Grand Designs (1999–…): Season 3, Episode 3 - The Woodsmans Cottage, Sussex - full transcript
Kevin McCloud meets a couple who have their hearts set on converting a disused industrial waterworks in the Chesterfield countryside into their dream home.
I've been up here ten years living
under canvas and in caravans and it's
been hard at times.
It's spot on!
It's just a weird feeling now I can
just turn the tap and get a hold of it.
I am Halloween.
I want to be shutting the door.
This week I'm on my way to meet a
man who's going to build his house in the
middle of the woods.
This is West Sussex, heart of the
stockbroker belt where the planners won't
even let you put up a garden shed.
And yet, up here on a site that's so
hidden away it hasn't even got a proper
road, he's achieved the unthinkable.
He's got planning
permission to build a house.
Hi Kevin.
Ben, how are you?
Nice to see you.
Yeah, and you.
Nice to be here.
Ben Law has been living
in this clearing for ten years.
This is very beautiful Ben.
Yeah, it's the magical spot.
And you've got a view as well.
Yep.
And why are you here?
I work the woods, I'm a coppice worker,
traditional woodsman and caretaker
of this bit of land.
Ben earns his living
from the forest selling
furniture, charcoal and
coppiced wood for fencing.
He manages his business from a collection
of temporary log cabins and tents.
His current home is a rusty caravan
but now he plans to build something much
more permanent.
You're not changing your lifestyle are you?
No, just continuing it and
making it a little more comfortable.
I've been up here ten years living
under canvas and in caravans and it's
been hard at times,
certainly during the winter.
You've been wanting to build a house
presumably then from the beginning.
Yeah, I certainly never planned
on living under canvas forever.
So you've been fighting for
planning permission for all that time?
I was going to say fighting was a
strong word but it's probably fairly
suitable actually.
Our woodlands are so well protected
that Ben's house will be one of the
first permanent homes to be
built in a forest in fifty years.
What's it going to look like, this house?
It's going to be made
of wood from the woods.
The idea being that
it will season and
blend into the
woodland quite quickly.
It's not going to look
like a one of these
is it? It's not going
to look like a Ben.
It's not going to look like a temporary
shelter. It's going to be a properly
finished house.
Absolutely.
Ben's using building techniques
that our ancestors used centuries ago.
First he'll build a skeleton from timber
A-frames made with tree trunks from
his own forest.
Unusually the roof goes on next.
It's covered with traditional wooden tiles
or shingles.
Then the walls will be built out of
straw bales clad on the outside in oak.
Inside there'll be one
large open plan living area.
There's one bedroom
for Ben, a bathroom
and storage areas
on the first floor.
So how much is it costing?
Between twenty to twenty five thousand.
That sounds incredibly cheap.
Sounds very expensive to me.
The big cost of the timber is sort of
one thing I'm saving which would make
a big difference.
And the walls and the roof.
And so your shell and your
floors and your structure is all here.
It's all already existing. It's out there.
Absolutely.
Brought in and stuck together.
Up here in the middle
of the woods Ben's
totally dependent on
solar and wind power.
And the new house will be too.
The last thing I want to do is dig
huge trenches, bring power lines in,
bring loads of services in, heavy drainage.
Although it's going to
be a comfortable house
I want it to sit gently
in the woodland.
By sorting out all the services myself
I'm sort of minimising that impact.
Do you have any idea
how long it's going to take?
Yeah.
He says very confidently.
No, it's got to be finished by next winter.
The caravan I'm living in
has got five holes in the floor.
It's got to be finished by next winter
although actually I have no idea how
long it is really going to take.
That gives him about
six months to build
somewhere warm
and dry for the winter.
Early in May Ben's builders arrive.
They're not your average team.
They've agreed to work for Ben for free.
In exchange Ben's promised
to teach them carpentry skills.
Steve and I are on the local tug of
war team so we have quite a good
experience of pulling on
ropes when we need to.
So I think that's quite a good mixture.
There's James and he's put up a lot
of marquees in his time so he's used to
ropes and loops and knots.
So yeah, I think between us and
with his guidance all should go well.
Does anybody want a hard hat? They
are available for anyone that wants them.
Viv Goodings, a master carpenter,
is the only one who's built a timber
framed house before.
Did everyone hear that?
Their first task is to put up the
basic wooden frame of Ben's house.
Ben's already cut and prepared eight
sweet Chestnut tree trunks from his.
wood and made them up into four A-frames.
Ben, you're going to operate the turfer?
If anyone's got a problem with anything,
your rope locks up, you're not sure
what's going, just yell stop.
We'll have a look, sort
it out and we'll carry on.
The process is really slow and it's
really controlled and as long as we all
stay in the right
place to do our thing
it's going to go up
with a hammer hitch.
Viv makes it sound
straightforward but what
they're attempting
is extremely difficult.
There's no crane to lift these huge
timbers. Ben wants to do it all with a
system of pulleys and ropes.
I'm a little bit nervous, you know,
it's sort of, it's a really big moment
in the build in a lot of ways.
I mean, once this is up, everything
which goes on afterwards stabilises it
more and more.
So this is a, yeah, a real key point.
This type of timber frame
is called a cruck frame.
The tree trunks are crossed at the
top to make a fork or cruck and pinned
together with wooden pegs.
The last thing to go into place is a
large beam, the Ridge pole, which sits
in the top of each fork
and ties them all together.
The feet are lined up to sit on stone pads.
The bottom of each leg
is tied to a nearby tree.
As we start pulling, the frame
naturally just wants to slide along the
ground and the foot slide on.
So we're creating a little harness to
hold the bottom of the foot so we can
restrain it back to a stake over there.
So that doesn't happen and then once
it becomes vertical it's not a problem.
The team take their positions, one
man on each rope to control the lift.
Better start pulling then Ben.
Ben takes up the slack on the winch.
He's hoping to lift three whole
30 foot tree trunks at once.
Despite the ropes, the feet are slipping.
Hold on Ben.
We'll try and put some
human power behind the feet.
Yeah, no, that makes sense.
So if we can get it started with us on it.
Once we get that first lift
going, it should be alright.
The first A-frame is the hardest to
lift because it's also carrying the full
weight of the Ridge pole.
The joints on the croc
frames are designed
to take the load in
a specific direction.
And while they're going
up, they're not taking
the load in the way that
they're designed to do.
And so the danger
is that you overstress
that joint and split
one of the uprights.
Because everything's under
an enormous amount of tension.
Once the frame's up, the wood's in
compression, the load's going straight
down through it.
So it's strong and it's
working as it should.
But in that interim period,
that's when it's at its most fragile.
What would be nice is just to lift the
Ridge round and drop it onto the next
crossbearer.
You can do that.
You alright with that?
Lovely.
Okay Ben, you're nearly there.
Back lines, are you tight?
Okay, stop there Ben.
That's it, we're up.
Ben checks whether the crossbeam is level.
Oh, spot on!
Yes!
Is it?
It's spot on!
By good or what?
It's literally that, it's spot on.
Brilliant.
First one's always the worst.
It's taken all morning
to get the first
A-frame up and there
are three more to go.
But Ben and Viv have hit a problem.
The Ridge pole is jammed against
an A-frame that's only half up.
We're just trying
to get the Ridge to
see it into the next
crook that's going up.
And it's all a bit messy at the moment.
It's stable as it is, so it's time to
have a little rethink I think for a
moment and see if we can get it down.
Ben's team are just like any
other set of builders really.
You hit a problem, put the kettle on.
It's close.
After a bit of thinking time, Viv
comes up with a high-tech solution.
Poke it with a ladder.
Right, try to look like we always
meant it to happen that way.
The Hall of Way.
Yeah, keep going.
Yep, she'll do.
That's it.
Near as damned.
Yep, near as damned.
Come on.
Oh, come on!
That's perfect in my book.
I come laden with
biscuits and milk,
and a voice and a
guitar as smooth as silk.
Cut.
Biscuits and milk.
Excellent. Perfect timing.
It was Ben's idea to build a crook-framed
house, but he used architect John
Rees to help him with the design.
It wasn't a typical
client-architect relationship.
Normally when you work with clients,
you take a brief from them and you
prescribe exactly how
the house is to be built.
