Inside Mel B's stunning new home as Spice Girl ditches Hollywood hills for £2m farm in the Yorkshire Dales

Spice Girl Mel B has swapped the glamour of the Hollywood Hills for a simple life down on the farm in her native Yorkshire, MailOnline can reveal.

The singer spent £2.2m to secure the charming farmhouse set in verdant countryside outside the city where she grew up to provide a wholesome family home for her children.

Spice Girl Melanie Brown, 49, went for the radical change of lifestyle after her LA dream soured and now revels in her new life in the countryside with hairdresser fiancee Rory McPhee and her youngest kids.

The farmhouse, which she describes as her 'happy house' is set in the rolling Yorkshire hills outside her native Leeds.

It is no longer a working farm but Mel and her family keep a menagerie of animals, including goats, sheep, poultry, her two rottweiler dogs and Yorkshire terrier, Cookie.

The idyllic pad in a secluded hamlet has five bedrooms, five-bathrooms and a one bedroom annex, as well as a detached office, double garage and stunning views across hills and a reservoir.

Outside, it has extensive gardens, an ornamental pond, two paddocks where Mel keeps her livestock and it is fringed by expansive woodland along the boundaries.

It lies in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty on the fringe of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and is in a location studded with historic properties.

Locals in the area she's moved have welcomed their famous neighbour.

One said: 'I hope she's really happy here, she's been through a lot in her life and she deserves to be happy after all the pleasure she's given to other people.

'It's a lovely place to live and she'll find the locals are dead friendly if she pops into the pubs while she's out walking the dogs.'

Mel has been keeping her Instagram followers updated on her new lifestyle, giving them a glimpse of the stone-flagged floors and towering ceilings as Rory risked life and limb decorating a 20ft Christmas tree in December.

Mel posted: 'Finally back home after a busy few months and Rory putting up the Christmas tree is just the best ! Look at him climbing the walls - but really being home is my happy place and I'm so glad. Now feels like Christmas is starting.'

Previously posting in the summer, she said: 'On Sundays we hug trees, spend time with the animals and have a Sunday dinner.'

And in October, she was pictured in a sports bra and hot pants bagging up fruit for her goats.

She posted: 'Me and the animals .. days at the farm, always havin' a good laugh - it's the simple things sometimes and I luvvvv playing with them soooo muchhh.'

However she had made no secret of the fact that her dream move to the countryside marks an end to her turbulent divorce from film producer Stephen Belafonte and the resulting financial turmoil.

In February last year she announced that her purchase of a new home had gone through - and spoke movingly abut how the move finally confirmed her financial independence.

She told her 1.5m followers: 'I'm soooo overwhelmed right now. Sitting here with my 3 dogs not really able to speak but something has happened to me a few mins ago which is HUGE!!!

'I want to share it with other survivors like me coz all YOU survivors out there will know how emotional this moment is. Five mins ago a man arrived at my door with a set of keys.

'They are the keys to my new home. A house I bought with the money I've worked bloody hard to pay for. It's taken me 5+ yrs to be able to do this.'

 She continued: 'In 2019, l had to come back to Leeds with NOTHING in my bank account. The money from the Spice Girls tour went on ENDLESS lawyers fees his [Belafonte's] and mine.

'Still being drained by my ex's nonstop demands for more more more, I had to move into my mum's bungalow my kids/ dogs/ low self esteem/failures/ divorced.

'From Wembley Stadium to my mum's. This is called FINANCIAL ABUSE and it's ugly, devastating, and vile.

'It's hard not to crumble. Hard to rebuild yourself on the inside and out. I've spent sooo many nights in pieces, nights I've had to turn to the beautiful ladies at women's aid refuge in Leeds just for words of comfort from women who GET IT.

'I share this coz it takes a LONG LONG time to deal with the trauma when you've been left financially at ground zero and everything nice you had was gone.'

And returning to the subject of her house purchase, she concluded: 'This will be my happy home, I'm thinking about my dad, I'm thinking about my kids, and I'm thinking about all those survivors out there - you CAN reclaim your power. Trust and believe.'

Mel's journey to her forever home has been a rocky one.

In 1998, at the height of her Spice Girls hey day, she bought a mansion in Little Marlow, Bucks, but was driven out by racist hate mail.

She told how she received letters saying: Get out of this village, you don't belong, you can't buy something like this.'

After her first divorce she moved to Los Angeles with Belafonte, her former manager and they together they bought a vast home in the Hollywood HIlls, once owned by movie legend Rudolph Valentino.

The couple put the home up for sale in the midst of their bitter divorce battle for £6.8 million ($8.9 million).

Built across four storeys, the house had four bedrooms, five bathrooms, a cinema, recording studio, a chef's kitchen, outdoor kitchen, gym, games room and a swimming pool overlooking the LA skyline.

Despite an opulent refurbishment and sought-after setting, the warring couple had to twice slash the price to just below £5m as they became desperate to sell.

Having escaped her Stateside nightmare the star was then forced to swallow her pride and move into mum Andrea's bungalow in Leeds.

Mel has three daughters, Phoenix Brown, 25, Angel Iris Murphy Brown, 17 and Madison Brown Belafonte, 13.

Her upcoming marriage to Rory McPhee is rumoured to be planned for St Paul's Cathedral, which she is able to use because she has been awarded an MBE.

It will be her third marriage, with the previous two ending in acrimony.

Mel wed Dutch dancer Jimmy Gulzar, the father of her 24-year-old daughter Phoenix, in 1998.

She went on to have daughter Iris, now 16, with Hollywood star Eddie Murphy and married her former manager Belafonte, the father of her 11-year-old daughter Madison, in 2007.

She filed for divorce ten years later after accusing him of emotional and physical abuse.