A loan for an oast? It's no mean boast!

When Derek and Ellen Farnsworth set about buying a Grade I-listed manor house in Northampton, they didn't bother hitting up the better-known lenders for their loan. They went straight to the Ecology Building Society and got one tailored to their needs.

'Parts of the house were dilapidated, patches of the roof were crumbling and several walls had rising damp and black spores,' says Mr Farnsworth, a father of three. 'So I realised we needed a lender with specialist environmental expertise. A friend had recently used the Ecology for a property that needed a greener approach so I decided to do likewise.'

Further south, a Folkestone couple wanted to buy a Martello tower - one of 74 converted forts on the Kent coast - so they approached their bank for a mortgage. They were turned down as, according to their lender, the £200,000 property was too 'eccentric'. They then went to the Kent Reliance Building Society, which specialises in mortgages for oast houses, windmills, converted dovecotes and towers, and were accepted.

Enter the world of the local and specialist building society. Both the Ecology and Kent Reliance are part of this 50-member group. What sets them apart from the bigger, national lenders is their small networks of local branches, named advisers instead of call centres and preferential rates for local borrowers. Cambridge Building Society, for instance, has a discounted first-time buyer mortgage for anyone who lives within a 25-mile radius and will give a remortgage only to someone who lives in East Anglia.

The oldest local is the Chesham Building society, which was founded in 1845 and has four branches in Buckinghamshire and 38 advisers.

Swansea Building Society has just one city branch and a staff of 18, three of them part-time. 'We can make faster decisions than the bigger lenders as we know the area and the types of property,' says chief executive Alun Williams. The society's niches are self-build houses, barn conversions and marina apartments after work began recently on the second stage of a huge flat and retail development that has been part-funded by the Welsh Development Agency. 'Almost all our business comes through word of mouth or referrals from surveyors, brokers and other property professionals. We stick to our area and share information among our network of mutuals,' adds Williams.

One recent client was the famous Welsh rugby winger and British Lion Ieuan Evans. He went to the society when he sold his house and bought a pair of semi-detached barns in Cowbridge, near Bridgend, south Wales. The former Welsh captain, who was capped 72 times and scored 33 international tries, raised a flexible discount mortgage to help fund his purchase and convert it into a family home.

Mortgage broker Barry Walker of Surrey-based Milborne Financial Services says: 'I sometimes recommend clients to local societies as they can weigh up cases on their individual merits and, instead of relying on agencies, use their own surveyors who know the quirkier, more unusual properties and can give customers a more hands-on, often cheaper service than the bigger lenders.'

Take Peter and Linda Constable, who bought an oast house near Ashford, Kent, and needed £70,000 to turn it into a four-bedroom family home. The couple approached several large building societies and found that 'they were not geared up for 200-year-old oast houses in serious need of repair', says Mr Constable. They then approached the Ecology, which agreed to fund their building work.

Mention Melton Mowbray and most people will say pork pies. One of the East Midlands town's lesser-known features is its mutual lender, the Melton Mowbray Building Society. Not long ago it made its first concession to marketing with a series of advertisements in the local paper - and local it aims to stay with its branches in nearby Grantham, Oakham and Nottingham.

The Melton Mowbury has a somewhat philanthropic approach. Every new customer is asked to name his or her favourite local charity or club and the society then donates £100 to its funds. 'We're traditional with a capital T. Most of the properties we lend on are at least 30 years old, and more than 90 per cent of our customers are homeowners as we lend to very few buy-to-let or commercial investors,' says a spokesman. Like most of its fellow mutuals, the Melton Mowbury prefers to credit-check than credit-score borrowers before interviewing them face to face and discussing their personal needs. Its key product is a discounted tracker that remains 0.54 per cent above base rate during the mortgage term - currently only 5.29 per cent.

A spokesman for the Building Societies Association says: 'The advantage of going to a local or specialist building society is diversity. A lot of them feature in the best-buy mortgage tables and, unlike the bigger lenders and banks, don't have shareholders needing dividends and can plough their profits back into helping their local customers.'

So next time an oast house, converted dovecote, turreted mansion or windmill takes your fancy, check out www.basa.org.uk to see if there's a local lender with specialist knowledge.