You say what size the timbers are
going to be that are required to support
the floor and the roof
and all the rest of it.
But what's nice
about working with
Ben is I have to start
from another angle.
I have to ask Ben what
timber he's got available.
Because Ben had all these big
timbers already chosen, didn't he?
That's right.
Big tree trunks,
basically, that he's
collected as he's
worked through the forest.
Yeah, the engineer and I cannot
suddenly decide we want to use a certain
sort of timber to do the job.
We have to start from what Ben has.
Ben's team are on
the home stretch.
The last two pieces
go up within an hour.
It's taken just one day
to put up the crook frame.
I think it looks lovely.
Absolutely brilliant.
Couldn't have been
a better day, really.
I think it's almost time for beer.
To build a conventional
house really well,
I think you need just
reams of drawings.
You need a bill of quantities,
a full specification, a schedule.
You need contracts with your builders.
And if you don't have any of these,
then the whole thing can just spiral out
of control.
But Ben's approach is entirely different.
If he's got any plans at
all, they're in his head.
So, maybe it doesn't
matter that nobody
on this build has
built a house before.
Maybe it's fine that he
doesn't have a schedule.
Maybe it's okay that he makes
up so much of it as he goes along.
But personally, I'd find
the whole thing terrifying.
Ben is just four weeks into his build.
A team of volunteer carpenters are
extending the crook frame to create
floors and verandas.
Ben's cottage is starting to grow.
It's looking really magnificent, Ben.
Are you pleased? Yeah, very pleased.
You should be.
What a structure.
Yeah, it's lovely to see the shape
of the crooks and the round wood.
It's an unusual shape, isn't it?
I mean, most buildings
are square rectangular.
This is very triangular.
It is. It's one of the
most simplest and
strongest ways of
putting wood together.
Ben's house is being built in a
tradition that's at least 1,300 years old.
And especially typical of Ireland,
Wales and Northern England.
Crook frame buildings like this
cottage followed simple patterns
and used curved and uneven
timber straight from the forest.
Early wooden buildings were quick to
build, they were easy to build and they
were inexpensive.
And that's partly because
the design was so efficient.
All the infill material
like this wattle
and door came from
the surrounding fields.
It was locally available and it was cheap.
But these buildings
were also limited
in size because they
were determined by
the length of these crook frames,
which in turn depended on the
height of the tree that you could find.
Crook frame houses were eventually
superseded by more sophisticated timber
frame styles.
Post and truss and box frame methods
which could go bigger and higher
and which produced great
medieval timber buildings.
It's only now after, what, 200 years
of advances in steel and concrete and
glass technology that
architects are exploring
the structural
qualities of wood again.
This timber grid shell by the
architect Ted Cullinan is the first of its
kind in Britain.
It's still a timber frame building.
It uses green oak.
But it also exploits
modern engineering,
computer modelling
and synthetic glues.
It's a wonderful
contemporary structure and
it's genetically linked
to the crook frame.
But it does not
exploit one structural
property of wood that
Ben knows all about.
Most timber frame buildings, old
and new, use square cut timber.
Ben wants to keep all his timber
in the round, as nature intended.
With timber that comes square, you
know, I mean there are measurements
and there are engineering
tolerances for materials like that.
Well, you're dealing with stuff in
the round all the time, aren't you?
So, I mean, is this stronger or is
this weaker or is it easier to calculate
the loads of this kind of material?
Well, in the round, the
wood is 50% stronger.
Working with wood, you know
that as soon as you slice into it,
as soon as you cut through
the grain, you're weakening it.
At the moment, this
has the whole fibres
of the grain running
right the way through.
Yeah. And the other thing that interests
me about round timber is that when
you're working with
flat and you join,
you connect two
pieces of wood together,
you've got a big area of surface
contact between the two pieces of timber.
What happens with round wood? Because
with two Poles, it's just a tiny point
of contact.
It is indeed. At the moment, we're
working on a type of cup joint where you
literally gouge out
what I call a dish into each side of
the round wood so they come together.
Well, they're two cupped hands like that.
Absolutely. So the two should meet
very, very snugly.
And then you basically peg a dowel
through and wedge it and secure it.
This project is a real labour of
love, a totally handcrafted house.
Each timber for the frame is cut and
prepared and fixed using traditional
jointing methods.
It's all held together with these pegs.
With oak pegs.
Oak pegs. Yeah. What we wanted
really was a well-seasoned dowel.
I'd say that the
dowel's dry and it's
already shrunk to the
size it's going to be.
Otherwise, if it shrinks, if it's
damp and it shrinks, it'll fall out.
Yeah.
As well as pegging the joint, Viv and
Andrew begin adding timber braces to
the frame to strengthen it.
So what does this piece of
wood do in the building then?
This is the main diagonal brace
for the main set of cruck frames.
It's one of them that's up
there that makes it a cross.
Absolutely. Cross-shaped
brace. And why
has it got this
extraordinary curve to it?
The idea that we can come out at right
angles from the base of the cruck and
go swooping off up towards the top.
This one you made earlier.
This is one we started
and we've rejected
it because, as you
can see, there's rot.
There's loads of holes in it.
All this stuff in here.
So you're missing one of these.
We are.
What are you going to do about that?
Go find another one.
The beauty of this project is that
virtually everything Ben needs to build
his house is right here around him.
There's no waiting for suppliers,
no trips to the builders' merchants, no
expensive delivery charges.
If he needs a piece of wood,
he just walks out and gets one.
Which one?
You see this one sweeping out?
Oh yeah.
You see the curved shape at the bottom?
Yeah.
That's what we're after.
Yeah. But then how do you know
that this one hasn't got some rot in it?
Well, to be honest, I don't.
You really have to take your chance
until you cut it and explore inside it.
Is that rotten?
Is that solid? Can you tell?
It does look like there
might be a bit of rot in it.
Yeah, I'd be a little
concerned about that one.
So we're going to look for another one?
Yep.
Ben's not just searching
for a sound piece of timber.
The round wood frame will
be visible in the finished house,
so he's also searching for pieces
that will add to the character of the
house and look good.
How's that looking?
Well, is there anything there to upset you?
No, I think that's going to
be absolutely fine, that one.
Lovely swept curve, got
plenty of material there.
I think it'll be a very good match to
the others as well, which is, although
I don't mind it, they're
slightly different.
It's nice to sort of
have a bit of symmetry.
It's certainly very pleasing.
Yeah.
The trees in Ben's wood are sweet Chestnut.
It's a strong, fast-growing hardwood
that provides him with a regular supply
of building materials.
These Poles get heavier, don't they?
The longer you hold them
magically they get to get heavier.
You can have a light one.
What do you think so?
Down here?
Where do you want it?
Down here's great.
On there?
That'll do nicely.
What's next then, with that?
It's ready for peeling.
With something like this, which
is green, it feels very, very clean.
You're going to trust me
with having a go with that?
Am I likely to dig into
the... Is it very sharp?
It is very sharp, yeah.
Wow.
Beautiful, isn't it?
It is, yeah.
It's a nice tool.
So what happens now?
What happens now
is, um, I'll give this
to Viv and he'll make
a tenon on the end.
Having carved out the joints, all
Viv needs to do is slot in the missing
piece of timber and
the bracing is finished.
It's as easy as that.
Ben's been building for two months
now and so far he's managed to hold on to
his volunteer workforce.
This free labour is one of the things
that makes this project possible.
To keep them all
sweet, Ben's providing
gourmet meals from
his outdoor kitchen.
You must be feeding about
20 people a day, aren't you?
No, I don't have anything
between four and ten, I suppose.
Really? Who's doing the cooking?
Um, I suppose I have
to say I do most of it.
Is that true?
Yeah.
As well as getting his
building materials from the
wood, Ben's pretty
self-sufficient in food too.
I'll grow you on herbs. I know that.
You'll grow your own veg.
I'll grow some of my own veg, yeah.
I'll grow a lot of fruit.
Wild strawberries, apples,
plums, pears, mulberries.
I've barbecued at home but
I've never cooked on an open fire.
It's like second
nature to me, I mean,
having been cooking
on it for ten years.
