Grand Designs (1999–…): Season 13, Episode 9 - Newbury - full transcript
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This is flint. It's a stone
which is really common in this
part of the world,
which is rural Berkshire.
And it's a material which
man has been using in construction
since the Iron Age.
It's sort of fallen from favour
now as a building material,
but there is one couple
who've bought
a farm down there behind me
who want to revive it.
They want to exploit its local
distinctiveness
and bring a little bit of rustic
bling to their new farmhouse.
When I say "farmhouse",
that suggests images
of a rosy-cheeked farmer's wife
bringing scones from
the warm oven to the table
in a mud-splattered kitchen,
surrounded by 15 dogs.
But it doesn't have
to be like that.
'Phil Palmer and Michael Butcher
were die-hard Londoners.
'They'd been loft dwellers in the
heart of the city for 11 years.'
Can we have two lattes, please?
'Phil ran a successful marketing
research consultancy
'and Michael was the chief editor
of a celebrity gossip magazine.'
She's looking old.
Oh, she's not looking good.
Doing a Britney.
'But around the time when Phil
developed a medical condition
'which affected his vocal cords,
'they'd already started
thinking about a change of scenery.'
We'd done a lot of the things
we'd set out to do in London.
We'd sort of hit
a point in our careers where the big
challenges had kind of disappeared.
'Three years ago, they thought
they'd found what they were
'looking for when they fell in love
with Christmas Farm, near Newbury.
'Smitten, they took the surprising
decision to move - lock,
'stock and barrel, to the
country and commute into London.'
We planned on change,
but not of this magnitude, really.
I think the important thing
was that we're two individuals
who are willing to take
a bit of a risk.
'It was a bigger commitment than
either of them had bargained for.
'There was an agricultural
tie on Christmas Farm,
'meaning whoever lived there had to
earn their living from the land.
'Phil and Michael had to give
up their urban media jobs and
'become fulltime turkey farmers.
'It's a completely new life.'
I get up at the time I used
to go to bed now.
'Two years later,
after a very steep learning curve,
'they're still finding their way.
'Feeling that turkey farming was
ruining their Christmas, they took
'the inventive step of deciding to
rear rare breed livestock instead.'
There he goes. Look at this!
Stampede!
'Now, they've decided it's time
for another of life's great changes.
'The uninspiring
Alpine timber chalet
'that serves as their farmhouse
has got to go.'
Hello. Hello. Hello there.
I'm Phil. Hello, Phil. I'm Michael.
How are you? Pleased to meet you.
This is um...rural Berkshire. Yeah.
With a touch of Finland there.
Yeah!
Yeah, it does look like it was built
by a serial killer in...Alaska.
LAUGHTER
It's not right here. No.
Functionally,
it doesn't work as a farmhouse.
And all the windows are small
and the ceilings are low
and there's this
tight...sort of oppressiveness.
'Instead, Phil and Michael want
an ultra-contemporary farmhouse,
'unlike anything the area
has seen before.'
So what is the 21st-century
smallholding farmhouse?
What does that look like?
The original brief to
the architect was glass box.
That's what we're looking for.
Is that a hark back
to your glamorous urban life?
Basically, yes! It is actually, yeah.
So, what makes it a farmhouse,
as opposed to
a house in the countryside?
The way the house is designed.
The lower level
is very much about the farm.
It's got storage,
it's got office space,
it's got a seed propagating room.
And the upper level is about us
living. OK.
Open plan, modern, ultramodern,
minimalist.
There'll be quite a split.
A vertical division. Yeah.
Absolutely. Work and party.
A bit of urban glam. Yeah.
On the smallholding. Yeah.
'Phil and Michael's new home
is certainly going to be
'radically different from the big
wooden chalet it replaces.
'Their 21st-century farmhouse
will have two distinct layers,
'where the bottom half is
dedicated to agriculture.
'There'll be two entrances
that'll sit side by side.
'One, the farm entrance, will
lead into a boot room and wet room
'where Phil and Michael can leave
all the mud from the farm behind.
'From here, they can cross the hall
into a generous sized farm office.
'A seed and root store will separate
the office from the house's only
'guest bedroom and bathroom, all
sitting under a grass covered roof.
'In absolute contrast,
the formal front door will lead to
'a hallway and up the stairs to a
dramatic and minimalist open space.
'On this first floor,
'three rooms would be set
at three different heights,
'following the slope of the hill
'and linked by a ramp running
the entire length of the house.
'At the lower end,
a high ceilinged bedroom will
'accommodate their outsize
four-poster bed.
'At the top end will sit a kitchen,
opening on to a garden.
'Between the two, a giant loft-like
living-cum-party room will fill
'the void, lit by a vast
parallelogram glass window
which will
'slide across an enormous
facade of flint cladding.
'That'll be dramatic.
'To top it all off,
following the lie of the land,
'the black rubber roof will crank
over a diagonal axis.
'This building will serve two
masters and two identities -
'that of working farm
and glamorous home.
'But to live in their radical
new farmhouse,
'they still have to make
a success of the farm itself.'
You have to farm the land,
but it also has to justify itself,
in terms of production. You can't
pretend, as it were. Exactly.
It has to pay for the upkeep
of the house. Yeah, yeah.
But the cost of the new house can't
be met from income off the land,
I'm guessing,
which sort of begs the question,
how do you manage to then afford
to do all of this?
We've got a house in London,
which we're going to sell. Oh, I see.
That will hopefully
sell for around a million-ish. Wow!
How much will this thing
cost to build?
It's going to cost us
around 400-ish.
And how much did you buy the whole
thing for? 750. OK.
So...
We've spent all our money. Yeah!
You're not going to have a mortgage,
though. No. No.
'With spring on the way,
'Phil and Michael have found a buyer
who will pay them four grand
'and take away the prefab chalet
that's sitting on the site.'
We ended up putting it on eBay.
We get some cash,
we get rid of the house.
It's really good to
see it coming down.
It's actually happening
and we are finally homeless, which...
We're living in the caravan now,
which is great.
Being in the caravan gives you
a really good end goal to play for.
I just hope it's quick.
Yeah, exactly.
'Now, every day for what is
scheduled to be at least a year,
'Phil and Michael must run the farm
while living in a caravan,
'at the same time as overseeing
a complicated building project
'that'll consume
every waking moment.'
It's going to be minus three tonight.
You're joking. Freezing.
It's a bit cold, isn't it?
It's doing that thing where it's hot
up here and cold down there.
Yeah, I know.
'Painfully,
they live in the caravan for six
'months before the
project even starts.
'It's late summer by the time
they finally sell their London home
'and can eventually break ground.'
There we go. First dig.
That is amazing.
It's just brilliant.
You missed a bit!
LAUGHTER
'Phil and Michael have agreed
a fixed price contract, so
'if it's not finished on schedule,
their builder pays a penalty.
'They may not be building
themselves,
'but they'll have enough on their
hands working on their 40-acre
smallholding
and fulfilling the agricultural tie.
'Remarkably, they're also
turning their hands to another
'occupation they've never
tried before.
'They're investing every remaining
penny they have in a microbrewery.'
So this is malt? This is malt, yup.
'They've installed these small
wooden vats in the barn.'
That's very beautiful. It's almost
the colour of lager, isn't it? Yeah.
And that's the golden one.
Cheers. Oh, wow!
Cheers. That's got a kind of...a
real tang, hasn't it?
Am I drinking the first batch? Yes.
Am I really? You guys can brew!
LAUGHTER
Thank God for that! Mm!
'There's a lot at stake.
'If this venture fails, they simply
won't be able to or allowed
'to live in their radical new house
under construction next door.
'Six weeks later,
the entire hill has been excavated
'and in late autumn, the contractor
pours the concrete slab.'
It's exciting seeing
something solid go in.
It feels like there's some
building happening now.
It's nice having the big thing.
That's nice.
That's kind of exciting.
'The success of Phil
'and Michael's new business
is by no means guaranteed.
'Meanwhile, their fabulously
concocted building project is
'moving unstoppably forward,
swallowing money.
'You have to admire their bottle.'
Down on the farm,
Phil and Michael are now
as accustomed to the outdoors life
as the rare breeds they rear.
The animals and
the brewery they started
occupy them round the clock,
seven days a week.
And all the while,
the steel frame of the new building
is rising inexorably, taking on the
house's unusual, irregular shape.
It's an extraordinary, mind-boggling
puzzle, this, isn't it? Yeah.
Each one of those purlins
is a different shape
and a different angle.
It's very, very exciting.
What surprises me about this,
I can tell you, is the shape.
It lurches, cos that
is so steep. Yeah.
'Now the frame's up,
'the configuration of the first
floor is clearly defined.
'This storey steps up the hill
'across three dramatic
changes of level
'with a sloped ramp to link them
rising three metres in all.'
It's mad! If you drop a can
of baked beans in the kitchen,
it'll roll down through
the window and smash.
We could throw it
through the glass, yeah.
It's going to be
very, very powerful.
