider, shrew, slug and toad, which she sees as “just part of it”.

Later this year, she will temporarily move into a two-bedroom terraced house she purchased in Lancaster to live with her partner, an environmental activist, and his son. She hopes to one day move them all into a treehouse or van and doubts she will ever fully return to a conventional lifestyle.

Jessica said: “Everyone loves it, seeing my really crazy little hobbit house – it’s got everything you need – it’s like a mini house. One year, I had about eight people in here on Christmas Day.”

In 2019, Jessica put traditional house living to one side and first started living nomadically