What are you going to cook on when
you're in, though? You're going to cook
on an conventional...
I'll have a raven, so it'll still be
fire-based. I'll still be cooking out
here in the summer.
Yeah. It'll be wonderful.
A few days later, Ben
starts work on the roof.
The rafters are on
and Viv and Julie begin
covering them with a
waterproof membrane.
Ben's made about 12,000
wooden shingles to tile his
roof, all of them hand-cut
from local Sweet Chestnut.
Sweet Chestnut's
been used for shingles
for years in France
and across Europe.
It's just very rarely been used here.
In France you've got shingles lasting
40 years plus, so I'm quite confident.
Hopefully it'll be my son who
re-shingles this house, not me.
The shingles are heavily overlapped
to encourage the water to run off rather
than soak through.
And if any water does get through,
the house is protected by the waterproof
membrane underneath.
Vanessa, I can't get
you to split that one
down. I'll do about
two-thirds the size.
That'll be good.
Thank you. Yeah.
It takes Ben just 10
days to do half the roof.
Each tile has to be pre-drilled to
stop it from splitting when it's nailed
onto the battens.
Then the tiles are
individually fitted. The
result is a roof with
a unique character.
They look absolutely beautiful.
It's a really textured finish you get.
And within a year or so
they'll start to go slightly greyer.
And they'll look like they've been
here 30 years, which is part of what I'm
trying to achieve with this house,
so it blends so well into the woodland.
This extraordinary
handmade house is as
beautiful and natural as
anything I've ever seen.
At the moment it looks like some
kind of South East Asian beach hut.
I can't wait to see what it
looks like when it's finished.
Ben is one of a handful of people in
Britain allowed to build in the woods.
Our planning laws are designed to
protect the countryside from development,
but Ben's circumstances
are pretty exceptional.
How did you get your planning application?
Because, I mean, not everybody
gets to build a house in the wood.
My planning application
has taken a long time,
and it's been built up by the planners
eventually understanding that I have
a genuine need to be here.
One, to look after the woodland,
to maintain my business,
and one of the primary parts
of that is burning charcoal,
so I need to be here to
stop fires breaking out.
If the fire got out of hand, the
circumstances could be devastating.
Ben sells the charcoal direct to
local villagers for their barbecues,
and earns about 200 pounds for every burn.
Here we go.
Is that supposed to happen?
Yeah.
Right.
How many hours does it take to do it?
From the point we light to
where you actually shut it down,
and then it goes into a cooling
period, is about between 11 to 15 hours.
Still, like tonight, I'll probably be
with it for the first couple of hours,
and then I can probably leave it
for a couple of hours, come back,
then I can probably leave
it for three or four hours.
So you really have to be on site.
You can't nip off home
and keep coming back.
Absolutely. This is actually,
believe it or not, under control.
Oh, yeah. Looks like it.
Although Ben eventually won
his battle with the planners,
his right to live in the woods is
hedged with very strict conditions.
What happens if, for example,
you decide to set up or move on?
I mean, can you sell the house or what?
No, no, I can't sell the house.
I can't sell the
house. It has a clause
on it that ties the
house directly to me.
If I was to sell the
land and the business,
the house would
have to come down.
You are joking.
No, I'm not. You seal up.
OK. All of this means that Ben's house,
which should be one of his greatest
assets, isn't really worth a penny.
Still, it'll provide him with a home
that's warm and dry come the winter,
if it all goes according to plan.
It's now August, and the warm
summer sun is drawing in volunteers
for Ben's project from near and far.
The latest recruit is a
student from Denmark.
I like to build organic houses,
so I travel around the world
and build stuff like this.
Volunteer labour may be financially
cheap, but it has its own price.
One week I might have
three or four people turn up,
and the next week I might
have three or four people turn up.
The next week I could be on my own.
So it's very hard to plan
a schedule around that.
You have to adapt to
who's here and what
their skills are and
what you can get done.
But I suppose for my own
sense of where winter is,
and it coming and feeling already
that the nights are drawing in,
that's starting to push me a little harder.
I am Halloween.
I want to be shutting the door.
Halloween is just
eight weeks away, and
right now there aren't
any doors to shut.
Ben hasn't even got any walls yet.
His workforce has also
shrunk to two - Anders and Julie,
who are just finishing off the floor walls.
The stage we're at now
has just got the floor down,
and then can get all
this insulation blown in.
Then from there it's really... Get
the bare walls in, plaster them up,
plaster the windows in,
and board up on the outside,
a few doors here and
there, things like that.
Fireplace, great burn, plumbing, electrics.
Yeah, one or two bits,
but I think I'll get there.
This is the insulation
going in at long
last, which is great
to see that happening.
We're insulating all the roof and
the floors with warm cell insulation,
which is recycled newspaper
and telephone directory mix,
which has a very
good insulation value,
and it's an environmentally
sound product
and it's sort of ideal
for this type of house.
Now the floors are in,
Ben can start the walls.
A simple studwork frame,
again made from his own trees,
supports the exterior skin
of waney-edged oak boards,
which are painstakingly cut to
fit against the round wood posts.
It's challenging this one,
it's going to be sweet.
Rather than getting the look of
just a sort of a straight clad wall,
you actually see the frames and
the shape of the round wood timber,
which I think really adds to
the character of the house.
The rustic oak's just
the skin of the building.
It'll hide a breather
membrane and 16
inches of straw bale
insulation behind it.
Gosh, Ben.
It's actually quite beautiful.
Yeah, thank you.
I wasn't prepared for this.
I mean, I thought it
would be, how shall
I say, you know,
wobbly, waney-edged,
a bit hippie maybe, you know, rustic.
Yeah, yeah.
But I wasn't prepared for it
to be beautiful, which it is.
I don't think I've ever
seen anything quite like this.
And kind of deciding, you know,
the floor treatments, the wall finishes,
the width of these waney
boards, all of this stuff.
I mean, how instrumental
has your architect
been and how much
have you done yourself?
I've done quite a lot of it myself.
Basically, I sort of employed
John Reerley at the stage
to help me sort of sort out building regs
and bring the original
drawings I had up to scratch.
And he's been great at
the other end of a phone,
if there's anything, you
know, I'm not certain of.
But when it comes to
actual finishes, construction,
choices of wood and stuff,
that's been very much down to me.
So when I look above my head
at the underside of this porch roof,
you seem to have made
some very conscious decisions
as you've gone along about the
quality of the material that you're using
and how you treat each structural element.
Yeah, and I think with,
especially with something like this,
I mean, to start with, I love
the contrast of light and dark.
I love to show wood in its
true form, in other words,
sometimes with the bark
on, sometimes removed.
And out, what I
call indoor outside
spaces, sort of balcony
areas for Anders,
to me, at places I
know, I'll probably
spend as much time
as I will in the house.
And what I look up at is
equally important to me,
is what I look at
anywhere else in the house,
and it has to be
aesthetically pleasing.
It's now September, and Ben
makes a start on the inside walls,
which are made out of this stuff, barley.
He's ordered 350 barley straw
bales from a neighbouring farm.
They were cut last year and have
been stacked in a barn over winter.
I've been a bit unlucky
that a winter before last
was one of the wettest
winters we've had,
and everyone's been
very short of straw,
and the straw's actually had
a bit of a premium this year.
So that being said, compare
it to normal costings of walls.
It's incredibly cheap
worth building a
wall, then you get the
insulation thrown in.
Straw's a fraction of the
price of bricks and mortar.
It's a very unusual choice of material,
but totally in keeping with Ben's
organic, low-tech approach to building.
Anyone can build with straw.
And since Ben's walls aren't load-bearing,
the straw's just stacked up between
the gaps in the timber frame and stud
work.
That pile you're sat next to is four.
They are full-size
bales, and they happen
to be the distance
between the two windows.
Is that planned? It is planned, yeah.
The original plans
for the house were
actually laid out in
bale measurements.
Really? Yeah. Very clever.
So the whole thing has been
designed around the bales.
Like, where I'm sitting, it's
going to be a window seat,
so it's exactly one bale high.
The end-crack frame is one bale's
width away from the outside wall.
The straw slots into the gap.
Now, there's a bit of a gap here, so...
Yep, well, we'll go towards that gap first.