You know what it sort of
reminds me of, in a bizarre way,
are those very big agricultural
kit steel-frame barns
you get as open sheds.
We're on an agricultural site,
it is an agricultural building.
Mm-Hm. Except... Right, except
that the traditional farmhouse,
which people still build
and still use,
with the kitchen in the middle
and the animals and the dogs,
that way of life is not what
you're recreating here, is it?
That happens downstairs,
all that farm stuff.
That's...90% farm.
The first floor is party.
Well, I hope so.
HE LAUGHS
You've got to enjoy yourself
sometime, you know.
I think this design might be just
too pristine and minimalist
to really be a farmhouse.
I mean, is it...that truly
21st-century exemplar
that integrates the everyday farm
life into the architecture,
or is it the urban loft
placed on top of the farm office?
Farming is so...immersive.
It's going to be almost impossible
to keep that upstairs clean -
the mud will migrate.
Is your place going to have
a little arbour like this? No.
No, I don't think so.
Or a weather vane? It could do.
No. No love seat then?
BOTH: No.
'To investigate whether you
really can maintain separation
'between a farmhouse
and farm living,
'we've come to visit one of Phil
and Michael's neighbours
'in her traditional
farmhouse kitchen.'
Hello. Hello, Dawn. Hi, Kevin.
How are you? Who's this?
This is Pumpkin Pie.
Is it terrestrial? Pumpkin!
It's a little pony.
You all live in here, do you?
Animals, people, horses, all under
one roof? Most of the time, yes.
LAUGHTER
'Inhabited by domestic animals,
'the traditional farm kitchen
is a halfway house
'between nature outside
and civilisation inside.
'Every element I see here
'has been honed by centuries
of practical experience
'of living in the country.'
This room is the powerhouse
of the entire building, really,
in terms of heating and cooking,
the day-to-day activity, looking
after the animals, everything.
The washing as well!
Washing, yeah. Yeah.
Well, in the day, if I'm on my own,
I only use the kitchen.
I'm intrigued by this, cos it's
a very old-fashioned English idea
that if you're involved
with the land,
that your home gets a bit muddy and
a bit dirty and rough at the edges,
and that's part of
the way of living,
but your place isn't going to
look anything like this, is it? No.
For us, we wanted to have
a bit of a separation.
When we're doing farmy stuff,
we do farmy stuff.
When we don't have to do that,
actually, we can go back to our
lovely, luxurious London lives!
There's a place for mud, a place
for books, a place for white rugs.
So that's an objective, is it? To be
able to have a white rug in a
farmhouse? To have white rugs.
Yeah. We've already bought them.
We've already got them.
It's that kind of perfect and pure?
Yeah. I'm standing on one.
THEY LAUGH
There we go. I'm standing on one,
I just realised.
But so is a horse. So...
There won't be one of those
on our white rugs.
A different kind of white rug.
I don't think this is
what you mean by...
No. But it's still a white rug.
BIRDSONG
And Phil and Michael
think they have a way
to keep their white-rug
upstairs pristine.
So the path to the front door
of the building is laid. Doors.
Doors. Doors plural.
There will be one here. OK?
Which will be the muddy room.
Right. That's the mud room.
And a big one here,
which will be the posh one.
If you're a proper person
with proper levels of filth,
you come in through the proper door.
Wipe your feet and you go on up.
Yeah, you can go on.
If you're a mucky pup... In here.
Shower. Shower. Spray, steam clean,
boots off. Absolutely. Jet wash.
Jet wash! Yeah.
Then up the stairs
with the animals, the dogs.
You can never create an airtight
distinction between them.
Well, I think
we're going to have a go.
'The design seems practical,
'but what does their architect
Sarah Guardhouse make
'of their dedication
to urban bling?'
So, Sarah, I want to know
whether you think this building
says 21st-century farmhouse,
or whether it's just going to be
a bit of an anomaly?
It doesn't look like your
old conventional farmhouse,
but it suits that purpose.
Farmhouses are no longer about
people sitting round in tractors.
And they're able to bring people
here, they're able to enjoy it,
they're able to connect to the
outside. It becomes one of the tools
for them to farm with, essentially.
If you've got an evening where
you can relax in a beautiful space,
you're going to be better prepared
to farm the next day and be outside.
So it makes them better farmers?
It makes them better farmers.
Lie down. Lie down.
Blake, lie down.
Lie down! Thank you.
'Of course, to be allowed
to live here,
'Phil and Michael have to
earn their living from the farm.'
Blake, off.
'Already, income from Phil
and Michael's smallholding
'is starting to grow.'
Did you really think,
ten years or so ago,
that...this is what
life would hold for you?
HE LAUGHS
Not at all!
Did you ever dream of this? No.
Oddly enough, being in
the middle of a muddy field
with geese going off in your head
all the time, no.
But it's... It's working.
'But the brewery has to work too.
'So they've decided to
quadruple their capacity
'and install a shiny new set
of brewing vessels.
'They're now working
14 hours a day
'to make their businesses work
'and have even
renamed the property...
'the Two Cocks Farm & Brewery.'
'Bringing their canny city-honed
marketing skills to bear
'is helping them make an impression
on the local community.'
Yes, we're from the city and there's
nothing we can do to disguise that,
but I think they're recognising that
we're not just these fly-by-nights
who have come to have
a weekender in the country,
we're actually here
to run a proper business.
We are a local business,
we trade very much on the fact
that it's local water, local hops,
you know, it's made on a farm
in the community.
I think we're the only gays
in the village here.
They're very kind.
They invite us to their parties
and get us drunk regularly.
There we go. Do you want
a carrier bag for those?
They're all right,
they're fitting in quite well,
they're almost seen as locals now.
Conscious of the need to fit in
with their new locality,
Phil and Michael have chosen
to clad their building in flint,
a very local building material.
A 12th century flint-clad church
sits just 300 yards from the farm.
There's the crane just there, look,
and the frame. Yeah, that's it.
Just down the hill. But this...
This wall must sort of
represent the kind of impact,
the scale of what you're
trying to do. It is beautiful.
'The flint facade is going to be
'the defining texture
of their building,
'so a lot will depend
on who they get in to do it.'
The bloke that did this,
he was all over the shop, yeah?
There's no attempt at
getting a flat face. No.
There's a lot of mortar.
And then that guy, above the window,
looks more like a single
contiguous surface texture.
I hope we get him, not that one.
'If they find the right person
to lay it,
'Phil and Michael's
unbroken pure flint wall
'will be quite something.'
It'll give it a kind of an
earthy, granular kind of quality.
Like a sort of...flinty nodule.
Yeah, bang on.
If we get that, that's exactly
what we want. Job done. Yeah.
Just kind of sinks and disappears
and...is just there.
A kind of quiet assertion. Yeah.
Yeah, quiet, solid,
strong, stunning.
Flinty.
But before it's laid
into the facade,
Phil and Michael need to get hold
of the kind of flint they want.
You'd think, wouldn't you,
given the fact there
are billions of flints
lying in the fields round
Philip and Michael's farm,
that they would just drive out
with a tractor
and pick up as many as they need
to build with - for free.
But, no, because round here,
you see,
the flints are greyish-brown
and yellowy-brown.
And, well, they want beautiful,
deep bluish-black flints
for their home.
So instead of getting them
for free here,
they're buying them from Norfolk.
The wall will need ten tons
of specially quarried
Norfolk blue-black flint,
which is already
being broken up off site
into smaller,
more manageable pieces.
So, Paul, what is this stuff?
It's a compressed silica, you know,
from the sea-bed sea animals we find.
We find skeletons sometimes in it,
all the creatures at the bottom
of the sea. Silica-rich skeletons?
And it does, of course,
when it's wet, it's got an almost
obsidian-like glass quality.
And, of course, being pretty
pure silica,
it's not far removed from glass.
No, it isn't, no.
Quite magical!
It's very, very difficult
to work with.
'Flint cracks randomly
'into uneven and heavy lumps
'which can be razor-sharp,
dangerous to handle,
'and difficult to build with.'
He's got a lot of work on his hands,
whoever undertakes it.
Yikes!
The craftsmanship needed
to make Phil and Michael's facade
needs to be of the highest order.
Luckily, they found Vernon Stacey,
a local stonemason
well used to laying flint.
Hi there. You OK? Yeah, good.
Wow! So this is the flint, then?
This is it.
'Flint is conventionally
set in small sections
'and bordered with brickwork,
'but Phil and Michael have demanded
'an unbroken 24 metre expanse
of pure flint.'
You'll become the first contemporary
flint-layer in the country.
It's certainly going to be
a learning curve for me.
And I'm nearly getting towards
retiring age.
THEY LAUGH
Brilliant. We'll let you
get on with it.
'Vernon has been laying flint
for 40 years,
'but this job presents him
with brand-new challenges.'
I'm a traditionalist, really,
rather than a modernist.
I've been a bit apprehensive
about starting this one.