Yeah, OK.
Yep.
Then the bales are pinned
together with Chestnut stakes.
So the cabling for all the wiring,
that's running through the straw?
It's got copper around it, so it's
fireproof. It's also vermin-proof.
But it's also very
expensive, isn't it, Pyro?
It is, yeah.
But it's not as expensive as
rebuilding a house from fire.
Point taken.
Once in place, the bales
are shaped with a chainsaw.
Really dense, really nice.
Yep.
With a good plastering
surface, it gets rough.
The straw bale
gives it a real sense of
solidity and mass
and weight, doesn't it?
It does.
Makes you feel very secure.
It does, secure and warm.
And angling the windows gives you
a lot more interesting light coming in.
These look very nice, these laths.
Are they Chestnut?
Yeah, this is ribbon Chestnut lath.
The beauty of this is because
it's been split around on the saw
and you've got a
much rougher surface,
which means the
plaster grip's a lot better.
And then what's this?
This must be your kitchen here, isn't it?
This is the kitchen, yep.
The key thing here for
me was that the kitchen
had to be open plan
into the main room.
Yeah.
So you can be here cooking
and talking with people.
Wow, this is absolutely beautiful.
The sculpture,
you've curved this wall
and you've got that
nice square edge seat
and these lovely curving
returns on these windows,
which, as you say, kind of give
much more light into the room.
It's actually lovely
stuff to work with straw.
Ben's house is almost watertight.
There's still an end wall to
be built and the glass to go in,
but of course with Ben it's all relative.
At the moment Ben doesn't
have a proper roof over his head.
So where are you sleeping now?
Are you sleeping on the straw here?
I've been up in the tree and
occasionally in the leaky caravan.
Because you had flu, didn't you?
I did, yeah.
Well, that must have
been pretty blinking
miserable on your
sleeping platform.
I'm quite used to sort of having
flu in bad weather conditions.
So you can't wait to be in, in fact.
Absolutely, can't wait to be in. Yeah.
It's only a few weeks away now.
Very exciting.
Yeah, it is.
I don't think I have
ever visited a project
as relaxed or as
enjoyable as this one.
The house is looking great,
the build's going really well
and on a day like today this
setting, this setting is just magical.
But Ben is still living outdoors.
He has no way of keeping warm.
He's sleeping on that platform
and it's the middle of October.
This house has to be
completely weatherproof by winter
and no one knows when
the weather's going to turn.
But sooner or later it will.
As Halloween approaches,
the weather starts to turn.
Ben's moved inside to
finish the interior of the house.
The Chestnut lath walls
need to be covered in Clay,
which is dug out of Ben's
own pond just down the hill.
There's very little sand
in it, it's just really sticky.
It's a very small area.
It's a very small area.
It's a very small area.
There's very little sand in it, it's
just really sticky, beautiful texture.
There used to be an old brick
works not far down the bottom
and this was one of the
old catheter ponds for it.
So I know that
Clay is brick quality
Clay, it's ideal for
making earth plasters.
It's going to be great.
The Clay is mixed with water, sand
and straw to make a sticky plaster.
One of the beauties of working with
an earth plaster is you can actually use
your hands and there's something,
I don't know, I suppose it's tactile
and you're much more in touch
with the material you're using.
Most people wait until the
plastering's done before they move in.
But for Ben, the temptation of a roof
and four walls, however unfinished, is
just too much.
Yeah, I've been sleeping in here
for about a week now, which is lovely.
I'm just sleeping on
straw bales at the moment.
It's the closest I've been
to a house for a long time.
I decided to get the stove going,
so it's the first time it's been lit.
And it's the first kettle boiling,
first cylinder of hot waters, nearly
ready for a bath.
It's pretty good, really.
Lighting the wood-burning stove is
something of a milestone in Ben's life.
It'll provide him
with heating and hot
running water for the
first time in ten years.
60 degrees. It feels amazing.
I'd be glad when it's sort of
flushed through the system.
It comes out a bit
clearer, but it feels great.
It's just a weird
feeling, knowing I
can just turn the tap
and get hot water.
It's not something I'm used to.
Turn that off, get it too hot.
The glass is one of the
last things to be installed.
It'll finally seal the house
against the weather.
But there's still one very
messy task to be done.
The straw bales must be lime plastered.
Lime's a perfect match for the straw.
It breathes moisture,
so the bales will stay dry.
It's pretty rodent-proof.
And unlike conventional hard plasters,
this one will set slowly and flex.
Ideal in a wooden straw house
that'll move and creak over time.
The determination has paid off.
By the end of November,
his house is up and ready.
It's taken just seven months.
I am so relieved
that Ben doesn't have
to spend another
winter in this shack.
And I'm also very
interested to see how
the inside of this
place has turned out.
- Hi, Kevin. - Ben, how are you?
- Well, thanks. - Nice to see you.
- Yeah. - How's your house?
It's coming over local.
Well, what a place.
Do you know, the outside
just doesn't prepare you for this.
- No, it's quite a contra, also.
- It is, it is.
It's like Beverly Hillbilly outside.
This is more like something
out of... It's like a fairy tale, really.
It's beautiful.
That big window makes it, doesn't it?
It's like a medieval house.
It's like a medieval
house, but it's much,
much lighter.
- Yeah. - It's flooded with light.
Yeah, medieval houses, you
come in and they're very dark.
Yeah, this is entirely different.
The upper level
will eventually have
floorboard at each end
to make storage areas,
but the round wood frame
will still be totally visible.
And you've even done the fireplace.
Is that Clay?
- It is indeed, yeah. - Yeah.
- Where are you sleeping?
- In the hammock at the moment, yeah.
- I haven't made the bed yet.
- The kitchen?
- Yep. - That's all in.
That's up and running.
Mmm. Yes, not exactly
the most, how should I say,
luxuriously appointed kitchen, this, is it?
It is to me.
In general, this is as much
as I need for a kitchen.
Rayburn?
- Water and staff. - Absolutely.
- But no fridge? - If there is.
- Is there always that? - Outside.
It's wintertime.
You don't need a fridge in the winter.
- Water? - Yep.
- This is... - The spring water.
This just comes from up the hill.
- Indeed, yeah. - This is hot.
- Yep. - This is rainwater.
- Yep. - It's coming through the wall.
- It's getting there. - It's getting there.
- It'll be burning in a minute.
- The water is running off a back boiler
and it goes through the wall. - Yeah?
- Into the bathroom.
- Just the other side of the wall?
- Yeah. - What about the shower?
I'll tile that out, but all the
plumbing's there ready to go.
- Or mod cons. - Absolutely.
Or mod cons, except, I noticed, this
is where your lav is supposed to be.
- That's right. - Yeah?
- Yeah. - But it's not here?
- It's not here yet.
- What do you do for bodily functions?
Basically, at the moment, I'm
still using the outside compost bin.
You're not still using that
privy up the hill, are you?
- I am still using it. - Really?
- So what's this room?
- This is the bedroom.
- Oh. - Oh, Ben, it's red.
- Yeah. - Wonderful colour.
This is what?
This is a limewash of iron
oxide mixed with turmeric.
- The spice?
- Yeah, cos that's what we had to hand
and I know they've used it in
temples in India for colouring.
- Mmm, tasty wall. - Yeah, absolutely.
- So where's this wood come from?
- This is out of the woods here.
I've used, really, pieces I've
had stacked around for a while
and which I'd normally make
into seats or furniture to sell
and thought, "Well, that'll do nicely."
Ben's house is half a
mile from the nearest
road and cut off
from main services,
so Ben taps into a free
local power supply - the sun.
- Show me these solar panels.
- OK, you've got them.
- Where do they come from?
- They came off the Big Brother half.
- They did not! - Yeah.
How much power do they generate?
- That's half a kilowatt up there.
- That sounds like quite a lot.
It is a lot, yeah.
So what happens to the
electricity once it's generated there?
- The electricity from there
then runs into my battery storage.
- Yeah? Where are they? - Just around here.
These are the batteries.
- Oh, goodness me, they are huge!
- They are.
They're two volts each
from an ex-submarine.
- Submarine batteries. - 920 amp-hour.
So they've got very long storage.
If I don't get any sun or wind for a week,
I'm still going to have a bit of
power in there to give me lights.
- And that's without using the
wind-generated power you've got?
- That's right, yeah.
Together, the wind
turbines and the solar panels
will generate electricity in
most weather conditions.
It's a low-voltage system, but it
provides enough power to run lights,
a stereo and a laptop computer,
which is about all Ben needs.
As well as power, Ben's
also self-sufficient in water.
You've got the rainwater coming
off the roof, down the downpipe,
and then along this orange pipe,
down towards the
rainwater tank at the far end.
- That green one down there? - Yeah.
- What happens if you run out of rainwater?
- I won't run out of rainwater.
I'm confident of that,
because I've worked out
the surface area of the roof,
and if you multiply that by
the average annual rainfall,
I've got enough for probably
half a village, let alone myself.
- So you're self-sufficient in
water because you've got a spring?
- Mm-hm. - Yeah?
You're going to be self-sufficient
in sewerage, obviously,
because you're going to
have a composting toilet.
- Yeah. - Self-sufficient in electricity.
- Yeah.
- In rainwater, rainwater harvesting.
- Yeah. - And fuel, of course.
I mean, you've got,
you know, 100 acres of...
Eating wood, cooking wood.
- It's all here. It's all everything.
- It's all here.
When Ben started this project,
I wasn't quite sure what his
house was going to look like.
After all, this is the first
house he's ever built.
But Ben is a born designer.
There's impeccable
attention to detail
here, and a beautiful
and modest simplicity.
The design of this
house succeeds because
it's basically made
out of one material,
from one place, driven by one
idea - the vision of one man.
You started out with
this extraordinary idea
that you would only spend
£25,000 on this house.
Um... Have you?
Um... No.
- I'm over budget. - By how much?
- £3,000.
I didn't know the price of glazing,
so I put in a total abstract
guess and I was well out.
- By how much?
- By about £800.
- All right. That's significant.
- It is on this budget, yeah.
- Yeah. How do you feel you've done?
To me, it started at a very basic level.
I needed to move out of a leaky
caravan and end up with a shelter.
And at that level, I've
done exceedingly well.
It's a huge achievement.
I didn't doubt I wouldn't get here,
but there were moments in the
middle when it looked a long way away.
So how on earth do you think
you're going to cope living indoors
for the first time in ten years?
Well, I've been indoors
in caravans and yurts.
This is just a slightly bigger indoors
and it's more comfortable indoors,
but the processes
are the same. You've
still got to light
fires to keep warm.
You're cooking over fires.
You've still got that connection of...
- You really want that.
- Oh, yeah. That's essential.
If I cut off from that, I'd lose
track of what I was doing.
That's what makes me work and function.
I'm really enjoying having hot water
without having to boil it in a kettle.
It's such a lovely thing to hear.
It's such a modest ambition
for someone to have.
No, it's great, just knowing I can
turn on a tap and have a hot bath at the
end of the day.
It's fantastic.
It's not a primitive life you're leading.
I'm trying to bring the
best of modern technology,
the most sustainable parts
of technology, into a dwelling,
but at the same time not lose the
essence of the natural materials that it's
built with.
Are you pleased with
the way it's turned out?
Yeah, it's beyond what I dreamt.
It's like walking into a temple to wood.
It's my expression of taking the
woodland and creating a house out of it.
To me that feels very harmonious,
I feel when I'm sitting in here.
It feels curvaceous, it
feels warm, it feels friendly,
it feels like a reflection of
the outside on the inside.
The concept was to create a
dwelling that became part of the wood.
My lifestyle would move straight from
the wood into the house and back out
into the wood.
And yeah, I feel like
we've achieved that already.
I think it's what I've been
looking for for a very long time.
It feels like a completion of a
cycle of what I'm doing here.
And I feel like now I've sort of got
stability in where I'm living and where
I'm operating my life from.
I can now put a lot more energy
out into the woodland, which is what I
really want to do.
This is a house in the
woods, made out of the woods.
But that idea doesn't represent going
back to nature in that kind of hippie
way, or somehow living in the past.
Ben's harnessing modern
technology here, like the solar panels,
which in turn are harnessing the
elements to give him everything he needs.
Heat, light, water and comfort.
I think he's achieved a very rare thing.
A truly modern, truly natural house.
under canvas and in caravans and it's
been hard at times.
It's spot on!
It's just a weird feeling now I can
just turn the tap and get a hold of it.
I am Halloween.
I want to be shutting the door.
This week I'm on my way to meet a
man who's going to build his house in the
middle of the woods.
This is West Sussex, heart of the
stockbroker belt where the planners won't
even let you put up a garden shed.
And yet, up here on a site that's so
hidden away it hasn't even got a proper
road, he's achieved the unthinkable.
He's got planning
permission to build a house.
Hi Kevin.
Ben, how are you?
Nice to see you.
Yeah, and you.
Nice to be here.
Ben Law has been living
in this clearing for ten years.
This is very beautiful Ben.
Yeah, it's the magical spot.
And you've got a view as well.
Yep.
And why are you here?
I work the woods, I'm a coppice worker,
traditional woodsman and caretaker
of this bit of land.
Ben earns his living
from the forest selling
furniture, charcoal and
coppiced wood for fencing.
He manages his business from a collection
of temporary log cabins and tents.
His current home is a rusty caravan
but now he plans to build something much
more permanent.
You're not changing your lifestyle are you?
No, just continuing it and
making it a little more comfortable.
I've been up here ten years living
under canvas and in caravans and it's
been hard at times,
certainly during the winter.
You've been wanting to build a house
presumably then from the beginning.
Yeah, I certainly never planned
on living under canvas forever.
So you've been fighting for
planning permission for all that time?
I was going to say fighting was a
strong word but it's probably fairly
suitable actually.
Our woodlands are so well protected
that Ben's house will be one of the
first permanent homes to be
built in a forest in fifty years.
What's it going to look like, this house?
It's going to be made
of wood from the woods.
The idea being that
it will season and
blend into the
woodland quite quickly.
It's not going to look
like a one of these
is it? It's not going
to look like a Ben.
It's not going to look like a temporary
shelter. It's going to be a properly
finished house.
Absolutely.
Ben's using building techniques
that our ancestors used centuries ago.
First he'll build a skeleton from timber
A-frames made with tree trunks from
his own forest.
Unusually the roof goes on next.
It's covered with traditional wooden tiles
or shingles.
Then the walls will be built out of
straw bales clad on the outside in oak.
Inside there'll be one
large open plan living area.
There's one bedroom
for Ben, a bathroom
and storage areas
on the first floor.
So how much is it costing?
Between twenty to twenty five thousand.
That sounds incredibly cheap.
Sounds very expensive to me.
The big cost of the timber is sort of
one thing I'm saving which would make
a big difference.
And the walls and the roof.
And so your shell and your
floors and your structure is all here.
It's all already existing. It's out there.
Absolutely.
Brought in and stuck together.
Up here in the middle
of the woods Ben's
totally dependent on
solar and wind power.
And the new house will be too.
The last thing I want to do is dig
huge trenches, bring power lines in,
bring loads of services in, heavy drainage.
Although it's going to
be a comfortable house
I want it to sit gently
in the woodland.
By sorting out all the services myself
I'm sort of minimising that impact.
Do you have any idea
how long it's going to take?
Yeah.
He says very confidently.
No, it's got to be finished by next winter.
The caravan I'm living in
has got five holes in the floor.
It's got to be finished by next winter
although actually I have no idea how
long it is really going to take.
That gives him about
six months to build
somewhere warm
and dry for the winter.
Early in May Ben's builders arrive.
They're not your average team.
They've agreed to work for Ben for free.
In exchange Ben's promised
to teach them carpentry skills.
Steve and I are on the local tug of
war team so we have quite a good
experience of pulling on
ropes when we need to.
So I think that's quite a good mixture.
There's James and he's put up a lot
of marquees in his time so he's used to
ropes and loops and knots.
So yeah, I think between us and
with his guidance all should go well.
Does anybody want a hard hat? They
are available for anyone that wants them.
Viv Goodings, a master carpenter,
is the only one who's built a timber
framed house before.