We're building off of steel,
which is non-absorbent,
we've got a plastic background,
which is completely impervious,
flint, which doesn't
absorb any moisture.
So all the moisture
in the mortar will drop
and it will end up
on the bottom here.
This is where occasionally
you can see water dripping out.
It's exasperating,
the whole situation, really.
I keep frightening everyone
by telling 'em it's going
to take three months.
'With just five months
to the delivery deadline,
'Vernon's work
determines everything,
'now that this project has slowed to
the plodding pace of the craftsman.'
Phil and Michael seem to making
a pretty good job of reinventing
themselves as small-scale farmers.
Their house, however, seems
anything but small-scale.
Its size
and its ambitions are big.
Eight months in, the ?400,000
fixed-price contract
is on budget, but there are still
challenges ahead.
The main facade will be made up
of just three materials.
The black rubber roof, the vast
glass window and of course,
the huge, unbroken flint wall
which Vernon has now been
meticulously laying for two weeks.
The biggest problem we've had
has been when it rains and
it's dripped off the roof.
But, now the
guys are doing the roof,
that shouldn't cause us any
problems at all now.
I've never seen a farmhouse with
a rubber fetish black roof before.
This one isn't high-gloss,
but matt. It should turn down
the volume of the building
and make it quieter.
At the edges, the rubber is designed
so it appears to
fold under and tuck itself into
the top of the flint facade,
thanks to a hidden gutter.
This is just one of the many
elements of this building
which looks simple but,
like the flint work itself,
are in fact
devilishly difficult to achieve.
Any building hides its guts
within its walls,
but this one takes
secrecy to a new level.
Not only does the rubber wrap around
and hide the structure
of the building at the back
but, also, this great, big flint
facade requires this multiple layer
of plastic and steel and timber
and membrane behind it,
especially devised
for this project.
It has its own support system.
All you will see, in the end,
is flint, rubber, glass.
Everything else is hidden.
What's true for the outside also
holds for the pared-back interiors.
From the kitchen, you can
begin to see the minimalism
emerging from behind
the scaffolding.
You get this view down there,
this amazing view.
Absolutely.
It's like looking down inside
a ship.
Yeah. Lots of engineering,
lots of bits but, actually,
this is going to
be a very simple structure
with most of the engineering hidden.
Artificial lighting is...
It's basically a huge track
which runs from that corner
all the way through.
Hence all those cables
we see dropping down there.
Very elegant, very hidden,
very, very straight.
Yeah, unlike us(!)
Unlike you!
PHIL LAUGHS
Speak for yourself!
This is shaping up to be a seriously
spectacular building.
And it looks like they're going to
be able to stay here
because their earnings are meeting
the terms of the agricultural tie.
The farm is ticking along nicely and
the brewery is really taking off.
They've even started winning awards.
We've got two silvers and a bronze,
and then we got a silver at the
Oxford Beer Festival as well.
Their beer isn't just a local
success.
They're also flogging it in some of
their old haunts in London.
We're in about 80-90 pubs and bars
in total,
of which the vast
majority are local to us here,
and about 15 of them are
up in London.
With the success of their business,
they've almost joined
the landed gentry.
What the brewery does
and the farm does now is,
it creates enough income for us to
carry on,
without having to worry
too much.
In the process of setting up
their booming business,
Phil and Michael are realising that,
while the muddy downstairs half
of their new home will certainly
help them farm,
the architecturally exciting house
above may also prove to be an asset
for entertaining clients and helping
them sell.
But, until it's complete, they have
to run the whole operation
from a cramped office in the barn.
So, yes, it's not big, is it? No.
It seems like you two guys are
cross-fertilising all those skills
that you bring, things
like marketing and doing
business with this very rural
tradition.
Brewing and farming isn't just about
producing a product.
You have to market it.
The farm, the brewery and the house,
they all complement each other.
You could bring some
people down and give them lunch
at your place and give them
an amazing experience.
White rugs for farmers. White rugs
for farmers. Mm-hm.
Next to the temporary farm
office, the barn's also been
a temporary home for the most exotic
rare breed on the farm,
Michael's extensive tortoise
collection.
Now, the purpose-built tortoise
house is ready for use.
Tortoise taxi.
Come on, is that all of them?
Yes. All right, let's go.
The tortoise house, a mini-version
of the farmhouse, is up in the
kitchen garden.
Once the ground source heat pump's
been dug in, this area will become
a haven of tranquillity for
Phil and Michael
and bring them closer to
their imagined rustic idyll.
This is Tiny.
Had him for 45 years now.
I think a lot of the
people who know us in London
would think of Michael as a party
boy, going down Soho,
having a great time, being
the life and soul
but there's also this
other side to Michael.
He is, if anything, more at home
here than he was in London.
Michael's harboured his rural dream
ever since he studied medieval
literature.
Just remembering back
to when I was a student
and reading about a locus amoenus
in literature.
It was basically a beautiful place.
A place where you have streams,
trees, lush grass.
Always a slightly magical place
outside of the city,
outside of the normal rules of
society,
it's taking an
idealised view of nature and beauty,
putting it all in one place.
I suppose we're trying to create
that, a bit, here.
Phil and Michael's mission to build
their locus amoenus
has still a little way to go.
Tortoises moved in ten weeks before
us, so we're not really very happy
about that,
but I think they are.
But the farmhouse is
beginning to come together.
After two months of flint laying,
the extraordinary facade
is nearly done.
It's very, very graphic, this wall.
A lot of flint buildings,
the flint almost looks like
it's been thrown into the middle.
And then it's kind of framed,
whereas here, the flint is the hero.
It's the big story.
Just like at the edge of
the rubber roof, the meeting point
between the different textures
and materials is seamless.
So, it all comes together on this
corner, doesn't it?
Because you have this
great sheet of flint stone,
meeting this crisp, little
black edge.
At the other end of the facade,
Vernon is on the verge of finishing
this masonry masterpiece.
Hello, Vernon. I think you're on
the home strait, are you?
During his two months of toil,
it seems that this traditionalist
has been converted to modern ways.
I think it suits the building
perfectly.
It's not trying to be perhaps
something that it's not,
like a farmhouse
in the traditional way.
Is this the last one?
This is the last one.
Excellent. This is two months' work!
Yes, I'm rather sad it's
coming to an end.
Go on, pop it in.
No, it's looking, it's too tight.
Good fit. It's like a keystone.
It's holding all the others in!
Look at that.
That's beautiful.
And congratulations.
A beautifully done thing,
and a first?
Most definitely a first for me,
yeah.
And, of course, all the value in
this wall is human energy, isn't it?
Well, it is, yeah, the actual
material is not worth a lot, really.
The same cannot be said of the
vast and very expensive
parallelogram glass window.
The plan is that it will slide
open along these rails, powered by
an electric motor.
How much is this big, sliding window
costing you? Lots. An awful lot.
I guess, what, 30?
Plus. Oh, really? Is it one piece?
One piece. One piece.
It will turn the building into
a living, moving thing and,
not only is it the most expensive
component, it's the most fragile.
It could all go crashingly wrong.
Just about on schedule,
the crane
is on site to install
the crowning piece of Phil
and Michael's snakeskin facade -
the huge sliding window.
It's such an expensive element
of the build.
And such a visual part of it.
And it's also the bit
that could go so drastically wrong.
I mean, oh, my God,
here's the guys arriving.
What I'm going to do is pick
the glass up, put it down in
front of the lorry...
This is nerve-racking.
It's a step into the unknown,
even for the company
that designed the glass, and that
are here to install it.
Biggest door we've lifted, biggest
moving component.
1.5 tonnes, apparently.
If this doesn't go in and work,
then the building's not watertight,
they can't finish half the stuff.
It's just going to stop.
It's a delicate task to slide
the 3x6m window
between the jutting scaffolding
and the jagged flint surface
of the building.
All right, let's go. We've got
a bully in. It's just scary.
BUILDERS SHOUT
LOUD CRACK
Ooh, that didn't sound very good.
The main thing is
to keep the glass off the thing.
You got this huge, dangling piece
of glass.
There's no protection
around it,
you get a chunk out of it,
then the whole piece is wrong.
We are, we're going to
have to fight.
Down, down on the right-hand
side, slightly.
That's it, keep going, keep going,
keep going like that.
We're in, totally in!
A few hairy moments there, weren't
there? It looks good, though,
it looks really good.
That crispness of the glass and
the steel against the flint.
As the roof light goes in and the
building finally becomes watertight,
the end of the project
is creeping into view.
It's amazing, isn't it? This actually
feels like a room, now.
For the first time. What I'm really
looking forward to is...
The storms
and things, and the snow.
Yeah. Can you imagine just sitting
here, watching... Huge fire roaring.
Yeah. Yeah.
Your turn to do the chores.
Watch my geese.
This simple, shimmering exterior is
now almost complete.
All that remains is to landscape
around the building.
It should look as though it's
sinking back into the hillside.
Inside, the extreme minimalism
of the design
is really beginning to assert
itself.