Did everyone hear that?
Their first task is to put up the
basic wooden frame of Ben's house.
Ben's already cut and prepared eight
sweet Chestnut tree trunks from his.
wood and made them up into four A-frames.
Ben, you're going to operate the turfer?
If anyone's got a problem with anything,
your rope locks up, you're not sure
what's going, just yell stop.
We'll have a look, sort
it out and we'll carry on.
The process is really slow and it's
really controlled and as long as we all
stay in the right
place to do our thing
it's going to go up
with a hammer hitch.
Viv makes it sound
straightforward but what
they're attempting
is extremely difficult.
There's no crane to lift these huge
timbers. Ben wants to do it all with a
system of pulleys and ropes.
I'm a little bit nervous, you know,
it's sort of, it's a really big moment
in the build in a lot of ways.
I mean, once this is up, everything
which goes on afterwards stabilises it
more and more.
So this is a, yeah, a real key point.
This type of timber frame
is called a cruck frame.
The tree trunks are crossed at the
top to make a fork or cruck and pinned
together with wooden pegs.
The last thing to go into place is a
large beam, the Ridge pole, which sits
in the top of each fork
and ties them all together.
The feet are lined up to sit on stone pads.
The bottom of each leg
is tied to a nearby tree.
As we start pulling, the frame
naturally just wants to slide along the
ground and the foot slide on.
So we're creating a little harness to
hold the bottom of the foot so we can
restrain it back to a stake over there.
So that doesn't happen and then once
it becomes vertical it's not a problem.
The team take their positions, one
man on each rope to control the lift.
Better start pulling then Ben.
Ben takes up the slack on the winch.
He's hoping to lift three whole
30 foot tree trunks at once.
Despite the ropes, the feet are slipping.
Hold on Ben.
We'll try and put some
human power behind the feet.
Yeah, no, that makes sense.
So if we can get it started with us on it.
Once we get that first lift
going, it should be alright.
The first A-frame is the hardest to
lift because it's also carrying the full
weight of the Ridge pole.
The joints on the croc
frames are designed
to take the load in
a specific direction.
And while they're going
up, they're not taking
the load in the way that
they're designed to do.
And so the danger
is that you overstress
that joint and split
one of the uprights.
Because everything's under
an enormous amount of tension.
Once the frame's up, the wood's in
compression, the load's going straight
down through it.
So it's strong and it's
working as it should.
But in that interim period,
that's when it's at its most fragile.
What would be nice is just to lift the
Ridge round and drop it onto the next
crossbearer.
You can do that.
You alright with that?
Lovely.
Okay Ben, you're nearly there.
Back lines, are you tight?
Okay, stop there Ben.
That's it, we're up.
Ben checks whether the crossbeam is level.
Oh, spot on!
Yes!
Is it?
It's spot on!
By good or what?
It's literally that, it's spot on.
Brilliant.
First one's always the worst.
It's taken all morning
to get the first
A-frame up and there
are three more to go.
But Ben and Viv have hit a problem.
The Ridge pole is jammed against
an A-frame that's only half up.
We're just trying
to get the Ridge to
see it into the next
crook that's going up.
And it's all a bit messy at the moment.
It's stable as it is, so it's time to
have a little rethink I think for a
moment and see if we can get it down.
Ben's team are just like any
other set of builders really.
You hit a problem, put the kettle on.
It's close.
After a bit of thinking time, Viv
comes up with a high-tech solution.
Poke it with a ladder.
Right, try to look like we always
meant it to happen that way.
The Hall of Way.
Yeah, keep going.
Yep, she'll do.
That's it.
Near as damned.
Yep, near as damned.
Come on.
Oh, come on!
That's perfect in my book.
I come laden with
biscuits and milk,
and a voice and a
guitar as smooth as silk.
Cut.
Biscuits and milk.
Excellent. Perfect timing.
It was Ben's idea to build a crook-framed
house, but he used architect John
Rees to help him with the design.
It wasn't a typical
client-architect relationship.
Normally when you work with clients,
you take a brief from them and you
prescribe exactly how
the house is to be built.
You say what size the timbers are
going to be that are required to support
the floor and the roof
and all the rest of it.
But what's nice
about working with
Ben is I have to start
from another angle.
I have to ask Ben what
timber he's got available.
Because Ben had all these big
timbers already chosen, didn't he?
That's right.
Big tree trunks,
basically, that he's
collected as he's
worked through the forest.
Yeah, the engineer and I cannot
suddenly decide we want to use a certain
sort of timber to do the job.
We have to start from what Ben has.
Ben's team are on
the home stretch.
The last two pieces
go up within an hour.
It's taken just one day
to put up the crook frame.
I think it looks lovely.
Absolutely brilliant.
Couldn't have been
a better day, really.
I think it's almost time for beer.
To build a conventional
house really well,
I think you need just
reams of drawings.
You need a bill of quantities,
a full specification, a schedule.
You need contracts with your builders.
And if you don't have any of these,
then the whole thing can just spiral out
of control.
But Ben's approach is entirely different.
If he's got any plans at
all, they're in his head.
So, maybe it doesn't
matter that nobody
on this build has
built a house before.
Maybe it's fine that he
doesn't have a schedule.
Maybe it's okay that he makes
up so much of it as he goes along.
But personally, I'd find
the whole thing terrifying.
Ben is just four weeks into his build.
A team of volunteer carpenters are
extending the crook frame to create
floors and verandas.
Ben's cottage is starting to grow.
It's looking really magnificent, Ben.
Are you pleased? Yeah, very pleased.
You should be.
What a structure.
Yeah, it's lovely to see the shape
of the crooks and the round wood.
It's an unusual shape, isn't it?
I mean, most buildings
are square rectangular.
This is very triangular.
It is. It's one of the
most simplest and
strongest ways of
putting wood together.
Ben's house is being built in a
tradition that's at least 1,300 years old.
And especially typical of Ireland,
Wales and Northern England.
Crook frame buildings like this
cottage followed simple patterns
and used curved and uneven
timber straight from the forest.
Early wooden buildings were quick to
build, they were easy to build and they
were inexpensive.
And that's partly because
the design was so efficient.
All the infill material
like this wattle
and door came from
the surrounding fields.
It was locally available and it was cheap.
But these buildings
were also limited
in size because they
were determined by
the length of these crook frames,
which in turn depended on the
height of the tree that you could find.
Crook frame houses were eventually
superseded by more sophisticated timber
frame styles.
Post and truss and box frame methods
which could go bigger and higher
and which produced great
medieval timber buildings.
It's only now after, what, 200 years
of advances in steel and concrete and
glass technology that
architects are exploring
the structural
qualities of wood again.
This timber grid shell by the
architect Ted Cullinan is the first of its
kind in Britain.
It's still a timber frame building.
It uses green oak.
But it also exploits
modern engineering,
computer modelling
and synthetic glues.
It's a wonderful
contemporary structure and
it's genetically linked
to the crook frame.
But it does not
exploit one structural
property of wood that
Ben knows all about.
Most timber frame buildings, old
and new, use square cut timber.
Ben wants to keep all his timber
in the round, as nature intended.
With timber that comes square, you
know, I mean there are measurements
and there are engineering
tolerances for materials like that.
Well, you're dealing with stuff in
the round all the time, aren't you?
So, I mean, is this stronger or is
this weaker or is it easier to calculate
the loads of this kind of material?
Well, in the round, the
wood is 50% stronger.
Working with wood, you know
that as soon as you slice into it,
as soon as you cut through
the grain, you're weakening it.
At the moment, this
has the whole fibres
of the grain running
right the way through.
Yeah. And the other thing that interests
me about round timber is that when
you're working with
flat and you join,
you connect two
pieces of wood together,
you've got a big area of surface
contact between the two pieces of timber.
What happens with round wood? Because
with two Poles, it's just a tiny point
of contact.
It is indeed. At the moment, we're
working on a type of cup joint where you
literally gouge out
what I call a dish into each side of
the round wood so they come together.
Well, they're two cupped hands like that.
Absolutely. So the two should meet
very, very snugly.
And then you basically peg a dowel
through and wedge it and secure it.
This project is a real labour of
love, a totally handcrafted house.
Each timber for the frame is cut and
prepared and fixed using traditional
jointing methods.
It's all held together with these pegs.
With oak pegs.
Oak pegs. Yeah. What we wanted
really was a well-seasoned dowel.
I'd say that the
dowel's dry and it's
already shrunk to the
size it's going to be.
Otherwise, if it shrinks, if it's
damp and it shrinks, it'll fall out.
Yeah.
As well as pegging the joint, Viv and
Andrew begin adding timber braces to
the frame to strengthen it.
So what does this piece of
wood do in the building then?
This is the main diagonal brace
for the main set of cruck frames.
It's one of them that's up
there that makes it a cross.
Absolutely. Cross-shaped
brace. And why
has it got this
extraordinary curve to it?
The idea that we can come out at right
angles from the base of the cruck and
go swooping off up towards the top.
This one you made earlier.
This is one we started
and we've rejected
it because, as you
can see, there's rot.
There's loads of holes in it.
All this stuff in here.
So you're missing one of these.
We are.
What are you going to do about that?
Go find another one.
The beauty of this project is that
virtually everything Ben needs to build
his house is right here around him.
There's no waiting for suppliers,
no trips to the builders' merchants, no
expensive delivery charges.
If he needs a piece of wood,
he just walks out and gets one.
Which one?
You see this one sweeping out?
Oh yeah.
You see the curved shape at the bottom?
Yeah.
That's what we're after.
Yeah. But then how do you know
that this one hasn't got some rot in it?
Well, to be honest, I don't.
You really have to take your chance
until you cut it and explore inside it.
Is that rotten?
Is that solid? Can you tell?
It does look like there
might be a bit of rot in it.
Yeah, I'd be a little
concerned about that one.
So we're going to look for another one?
Yep.
Ben's not just searching
for a sound piece of timber.
The round wood frame will
be visible in the finished house,
so he's also searching for pieces
that will add to the character of the
house and look good.
How's that looking?
Well, is there anything there to upset you?
No, I think that's going to
be absolutely fine, that one.
Lovely swept curve, got
plenty of material there.
I think it'll be a very good match to
the others as well, which is, although
I don't mind it, they're
slightly different.
It's nice to sort of
have a bit of symmetry.
It's certainly very pleasing.
Yeah.
The trees in Ben's wood are sweet Chestnut.
It's a strong, fast-growing hardwood
that provides him with a regular supply
of building materials.
These Poles get heavier, don't they?
The longer you hold them
magically they get to get heavier.
You can have a light one.
What do you think so?
Down here?
Where do you want it?
Down here's great.
On there?
That'll do nicely.
What's next then, with that?
It's ready for peeling.
With something like this, which
is green, it feels very, very clean.
You're going to trust me
with having a go with that?
Am I likely to dig into
the... Is it very sharp?
It is very sharp, yeah.
Wow.
Beautiful, isn't it?
It is, yeah.
It's a nice tool.
So what happens now?
What happens now
is, um, I'll give this
to Viv and he'll make
a tenon on the end.
Having carved out the joints, all
Viv needs to do is slot in the missing
piece of timber and
the bracing is finished.
It's as easy as that.
Ben's been building for two months
now and so far he's managed to hold on to
his volunteer workforce.
This free labour is one of the things
that makes this project possible.
To keep them all
sweet, Ben's providing
gourmet meals from
his outdoor kitchen.
You must be feeding about
20 people a day, aren't you?
No, I don't have anything
between four and ten, I suppose.
Really? Who's doing the cooking?
Um, I suppose I have
to say I do most of it.
Is that true?
Yeah.
As well as getting his
building materials from the
wood, Ben's pretty
self-sufficient in food too.
I'll grow you on herbs. I know that.
You'll grow your own veg.
I'll grow some of my own veg, yeah.
I'll grow a lot of fruit.
Wild strawberries, apples,
plums, pears, mulberries.
I've barbecued at home but
I've never cooked on an open fire.
It's like second
nature to me, I mean,
having been cooking
on it for ten years.
What are you going to cook on when
you're in, though? You're going to cook
on an conventional...
I'll have a raven, so it'll still be
fire-based. I'll still be cooking out
here in the summer.
Yeah. It'll be wonderful.
A few days later, Ben
starts work on the roof.
The rafters are on
and Viv and Julie begin
covering them with a
waterproof membrane.
Ben's made about 12,000
wooden shingles to tile his
roof, all of them hand-cut
from local Sweet Chestnut.
Sweet Chestnut's
been used for shingles
for years in France
and across Europe.
It's just very rarely been used here.
In France you've got shingles lasting
40 years plus, so I'm quite confident.
Hopefully it'll be my son who
re-shingles this house, not me.
The shingles are heavily overlapped
to encourage the water to run off rather
than soak through.
And if any water does get through,
the house is protected by the waterproof
membrane underneath.
Vanessa, I can't get
you to split that one
down. I'll do about
two-thirds the size.
That'll be good.
Thank you. Yeah.
It takes Ben just 10
days to do half the roof.
Each tile has to be pre-drilled to
stop it from splitting when it's nailed
onto the battens.
Then the tiles are
individually fitted. The
result is a roof with
a unique character.
They look absolutely beautiful.
It's a really textured finish you get.
And within a year or so
they'll start to go slightly greyer.
And they'll look like they've been
here 30 years, which is part of what I'm
trying to achieve with this house,
so it blends so well into the woodland.
This extraordinary
handmade house is as
beautiful and natural as
anything I've ever seen.
At the moment it looks like some
kind of South East Asian beach hut.
I can't wait to see what it
looks like when it's finished.
Ben is one of a handful of people in
Britain allowed to build in the woods.
Our planning laws are designed to
protect the countryside from development,
but Ben's circumstances
are pretty exceptional.
How did you get your planning application?
Because, I mean, not everybody
gets to build a house in the wood.
My planning application
has taken a long time,
and it's been built up by the planners
eventually understanding that I have
a genuine need to be here.
One, to look after the woodland,
to maintain my business,
and one of the primary parts
of that is burning charcoal,
so I need to be here to
stop fires breaking out.
If the fire got out of hand, the
circumstances could be devastating.
Ben sells the charcoal direct to
local villagers for their barbecues,
and earns about 200 pounds for every burn.
Here we go.
Is that supposed to happen?
Yeah.
Right.
How many hours does it take to do it?
From the point we light to
where you actually shut it down,
and then it goes into a cooling
period, is about between 11 to 15 hours.
Still, like tonight, I'll probably be
with it for the first couple of hours,
and then I can probably leave it
for a couple of hours, come back,
then I can probably leave
it for three or four hours.
So you really have to be on site.
You can't nip off home
and keep coming back.
Absolutely. This is actually,
believe it or not, under control.
Oh, yeah. Looks like it.
Although Ben eventually won
his battle with the planners,
his right to live in the woods is
hedged with very strict conditions.
What happens if, for example,
you decide to set up or move on?
I mean, can you sell the house or what?
No, no, I can't sell the house.
I can't sell the
house. It has a clause
on it that ties the
house directly to me.
If I was to sell the
land and the business,
the house would
have to come down.
You are joking.
No, I'm not. You seal up.
OK. All of this means that Ben's house,
which should be one of his greatest
assets, isn't really worth a penny.
Still, it'll provide him with a home
that's warm and dry come the winter,
if it all goes according to plan.
It's now August, and the warm
summer sun is drawing in volunteers
for Ben's project from near and far.
The latest recruit is a
student from Denmark.
I like to build organic houses,
so I travel around the world
and build stuff like this.
Volunteer labour may be financially
cheap, but it has its own price.
One week I might have
three or four people turn up,
and the next week I might
have three or four people turn up.
The next week I could be on my own.
So it's very hard to plan
a schedule around that.
You have to adapt to
who's here and what
their skills are and
what you can get done.
But I suppose for my own
sense of where winter is,
and it coming and feeling already
that the nights are drawing in,
that's starting to push me a little harder.
I am Halloween.
I want to be shutting the door.
Halloween is just
eight weeks away, and
right now there aren't
any doors to shut.
Ben hasn't even got any walls yet.
His workforce has also
shrunk to two - Anders and Julie,
who are just finishing off the floor walls.