Can we make that look just
like the steel?
I think you're going to have
to plaster it in and paint
it out white.
Let's have a think about it. Next?
Just round here... Architect Sara
Gardhouse has been working closely
with the site foreman,
Mark Open, to make sure every detail
is absolutely to her
satisfaction.
What the architect wants, she gets.
And that simplicity can only be
achieved through, really,
hiding the details away.
I think if we can get another one
in there...
It all seems very simple, but
there is so much behind
the finished surface.
Whatever Phil and Michael decide
to put in the building
is certainly going to stand out
against this hard-won minimalism.
In some respects, the architecture
has been designed around some of
our bits of furniture, so we have
quite a large Gothic revival bed,
which is a big four-poster
canopy jobby.
The need was for a bedroom that
would accommodate something of that
sort of stature.
Yes, well, in a room this size,
you can have a bed as big as a barn,
but it remains to be seen how
well these overblown ideas
sit alongside the day-to-day farming
needs and whether it results in
one unified building.
The complete, rebooted 21st-century
country villa-cum-farmhouse.
'No longer new arrivals
in the country, Phil and Michael
'and their business
are now well established.
'But has their reinvented farmhouse
'matched the success
of their brand?'
So, you remember the big
red frame of this building,
just how enormous it felt
sat on that farm.
And yet, this building,
as it's progressed, has seemed,
if anything, to shrink in size,
to the point now, actually,
where you can hardly see it.
There it is.
'This place seems like no
farmhouse I've ever seen.
'It's more formal.
Like a classical rural villa,
'it hides the agricultural
role it serves.
'Having said that,
'it ain't polite.'
Hello, you two.
Hello, how you doing?
Good to see you. How are you?
Good to see you. Welcome.
Thank you, thank you.
I've been very excited
about coming to see this house.
It's looking astonishingly good.
'Phil and Michael's striking
building has attitude,
'thanks to the extensive use
of a number of unusual materials,
'each used in large expanses.
'There's the black rubber bodysuit
that wraps over the roof,
'the facade of flashy flint,
'the expansive glass wall
'and the large encasing
steel framework.
'All low profile and high impact.'
And it's completely transformed,
isn't it,
from Alaskan mass murderers'
homestead to...
THEY LAUGH
..Darth Vader's rural retreat.
Is it like the Death Star inside?
LAUGHTER
'Confronted by the two doorways,
I'm glad to say they take me
'in through the posher,
cleaner entrance.'
Come on in. It's like we're
into a cave. Oh, my goodness me.
It's a cave-cum-art gallery.
With a beautiful,
polished dark grey...
It's concrete, the floor, isn't it?
Yeah, that's right.
There's no mistaking this for
a farm. It's got farmers in it.
LAUGHTER
'And the edgy steel handrail
tells you that.
'It grows out off the ground -
it's part art gallery staircase,
'part agricultural implement.'
And up into...
KEVIN LAUGHS
'The revelation of this large
single space is a shock.
'I've never seen it without
scaffolding and its scale
'and exposure to the outdoors is
almost too much, too flamboyant.
'At one end, beneath the kitchen,
'the fireplace is a welcome
focus on a domestic scale.
'At the other,
as the building slopes down,
'it grows to cathedral-like
proportions.
'Joining the two ends is
the crazy, sloping ramp.'
That's great, that ramp.
It's good, isn't it? Bonkers!
LAUGHTER
Yeah. And your white rug!
There's no mud. No.
Yet. No, there won't be. Won't be.
There's your triptych. Yeah.
It's relatively enclosed,
but this view is so open,
so big, right to the heavens.
You're watching telly.
It's like going to the cinema. Yeah.
Standing here, in my
peripheral vision,
almost everything is that view.
Yeah.
It's a pretty good movie.
'This window's so big, it also gives
great views from the next level up,
'in what is traditionally considered
the engine room of the farmhouse.'
About three steps into
the kitchen, which is...
KEVIN LAUGHS
..excoriatingly white!
And perfect! It's lovely.
It's complete, except there
is no miniature pony here.
Surely that's the accessory
every farmhouse kitchen must have,
together with the range. That's
the other item that's missing here.
But we don't need the range.
Got underfloor heating.
It's nice and warm
down by the fire. OK.
Your farmhouse kitchen is not in
the heart of the building, is it?
It's at one end. But at an end
that you go straight out
and effectively
into the vegetable garden.
There's also something of
the command module, isn't there,
about the way that this console
kind of overlooks the space below?
What's great is that, from here,
you've got this wonderful connection
all the way through the building.
There's no doorways getting
in the way, there's no blockages.
You've got the line which runs
right the way through.
The lighting marks
the fold in the roof.
That runs all the way through,
beyond the glass.
Then behind the bed, the bedroom.
So you've got this interconnection.
'Down the ramp,
at the other end of the building,
'Phil and Michael have
just about managed to
'squeeze their Gothic revival bed
into their towering master bedroom.
'Behind the bed, a doorless
set of partitions carry
'the diagonal lighting
track line right to the
'corner of the building and divide
up the bathroom functions.
'The bedroom enjoys its own low
and angled vista,
'echoing the huge window
in the main room.
'The latter, of course, is the big
party piece of the building.
'It opens.'
I just press this one?
That's it. Oh!
It's opening? It is! Magnificent.
And immediately, there's
that cool wash of air.
And the sound of geese.
GEESE HONK
I do like the way that the glass
covers the flint
with that gloss of colour.
Sort of green, isn't it?
Yeah, like a varnish.
It's one silica compound
sliding over another.
It's like an abstract
piece of art. Yeah.
So, where we're stood is,
by the looks of it,
all wild flower meadow turf, is it?
Yes, that's right.
In summer, I guess you'll just have
that window open all the time? Yeah.
It will be like another room,
won't it, I guess?
A green, carpeted room.
'Directly underneath
the wildflower meadow,
'there's a self-contained
guest suite.
'It offers the promise of
privacy and separation
'from the main building.'
And here we are again. I know.
But this time, we get the choice
to go into the other door?
Oh, absolutely. You've been
out and mucky now. Yeah.
Enough of the decorative
ponciness of upstairs. Absolutely.
Into the mud room. Oh, yes.
Shower. Look, there we are. Perfect.
Dog. Yeah, watching the dog.
Straight over the drain.
Exactly. Drain on the floor,
wash your hands, coats, boots.
Absolutely.
And then you go through.
Really sensible.
Across the entrance hall,
and then you're into the office.
I did think that downstairs
was going to be so different
in character to upstairs
but, in fact, there are
some clever little clues.
Presumably, this follows
the line, does it not?
The lighting track upstairs,
which is the line
of the fold in the roof. Yeah.
Sloping ceiling over there.
It does, doesn't it?
And there's a wall which doesn't
have a connection
with anything else, like upstairs.
'Despite the threats of
mud and mad parties,
'this building has turned out
to be elegant,
'the modern equivalent of the small
18th-century rural mansion,
'with its attached farm,
'built for gentlemen equally
at home in Berkshire as in Soho.'
So, has the urban, rustic
experiment worked, then?
Totally. The joy of this is
that we have been able to build
something which is in a place
that we love, is about what we want,
reflecting who we are
and what we like.
I love standing on the green roof
and being able to touch
the flint wall.
It's like an outdoor sculpture.
I can't believe we live here.
I like sitting on the loo
in the en suite,
because you're looking
straight up the garden.
How many loos can you do that with?
Did you build this for what
you expected to, in the end?
Came in bang on budget. Yeah.
That was down to having
a contractor delivering you
a fixed price contract? Absolutely.
Will this building
make you better farmers?
I think it will, actually.
We've always had that idea
that the countryside
can't be a theme park home,
so that it has to work
to actually make a living.
Here, you get up in the morning,
you have a cup of coffee
looking out at the garden,
looking out at the animals,
and it's given us time
to start contemplating,
so you can plan your day better.
And I think that will
make us better farmers.
That makes it a proper farmhouse,
then, doesn't it? It does.
Absolutely. That and the arts.
THEY LAUGH
And the underfloor heating. And the
Wi-Fi. And the big opening window.
Yeah. Yeah. And the loo that
looks up the garden. And the ramp.
And the black rubber roof.
The flint wall. Yeah.
And the white rug.
It's just a big farmhouse. Yep.
I think Phil and Michael's humour
and their new identities as farmers,
brewers and entrepreneurs,
are all bound up
in the vigorous personality
of this shed-shaped building,
which powerfully roots them
to this place.
Architecture is a little
bit like agriculture,
in as much as it needs
the cross-fertilisation of ideas
to produce new, stronger,
vigorous forms
and here, goodness me,
there are lots and lots of ideas
in this building which have been
cross-pollinated, not least
the energy of Phil and Michael.
Yes, this place is a farmhouse
for the modern age,
but it's also an urban party pad,
it's a rural retreat.
It's an idyll.
It is these things all mixed up
and it is something else, I believe.
It is an exemplar of the
21st-century country house -
life-giving,
life-changing, game-changing.
---
This is flint. It's a stone
which is really common in this
part of the world,
which is rural Berkshire.
And it's a material which
man has been using in construction
since the Iron Age.
It's sort of fallen from favour
now as a building material,
but there is one couple
who've bought
a farm down there behind me
who want to revive it.
They want to exploit its local
distinctiveness
and bring a little bit of rustic
bling to their new farmhouse.
When I say "farmhouse",
that suggests images
of a rosy-cheeked farmer's wife
bringing scones from
the warm oven to the table
in a mud-splattered kitchen,
surrounded by 15 dogs.
But it doesn't have
to be like that.
'Phil Palmer and Michael Butcher
were die-hard Londoners.
'They'd been loft dwellers in the
heart of the city for 11 years.'
Can we have two lattes, please?
'Phil ran a successful marketing
research consultancy
'and Michael was the chief editor
of a celebrity gossip magazine.'
She's looking old.
Oh, she's not looking good.
Doing a Britney.
'But around the time when Phil
developed a medical condition
'which affected his vocal cords,
'they'd already started
thinking about a change of scenery.'
We'd done a lot of the things
we'd set out to do in London.
We'd sort of hit
a point in our careers where the big
challenges had kind of disappeared.
'Three years ago, they thought
they'd found what they were
'looking for when they fell in love
with Christmas Farm, near Newbury.
'Smitten, they took the surprising
decision to move - lock,
'stock and barrel, to the
country and commute into London.'
We planned on change,
but not of this magnitude, really.
I think the important thing
was that we're two individuals
who are willing to take
a bit of a risk.
'It was a bigger commitment than
either of them had bargained for.
'There was an agricultural
tie on Christmas Farm,
'meaning whoever lived there had to
earn their living from the land.
'Phil and Michael had to give
up their urban media jobs and
'become fulltime turkey farmers.
'It's a completely new life.'
I get up at the time I used
to go to bed now.
'Two years later,
after a very steep learning curve,
'they're still finding their way.
'Feeling that turkey farming was
ruining their Christmas, they took
'the inventive step of deciding to
rear rare breed livestock instead.'
There he goes. Look at this!
Stampede!
'Now, they've decided it's time
for another of life's great changes.
'The uninspiring
Alpine timber chalet
'that serves as their farmhouse
has got to go.'
Hello. Hello. Hello there.
I'm Phil. Hello, Phil. I'm Michael.
How are you? Pleased to meet you.
This is um...rural Berkshire. Yeah.
With a touch of Finland there.
Yeah!
Yeah, it does look like it was built
by a serial killer in...Alaska.
LAUGHTER
It's not right here. No.
Functionally,
it doesn't work as a farmhouse.
And all the windows are small
and the ceilings are low
and there's this
tight...sort of oppressiveness.
'Instead, Phil and Michael want
an ultra-contemporary farmhouse,
'unlike anything the area
has seen before.'
So what is the 21st-century
smallholding farmhouse?
What does that look like?
The original brief to
the architect was glass box.
That's what we're looking for.
Is that a hark back
to your glamorous urban life?
Basically, yes! It is actually, yeah.
So, what makes it a farmhouse,
as opposed to
a house in the countryside?
The way the house is designed.
The lower level
is very much about the farm.
It's got storage,
it's got office space,
it's got a seed propagating room.
And the upper level is about us
living. OK.
Open plan, modern, ultramodern,
minimalist.
There'll be quite a split.
A vertical division. Yeah.
Absolutely. Work and party.
A bit of urban glam. Yeah.
On the smallholding. Yeah.
'Phil and Michael's new home
is certainly going to be
'radically different from the big
wooden chalet it replaces.
'Their 21st-century farmhouse
will have two distinct layers,
'where the bottom half is
dedicated to agriculture.
'There'll be two entrances
that'll sit side by side.
'One, the farm entrance, will
lead into a boot room and wet room
'where Phil and Michael can leave
all the mud from the farm behind.
'From here, they can cross the hall
into a generous sized farm office.
'A seed and root store will separate
the office from the house's only
'guest bedroom and bathroom, all
sitting under a grass covered roof.
'In absolute contrast,
the formal front door will lead to
'a hallway and up the stairs to a
dramatic and minimalist open space.
'On this first floor,
'three rooms would be set
at three different heights,
'following the slope of the hill
'and linked by a ramp running
the entire length of the house.
'At the lower end,
a high ceilinged bedroom will
'accommodate their outsize
four-poster bed.
'At the top end will sit a kitchen,
opening on to a garden.
'Between the two, a giant loft-like
living-cum-party room will fill
'the void, lit by a vast
parallelogram glass window
which will
'slide across an enormous
facade of flint cladding.
'That'll be dramatic.
'To top it all off,
following the lie of the land,
'the black rubber roof will crank
over a diagonal axis.
'This building will serve two
masters and two identities -
'that of working farm
and glamorous home.
'But to live in their radical
new farmhouse,
'they still have to make
a success of the farm itself.'
You have to farm the land,
but it also has to justify itself,
in terms of production. You can't
pretend, as it were. Exactly.
It has to pay for the upkeep
of the house. Yeah, yeah.
But the cost of the new house can't
be met from income off the land,
I'm guessing,
which sort of begs the question,
how do you manage to then afford
to do all of this?
We've got a house in London,
which we're going to sell. Oh, I see.
That will hopefully
sell for around a million-ish. Wow!
How much will this thing
cost to build?
It's going to cost us
around 400-ish.
And how much did you buy the whole
thing for? 750. OK.
So...
We've spent all our money. Yeah!
You're not going to have a mortgage,
though. No. No.
'With spring on the way,
'Phil and Michael have found a buyer
who will pay them four grand
'and take away the prefab chalet
that's sitting on the site.'
We ended up putting it on eBay.
We get some cash,
we get rid of the house.
It's really good to
see it coming down.
It's actually happening
and we are finally homeless, which...
We're living in the caravan now,
which is great.
Being in the caravan gives you
a really good end goal to play for.
I just hope it's quick.
Yeah, exactly.
'Now, every day for what is
scheduled to be at least a year,
'Phil and Michael must run the farm
while living in a caravan,
'at the same time as overseeing
a complicated building project
'that'll consume
every waking moment.'
It's going to be minus three tonight.
You're joking. Freezing.
It's a bit cold, isn't it?
It's doing that thing where it's hot
up here and cold down there.
Yeah, I know.
'Painfully,
they live in the caravan for six
'months before the
project even starts.
'It's late summer by the time
they finally sell their London home
'and can eventually break ground.'
There we go. First dig.
That is amazing.
It's just brilliant.
You missed a bit!
LAUGHTER
'Phil and Michael have agreed
a fixed price contract, so
'if it's not finished on schedule,
their builder pays a penalty.
'They may not be building
themselves,
'but they'll have enough on their
hands working on their 40-acre
smallholding
and fulfilling the agricultural tie.
'Remarkably, they're also
turning their hands to another
'occupation they've never
tried before.
'They're investing every remaining
penny they have in a microbrewery.'
So this is malt? This is malt, yup.
'They've installed these small
wooden vats in the barn.'
That's very beautiful. It's almost
the colour of lager, isn't it? Yeah.
And that's the golden one.
Cheers. Oh, wow!
Cheers. That's got a kind of...a
real tang, hasn't it?
Am I drinking the first batch? Yes.
Am I really? You guys can brew!
LAUGHTER
Thank God for that! Mm!
'There's a lot at stake.
'If this venture fails, they simply
won't be able to or allowed
'to live in their radical new house
under construction next door.
'Six weeks later,
the entire hill has been excavated
'and in late autumn, the contractor
pours the concrete slab.'
It's exciting seeing
something solid go in.
It feels like there's some
building happening now.
It's nice having the big thing.
That's nice.
That's kind of exciting.
'The success of Phil
'and Michael's new business
is by no means guaranteed.
'Meanwhile, their fabulously
concocted building project is
'moving unstoppably forward,
swallowing money.
'You have to admire their bottle.'
Down on the farm,
Phil and Michael are now
as accustomed to the outdoors life
as the rare breeds they rear.
The animals and
the brewery they started
occupy them round the clock,
seven days a week.
And all the while,
the steel frame of the new building
is rising inexorably, taking on the
house's unusual, irregular shape.
It's an extraordinary, mind-boggling
puzzle, this, isn't it? Yeah.
Each one of those purlins
is a different shape
and a different angle.
It's very, very exciting.
What surprises me about this,
I can tell you, is the shape.
It lurches, cos that
is so steep. Yeah.
'Now the frame's up,
'the configuration of the first
floor is clearly defined.
'This storey steps up the hill
'across three dramatic
changes of level
'with a sloped ramp to link them
rising three metres in all.'
It's mad! If you drop a can
of baked beans in the kitchen,
it'll roll down through
the window and smash.
We could throw it
through the glass, yeah.
It's going to be
very, very powerful.
You know what it sort of
reminds me of, in a bizarre way,
are those very big agricultural
kit steel-frame barns
you get as open sheds.
We're on an agricultural site,
it is an agricultural building.
Mm-Hm. Except... Right, except
that the traditional farmhouse,
which people still build
and still use,
with the kitchen in the middle
and the animals and the dogs,
that way of life is not what
you're recreating here, is it?
That happens downstairs,
all that farm stuff.
That's...90% farm.
The first floor is party.
Well, I hope so.
HE LAUGHS
You've got to enjoy yourself
sometime, you know.
I think this design might be just
too pristine and minimalist
to really be a farmhouse.
I mean, is it...that truly
21st-century exemplar
that integrates the everyday farm
life into the architecture,
or is it the urban loft
placed on top of the farm office?
Farming is so...immersive.
It's going to be almost impossible
to keep that upstairs clean -
the mud will migrate.
Is your place going to have
a little arbour like this? No.
No, I don't think so.
Or a weather vane? It could do.
No. No love seat then?
BOTH: No.
'To investigate whether you
really can maintain separation
'between a farmhouse
and farm living,
'we've come to visit one of Phil
and Michael's neighbours
'in her traditional
farmhouse kitchen.'
Hello. Hello, Dawn. Hi, Kevin.
How are you? Who's this?
This is Pumpkin Pie.
Is it terrestrial? Pumpkin!
It's a little pony.
You all live in here, do you?
Animals, people, horses, all under
one roof? Most of the time, yes.
LAUGHTER
'Inhabited by domestic animals,
'the traditional farm kitchen
is a halfway house
'between nature outside
and civilisation inside.
'Every element I see here
'has been honed by centuries
of practical experience
'of living in the country.'
This room is the powerhouse
of the entire building, really,
in terms of heating and cooking,
the day-to-day activity, looking
after the animals, everything.
The washing as well!
Washing, yeah. Yeah.
Well, in the day, if I'm on my own,
I only use the kitchen.
I'm intrigued by this, cos it's
a very old-fashioned English idea
that if you're involved
with the land,
that your home gets a bit muddy and
a bit dirty and rough at the edges,
and that's part of
the way of living,
but your place isn't going to
look anything like this, is it? No.
For us, we wanted to have
a bit of a separation.
When we're doing farmy stuff,
we do farmy stuff.
When we don't have to do that,
actually, we can go back to our
lovely, luxurious London lives!
There's a place for mud, a place
for books, a place for white rugs.
So that's an objective, is it? To be
able to have a white rug in a
farmhouse? To have white rugs.
Yeah. We've already bought them.
We've already got them.
It's that kind of perfect and pure?
Yeah. I'm standing on one.
THEY LAUGH
There we go. I'm standing on one,
I just realised.
But so is a horse. So...
There won't be one of those
on our white rugs.
A different kind of white rug.
I don't think this is
what you mean by...
No. But it's still a white rug.
BIRDSONG
And Phil and Michael
think they have a way
to keep their white-rug
upstairs pristine.
So the path to the front door
of the building is laid. Doors.
Doors. Doors plural.
There will be one here. OK?
Which will be the muddy room.
Right. That's the mud room.
And a big one here,
which will be the posh one.
If you're a proper person
with proper levels of filth,
you come in through the proper door.
Wipe your feet and you go on up.
Yeah, you can go on.
If you're a mucky pup... In here.
Shower. Shower. Spray, steam clean,
boots off. Absolutely. Jet wash.
Jet wash! Yeah.
Then up the stairs
with the animals, the dogs.
You can never create an airtight
distinction between them.
Well, I think
we're going to have a go.
'The design seems practical,
'but what does their architect
Sarah Guardhouse make
'of their dedication
to urban bling?'
So, Sarah, I want to know
whether you think this building
says 21st-century farmhouse,
or whether it's just going to be
a bit of an anomaly?
It doesn't look like your
old conventional farmhouse,
but it suits that purpose.
Farmhouses are no longer about
people sitting round in tractors.
And they're able to bring people
here, they're able to enjoy it,
they're able to connect to the
outside. It becomes one of the tools
for them to farm with, essentially.
If you've got an evening where
you can relax in a beautiful space,
you're going to be better prepared
to farm the next day and be outside.
So it makes them better farmers?
It makes them better farmers.
Lie down. Lie down.
Blake, lie down.
Lie down! Thank you.
'Of course, to be allowed
to live here,
'Phil and Michael have to
earn their living from the farm.'
Blake, off.
'Already, income from Phil
and Michael's smallholding
'is starting to grow.'
Did you really think,
ten years or so ago,
that...this is what
life would hold for you?
HE LAUGHS
Not at all!
Did you ever dream of this? No.
Oddly enough, being in
the middle of a muddy field
with geese going off in your head
all the time, no.
But it's... It's working.
'But the brewery has to work too.
'So they've decided to
quadruple their capacity
'and install a shiny new set
of brewing vessels.
'They're now working
14 hours a day
'to make their businesses work
'and have even
renamed the property...
'the Two Cocks Farm & Brewery.'
'Bringing their canny city-honed
marketing skills to bear
'is helping them make an impression
on the local community.'
Yes, we're from the city and there's
nothing we can do to disguise that,
but I think they're recognising that
we're not just these fly-by-nights
who have come to have
a weekender in the country,
we're actually here
to run a proper business.
We are a local business,
we trade very much on the fact
that it's local water, local hops,
you know, it's made on a farm
in the community.
I think we're the only gays
in the village here.
They're very kind.
They invite us to their parties
and get us drunk regularly.
There we go. Do you want
a carrier bag for those?
They're all right,
they're fitting in quite well,
they're almost seen as locals now.
Conscious of the need to fit in
with their new locality,
Phil and Michael have chosen
to clad their building in flint,
a very local building material.
A 12th century flint-clad church
sits just 300 yards from the farm.
There's the crane just there, look,
and the frame. Yeah, that's it.
Just down the hill. But this...
This wall must sort of
represent the kind of impact,
the scale of what you're
trying to do. It is beautiful.
'The flint facade is going to be
'the defining texture
of their building,
'so a lot will depend
on who they get in to do it.'
The bloke that did this,
he was all over the shop, yeah?
There's no attempt at
getting a flat face. No.
There's a lot of mortar.
And then that guy, above the window,
looks more like a single
contiguous surface texture.
I hope we get him, not that one.
'If they find the right person
to lay it,
'Phil and Michael's
unbroken pure flint wall
'will be quite something.'
It'll give it a kind of an
earthy, granular kind of quality.
Like a sort of...flinty nodule.
Yeah, bang on.
If we get that, that's exactly
what we want. Job done. Yeah.
Just kind of sinks and disappears
and...is just there.
A kind of quiet assertion. Yeah.
Yeah, quiet, solid,
strong, stunning.
Flinty.
But before it's laid
into the facade,
Phil and Michael need to get hold
of the kind of flint they want.
You'd think, wouldn't you,
given the fact there
are billions of flints
lying in the fields round
Philip and Michael's farm,
that they would just drive out
with a tractor
and pick up as many as they need
to build with - for free.
But, no, because round here,
you see,
the flints are greyish-brown
and yellowy-brown.
And, well, they want beautiful,
deep bluish-black flints
for their home.
So instead of getting them
for free here,
they're buying them from Norfolk.
The wall will need ten tons
of specially quarried
Norfolk blue-black flint,
which is already
being broken up off site
into smaller,
more manageable pieces.
So, Paul, what is this stuff?
It's a compressed silica, you know,
from the sea-bed sea animals we find.
We find skeletons sometimes in it,
all the creatures at the bottom
of the sea. Silica-rich skeletons?
And it does, of course,
when it's wet, it's got an almost
obsidian-like glass quality.
And, of course, being pretty
pure silica,
it's not far removed from glass.
No, it isn't, no.
Quite magical!
It's very, very difficult
to work with.
'Flint cracks randomly
'into uneven and heavy lumps
'which can be razor-sharp,
dangerous to handle,
'and difficult to build with.'
He's got a lot of work on his hands,
whoever undertakes it.
Yikes!
The craftsmanship needed
to make Phil and Michael's facade
needs to be of the highest order.
Luckily, they found Vernon Stacey,
a local stonemason
well used to laying flint.
Hi there. You OK? Yeah, good.
Wow! So this is the flint, then?
This is it.
'Flint is conventionally
set in small sections
'and bordered with brickwork,
'but Phil and Michael have demanded
'an unbroken 24 metre expanse
of pure flint.'
You'll become the first contemporary
flint-layer in the country.
It's certainly going to be
a learning curve for me.
And I'm nearly getting towards
retiring age.
THEY LAUGH
Brilliant. We'll let you
get on with it.
'Vernon has been laying flint
for 40 years,
'but this job presents him
with brand-new challenges.'
I'm a traditionalist, really,
rather than a modernist.
I've been a bit apprehensive
about starting this one.
We're building off of steel,
which is non-absorbent,
we've got a plastic background,
which is completely impervious,
flint, which doesn't
absorb any moisture.
So all the moisture
in the mortar will drop
and it will end up
on the bottom here.
This is where occasionally
you can see water dripping out.
It's exasperating,
the whole situation, really.
I keep frightening everyone
by telling 'em it's going
to take three months.
'With just five months
to the delivery deadline,
'Vernon's work
determines everything,
'now that this project has slowed to
the plodding pace of the craftsman.'
Phil and Michael seem to making
a pretty good job of reinventing
themselves as small-scale farmers.
Their house, however, seems
anything but small-scale.
Its size
and its ambitions are big.
Eight months in, the ?400,000
fixed-price contract
is on budget, but there are still
challenges ahead.
The main facade will be made up
of just three materials.
The black rubber roof, the vast
glass window and of course,
the huge, unbroken flint wall
which Vernon has now been
meticulously laying for two weeks.
The biggest problem we've had
has been when it rains and
it's dripped off the roof.
But, now the
guys are doing the roof,
that shouldn't cause us any
problems at all now.
I've never seen a farmhouse with
a rubber fetish black roof before.
This one isn't high-gloss,
but matt. It should turn down
the volume of the building
and make it quieter.
At the edges, the rubber is designed
so it appears to
fold under and tuck itself into
the top of the flint facade,
thanks to a hidden gutter.
This is just one of the many
elements of this building
which looks simple but,
like the flint work itself,
are in fact
devilishly difficult to achieve.
Any building hides its guts
within its walls,
but this one takes
secrecy to a new level.
Not only does the rubber wrap around
and hide the structure
of the building at the back
but, also, this great, big flint
facade requires this multiple layer
of plastic and steel and timber
and membrane behind it,
especially devised
for this project.
It has its own support system.
All you will see, in the end,
is flint, rubber, glass.
Everything else is hidden.
What's true for the outside also
holds for the pared-back interiors.
From the kitchen, you can
begin to see the minimalism
emerging from behind
the scaffolding.
You get this view down there,
this amazing view.
Absolutely.
It's like looking down inside
a ship.
Yeah. Lots of engineering,
lots of bits but, actually,
this is going to
be a very simple structure
with most of the engineering hidden.
Artificial lighting is...
It's basically a huge track
which runs from that corner
all the way through.
Hence all those cables
we see dropping down there.
Very elegant, very hidden,
very, very straight.
Yeah, unlike us(!)
Unlike you!
PHIL LAUGHS
Speak for yourself!
This is shaping up to be a seriously
spectacular building.
And it looks like they're going to
be able to stay here
because their earnings are meeting
the terms of the agricultural tie.
The farm is ticking along nicely and
the brewery is really taking off.
They've even started winning awards.
We've got two silvers and a bronze,
and then we got a silver at the
Oxford Beer Festival as well.
Their beer isn't just a local
success.
They're also flogging it in some of
their old haunts in London.
We're in about 80-90 pubs and bars
in total,
of which the vast
majority are local to us here,
and about 15 of them are
up in London.
With the success of their business,
they've almost joined
the landed gentry.
What the brewery does
and the farm does now is,
it creates enough income for us to
carry on,
without having to worry
too much.
In the process of setting up
their booming business,
Phil and Michael are realising that,
while the muddy downstairs half
of their new home will certainly
help them farm,
the architecturally exciting house
above may also prove to be an asset
for entertaining clients and helping
them sell.
But, until it's complete, they have
to run the whole operation
from a cramped office in the barn.
So, yes, it's not big, is it? No.
It seems like you two guys are
cross-fertilising all those skills
that you bring, things
like marketing and doing
business with this very rural
tradition.
Brewing and farming isn't just about
producing a product.
You have to market it.
The farm, the brewery and the house,
they all complement each other.
You could bring some
people down and give them lunch
at your place and give them
an amazing experience.
White rugs for farmers. White rugs
for farmers. Mm-hm.
Next to the temporary farm
office, the barn's also been
a temporary home for the most exotic
rare breed on the farm,
Michael's extensive tortoise
collection.
Now, the purpose-built tortoise
house is ready for use.
Tortoise taxi.
Come on, is that all of them?
Yes. All right, let's go.
The tortoise house, a mini-version
of the farmhouse, is up in the
kitchen garden.
Once the ground source heat pump's
been dug in, this area will become
a haven of tranquillity for
Phil and Michael
and bring them closer to
their imagined rustic idyll.
This is Tiny.
Had him for 45 years now.
I think a lot of the
people who know us in London
would think of Michael as a party
boy, going down Soho,
having a great time, being
the life and soul
but there's also this
other side to Michael.
He is, if anything, more at home
here than he was in London.
Michael's harboured his rural dream
ever since he studied medieval
literature.
Just remembering back
to when I was a student
and reading about a locus amoenus
in literature.
It was basically a beautiful place.
A place where you have streams,
trees, lush grass.
Always a slightly magical place
outside of the city,
outside of the normal rules of
society,
it's taking an
idealised view of nature and beauty,
putting it all in one place.
I suppose we're trying to create
that, a bit, here.
Phil and Michael's mission to build
their locus amoenus
has still a little way to go.
Tortoises moved in ten weeks before
us, so we're not really very happy
about that,
but I think they are.
But the farmhouse is
beginning to come together.
After two months of flint laying,
the extraordinary facade
is nearly done.
It's very, very graphic, this wall.
A lot of flint buildings,
the flint almost looks like
it's been thrown into the middle.
And then it's kind of framed,
whereas here, the flint is the hero.
It's the big story.
Just like at the edge of
the rubber roof, the meeting point
between the different textures
and materials is seamless.
So, it all comes together on this
corner, doesn't it?
Because you have this
great sheet of flint stone,
meeting this crisp, little
black edge.
At the other end of the facade,
Vernon is on the verge of finishing
this masonry masterpiece.
Hello, Vernon. I think you're on
the home strait, are you?
During his two months of toil,
it seems that this traditionalist
has been converted to modern ways.
I think it suits the building
perfectly.
It's not trying to be perhaps
something that it's not,
like a farmhouse
in the traditional way.
Is this the last one?
This is the last one.
Excellent. This is two months' work!
Yes, I'm rather sad it's
coming to an end.
Go on, pop it in.
No, it's looking, it's too tight.
Good fit. It's like a keystone.
It's holding all the others in!
Look at that.
That's beautiful.
And congratulations.
A beautifully done thing,
and a first?
Most definitely a first for me,
yeah.
And, of course, all the value in
this wall is human energy, isn't it?
Well, it is, yeah, the actual
material is not worth a lot, really.
The same cannot be said of the
vast and very expensive
parallelogram glass window.
The plan is that it will slide
open along these rails, powered by
an electric motor.
How much is this big, sliding window
costing you? Lots. An awful lot.
I guess, what, 30?
Plus. Oh, really? Is it one piece?
One piece. One piece.
It will turn the building into
a living, moving thing and,
not only is it the most expensive
component, it's the most fragile.
It could all go crashingly wrong.
Just about on schedule,
the crane
is on site to install
the crowning piece of Phil
and Michael's snakeskin facade -
the huge sliding window.
It's such an expensive element
of the build.
And such a visual part of it.
And it's also the bit
that could go so drastically wrong.
I mean, oh, my God,
here's the guys arriving.
What I'm going to do is pick
the glass up, put it down in
front of the lorry...
This is nerve-racking.
It's a step into the unknown,
even for the company
that designed the glass, and that
are here to install it.
Biggest door we've lifted, biggest
moving component.
1.5 tonnes, apparently.
If this doesn't go in and work,
then the building's not watertight,
they can't finish half the stuff.
It's just going to stop.
It's a delicate task to slide
the 3x6m window
between the jutting scaffolding
and the jagged flint surface
of the building.
All right, let's go. We've got
a bully in. It's just scary.
BUILDERS SHOUT
LOUD CRACK
Ooh, that didn't sound very good.
The main thing is
to keep the glass off the thing.
You got this huge, dangling piece
of glass.
There's no protection
around it,
you get a chunk out of it,
then the whole piece is wrong.
We are, we're going to
have to fight.
Down, down on the right-hand
side, slightly.
That's it, keep going, keep going,
keep going like that.
We're in, totally in!
A few hairy moments there, weren't
there? It looks good, though,
it looks really good.
That crispness of the glass and
the steel against the flint.
As the roof light goes in and the
building finally becomes watertight,
the end of the project
is creeping into view.
It's amazing, isn't it? This actually
feels like a room, now.
For the first time. What I'm really
looking forward to is...
The storms
and things, and the snow.
Yeah. Can you imagine just sitting
here, watching... Huge fire roaring.
Yeah. Yeah.
Your turn to do the chores.
Watch my geese.
This simple, shimmering exterior is
now almost complete.
All that remains is to landscape
around the building.
It should look as though it's
sinking back into the hillside.
Inside, the extreme minimalism
of the design
is really beginning to assert
itself.
Can we make that look just
like the steel?
I think you're going to have
to plaster it in and paint
it out white.
Let's have a think about it. Next?
Just round here... Architect Sara
Gardhouse has been working closely
with the site foreman,
Mark Open, to make sure every detail
is absolutely to her
satisfaction.
What the architect wants, she gets.
And that simplicity can only be
achieved through, really,
hiding the details away.
I think if we can get another one
in there...
It all seems very simple, but
there is so much behind
the finished surface.
Whatever Phil and Michael decide
to put in the building
is certainly going to stand out
against this hard-won minimalism.
In some respects, the architecture
has been designed around some of
our bits of furniture, so we have
quite a large Gothic revival bed,
which is a big four-poster
canopy jobby.
The need was for a bedroom that
would accommodate something of that
sort of stature.
Yes, well, in a room this size,
you can have a bed as big as a barn,
but it remains to be seen how
well these overblown ideas
sit alongside the day-to-day farming
needs and whether it results in
one unified building.
The complete, rebooted 21st-century
country villa-cum-farmhouse.
'No longer new arrivals
in the country, Phil and Michael
'and their business
are now well established.
'But has their reinvented farmhouse
'matched the success
of their brand?'
So, you remember the big
red frame of this building,
just how enormous it felt
sat on that farm.
And yet, this building,
as it's progressed, has seemed,
if anything, to shrink in size,
to the point now, actually,
where you can hardly see it.
There it is.
'This place seems like no
farmhouse I've ever seen.
'It's more formal.
Like a classical rural villa,
'it hides the agricultural
role it serves.
'Having said that,
'it ain't polite.'
Hello, you two.
Hello, how you doing?
Good to see you. How are you?
Good to see you. Welcome.
Thank you, thank you.
I've been very excited
about coming to see this house.
It's looking astonishingly good.
'Phil and Michael's striking
building has attitude,
'thanks to the extensive use
of a number of unusual materials,
'each used in large expanses.
'There's the black rubber bodysuit
that wraps over the roof,
'the facade of flashy flint,
'the expansive glass wall
'and the large encasing
steel framework.
'All low profile and high impact.'
And it's completely transformed,
isn't it,
from Alaskan mass murderers'
homestead to...
THEY LAUGH
..Darth Vader's rural retreat.
Is it like the Death Star inside?
LAUGHTER
'Confronted by the two doorways,
I'm glad to say they take me
'in through the posher,
cleaner entrance.'
Come on in. It's like we're
into a cave. Oh, my goodness me.
It's a cave-cum-art gallery.
With a beautiful,
polished dark grey...
It's concrete, the floor, isn't it?
Yeah, that's right.
There's no mistaking this for
a farm. It's got farmers in it.
LAUGHTER
'And the edgy steel handrail
tells you that.
'It grows out off the ground -
it's part art gallery staircase,
'part agricultural implement.'
And up into...
KEVIN LAUGHS
'The revelation of this large
single space is a shock.
'I've never seen it without
scaffolding and its scale
'and exposure to the outdoors is
almost too much, too flamboyant.
'At one end, beneath the kitchen,
'the fireplace is a welcome
focus on a domestic scale.
'At the other,
as the building slopes down,
'it grows to cathedral-like
proportions.
'Joining the two ends is
the crazy, sloping ramp.'
That's great, that ramp.
It's good, isn't it? Bonkers!
LAUGHTER
Yeah. And your white rug!
There's no mud. No.
Yet. No, there won't be. Won't be.
There's your triptych. Yeah.
It's relatively enclosed,
but this view is so open,
so big, right to the heavens.
You're watching telly.
It's like going to the cinema. Yeah.
Standing here, in my
peripheral vision,
almost everything is that view.
Yeah.
It's a pretty good movie.
'This window's so big, it also gives
great views from the next level up,
'in what is traditionally considered
the engine room of the farmhouse.'
About three steps into
the kitchen, which is...
KEVIN LAUGHS
..excoriatingly white!
And perfect! It's lovely.
It's complete, except there
is no miniature pony here.
Surely that's the accessory
every farmhouse kitchen must have,
together with the range. That's
the other item that's missing here.
But we don't need the range.
Got underfloor heating.
It's nice and warm
down by the fire. OK.
Your farmhouse kitchen is not in
the heart of the building, is it?
It's at one end. But at an end
that you go straight out
and effectively
into the vegetable garden.
There's also something of
the command module, isn't there,
about the way that this console
kind of overlooks the space below?
What's great is that, from here,
you've got this wonderful connection
all the way through the building.
There's no doorways getting
in the way, there's no blockages.
You've got the line which runs
right the way through.
The lighting marks
the fold in the roof.
That runs all the way through,
beyond the glass.
Then behind the bed, the bedroom.
So you've got this interconnection.
'Down the ramp,
at the other end of the building,
'Phil and Michael have
just about managed to
'squeeze their Gothic revival bed
into their towering master bedroom.
'Behind the bed, a doorless
set of partitions carry
'the diagonal lighting
track line right to the
'corner of the building and divide
up the bathroom functions.
'The bedroom enjoys its own low
and angled vista,
'echoing the huge window
in the main room.
'The latter, of course, is the big
party piece of the building.
'It opens.'
I just press this one?
That's it. Oh!
It's opening? It is! Magnificent.
And immediately, there's
that cool wash of air.
And the sound of geese.
GEESE HONK
I do like the way that the glass
covers the flint
with that gloss of colour.
Sort of green, isn't it?
Yeah, like a varnish.
It's one silica compound
sliding over another.
It's like an abstract
piece of art. Yeah.
So, where we're stood is,
by the looks of it,
all wild flower meadow turf, is it?
Yes, that's right.
In summer, I guess you'll just have
that window open all the time? Yeah.
It will be like another room,
won't it, I guess?
A green, carpeted room.
'Directly underneath
the wildflower meadow,
'there's a self-contained
guest suite.
'It offers the promise of
privacy and separation
'from the main building.'
And here we are again. I know.
But this time, we get the choice
to go into the other door?
Oh, absolutely. You've been
out and mucky now. Yeah.
Enough of the decorative
ponciness of upstairs. Absolutely.
Into the mud room. Oh, yes.
Shower. Look, there we are. Perfect.
Dog. Yeah, watching the dog.
Straight over the drain.
Exactly. Drain on the floor,
wash your hands, coats, boots.
Absolutely.
And then you go through.
Really sensible.
Across the entrance hall,
and then you're into the office.
I did think that downstairs
was going to be so different
in character to upstairs
but, in fact, there are
some clever little clues.
Presumably, this follows
the line, does it not?
The lighting track upstairs,
which is the line
of the fold in the roof. Yeah.
Sloping ceiling over there.
It does, doesn't it?
And there's a wall which doesn't
have a connection
with anything else, like upstairs.
'Despite the threats of
mud and mad parties,
'this building has turned out
to be elegant,
'the modern equivalent of the small
18th-century rural mansion,
'with its attached farm,
'built for gentlemen equally
at home in Berkshire as in Soho.'
So, has the urban, rustic
experiment worked, then?
Totally. The joy of this is
that we have been able to build
something which is in a place
that we love, is about what we want,
reflecting who we are
and what we like.
I love standing on the green roof
and being able to touch
the flint wall.
It's like an outdoor sculpture.
I can't believe we live here.
I like sitting on the loo
in the en suite,
because you're looking
straight up the garden.
How many loos can you do that with?
Did you build this for what
you expected to, in the end?
Came in bang on budget. Yeah.
That was down to having
a contractor delivering you
a fixed price contract? Absolutely.
Will this building
make you better farmers?
I think it will, actually.
We've always had that idea
that the countryside
can't be a theme park home,
so that it has to work
to actually make a living.
Here, you get up in the morning,
you have a cup of coffee
looking out at the garden,
looking out at the animals,
and it's given us time
to start contemplating,
so you can plan your day better.
And I think that will
make us better farmers.
That makes it a proper farmhouse,
then, doesn't it? It does.
Absolutely. That and the arts.
THEY LAUGH
And the underfloor heating. And the
Wi-Fi. And the big opening window.
Yeah. Yeah. And the loo that
looks up the garden. And the ramp.
And the black rubber roof.
The flint wall. Yeah.
And the white rug.
It's just a big farmhouse. Yep.
I think Phil and Michael's humour
and their new identities as farmers,
brewers and entrepreneurs,
are all bound up
in the vigorous personality
of this shed-shaped building,
which powerfully roots them
to this place.
Architecture is a little
bit like agriculture,
in as much as it needs
the cross-fertilisation of ideas
to produce new, stronger,
vigorous forms
and here, goodness me,
there are lots and lots of ideas
in this building which have been
cross-pollinated, not least
the energy of Phil and Michael.
Yes, this place is a farmhouse
for the modern age,
but it's also an urban party pad,
it's a rural retreat.
It's an idyll.
It is these things all mixed up
and it is something else, I believe.
It is an exemplar of the
21st-century country house -
life-giving,
life-changing, game-changing.