The stage we're at now
has just got the floor down,
and then can get all
this insulation blown in.
Then from there it's really... Get
the bare walls in, plaster them up,
plaster the windows in,
and board up on the outside,
a few doors here and
there, things like that.
Fireplace, great burn, plumbing, electrics.
Yeah, one or two bits,
but I think I'll get there.
This is the insulation
going in at long
last, which is great
to see that happening.
We're insulating all the roof and
the floors with warm cell insulation,
which is recycled newspaper
and telephone directory mix,
which has a very
good insulation value,
and it's an environmentally
sound product
and it's sort of ideal
for this type of house.
Now the floors are in,
Ben can start the walls.
A simple studwork frame,
again made from his own trees,
supports the exterior skin
of waney-edged oak boards,
which are painstakingly cut to
fit against the round wood posts.
It's challenging this one,
it's going to be sweet.
Rather than getting the look of
just a sort of a straight clad wall,
you actually see the frames and
the shape of the round wood timber,
which I think really adds to
the character of the house.
The rustic oak's just
the skin of the building.
It'll hide a breather
membrane and 16
inches of straw bale
insulation behind it.
Gosh, Ben.
It's actually quite beautiful.
Yeah, thank you.
I wasn't prepared for this.
I mean, I thought it
would be, how shall
I say, you know,
wobbly, waney-edged,
a bit hippie maybe, you know, rustic.
Yeah, yeah.
But I wasn't prepared for it
to be beautiful, which it is.
I don't think I've ever
seen anything quite like this.
And kind of deciding, you know,
the floor treatments, the wall finishes,
the width of these waney
boards, all of this stuff.
I mean, how instrumental
has your architect
been and how much
have you done yourself?
I've done quite a lot of it myself.
Basically, I sort of employed
John Reerley at the stage
to help me sort of sort out building regs
and bring the original
drawings I had up to scratch.
And he's been great at
the other end of a phone,
if there's anything, you
know, I'm not certain of.
But when it comes to
actual finishes, construction,
choices of wood and stuff,
that's been very much down to me.
So when I look above my head
at the underside of this porch roof,
you seem to have made
some very conscious decisions
as you've gone along about the
quality of the material that you're using
and how you treat each structural element.
Yeah, and I think with,
especially with something like this,
I mean, to start with, I love
the contrast of light and dark.
I love to show wood in its
true form, in other words,
sometimes with the bark
on, sometimes removed.
And out, what I
call indoor outside
spaces, sort of balcony
areas for Anders,
to me, at places I
know, I'll probably
spend as much time
as I will in the house.
And what I look up at is
equally important to me,
is what I look at
anywhere else in the house,
and it has to be
aesthetically pleasing.
It's now September, and Ben
makes a start on the inside walls,
which are made out of this stuff, barley.
He's ordered 350 barley straw
bales from a neighbouring farm.
They were cut last year and have
been stacked in a barn over winter.
I've been a bit unlucky
that a winter before last
was one of the wettest
winters we've had,
and everyone's been
very short of straw,
and the straw's actually had
a bit of a premium this year.
So that being said, compare
it to normal costings of walls.
It's incredibly cheap
worth building a
wall, then you get the
insulation thrown in.
Straw's a fraction of the
price of bricks and mortar.
It's a very unusual choice of material,
but totally in keeping with Ben's
organic, low-tech approach to building.
Anyone can build with straw.
And since Ben's walls aren't load-bearing,
the straw's just stacked up between
the gaps in the timber frame and stud
work.
That pile you're sat next to is four.
They are full-size
bales, and they happen
to be the distance
between the two windows.
Is that planned? It is planned, yeah.
The original plans
for the house were
actually laid out in
bale measurements.
Really? Yeah. Very clever.
So the whole thing has been
designed around the bales.
Like, where I'm sitting, it's
going to be a window seat,
so it's exactly one bale high.
The end-crack frame is one bale's
width away from the outside wall.
The straw slots into the gap.
Now, there's a bit of a gap here, so...
Yep, well, we'll go towards that gap first.
Yeah, OK.
Yep.
Then the bales are pinned
together with Chestnut stakes.
So the cabling for all the wiring,
that's running through the straw?
It's got copper around it, so it's
fireproof. It's also vermin-proof.
But it's also very
expensive, isn't it, Pyro?
It is, yeah.
But it's not as expensive as
rebuilding a house from fire.
Point taken.
Once in place, the bales
are shaped with a chainsaw.
Really dense, really nice.
Yep.
With a good plastering
surface, it gets rough.
The straw bale
gives it a real sense of
solidity and mass
and weight, doesn't it?
It does.
Makes you feel very secure.
It does, secure and warm.
And angling the windows gives you
a lot more interesting light coming in.
These look very nice, these laths.
Are they Chestnut?
Yeah, this is ribbon Chestnut lath.
The beauty of this is because
it's been split around on the saw
and you've got a
much rougher surface,
which means the
plaster grip's a lot better.
And then what's this?
This must be your kitchen here, isn't it?
This is the kitchen, yep.
The key thing here for
me was that the kitchen
had to be open plan
into the main room.
Yeah.
So you can be here cooking
and talking with people.
Wow, this is absolutely beautiful.
The sculpture,
you've curved this wall
and you've got that
nice square edge seat
and these lovely curving
returns on these windows,
which, as you say, kind of give
much more light into the room.
It's actually lovely
stuff to work with straw.
Ben's house is almost watertight.
There's still an end wall to
be built and the glass to go in,
but of course with Ben it's all relative.
At the moment Ben doesn't
have a proper roof over his head.
So where are you sleeping now?
Are you sleeping on the straw here?
I've been up in the tree and
occasionally in the leaky caravan.
Because you had flu, didn't you?
I did, yeah.
Well, that must have
been pretty blinking
miserable on your
sleeping platform.
I'm quite used to sort of having
flu in bad weather conditions.
So you can't wait to be in, in fact.
Absolutely, can't wait to be in. Yeah.
It's only a few weeks away now.
Very exciting.
Yeah, it is.
I don't think I have
ever visited a project
as relaxed or as
enjoyable as this one.
The house is looking great,
the build's going really well
and on a day like today this
setting, this setting is just magical.
But Ben is still living outdoors.
He has no way of keeping warm.
He's sleeping on that platform
and it's the middle of October.
This house has to be
completely weatherproof by winter
and no one knows when
the weather's going to turn.
But sooner or later it will.
As Halloween approaches,
the weather starts to turn.
Ben's moved inside to
finish the interior of the house.
The Chestnut lath walls
need to be covered in Clay,
which is dug out of Ben's
own pond just down the hill.
There's very little sand
in it, it's just really sticky.
It's a very small area.
It's a very small area.
It's a very small area.
There's very little sand in it, it's
just really sticky, beautiful texture.
There used to be an old brick
works not far down the bottom
and this was one of the
old catheter ponds for it.
So I know that
Clay is brick quality
Clay, it's ideal for
making earth plasters.
It's going to be great.
The Clay is mixed with water, sand
and straw to make a sticky plaster.
One of the beauties of working with
an earth plaster is you can actually use
your hands and there's something,
I don't know, I suppose it's tactile
and you're much more in touch
with the material you're using.
Most people wait until the
plastering's done before they move in.
But for Ben, the temptation of a roof
and four walls, however unfinished, is
just too much.
Yeah, I've been sleeping in here
for about a week now, which is lovely.
I'm just sleeping on
straw bales at the moment.
It's the closest I've been
to a house for a long time.
I decided to get the stove going,
so it's the first time it's been lit.
And it's the first kettle boiling,
first cylinder of hot waters, nearly
ready for a bath.
It's pretty good, really.
Lighting the wood-burning stove is
something of a milestone in Ben's life.
It'll provide him
with heating and hot
running water for the
first time in ten years.
60 degrees. It feels amazing.
I'd be glad when it's sort of
flushed through the system.
It comes out a bit
clearer, but it feels great.
It's just a weird
feeling, knowing I
can just turn the tap
and get hot water.
It's not something I'm used to.
Turn that off, get it too hot.
The glass is one of the
last things to be installed.
It'll finally seal the house
against the weather.
But there's still one very
messy task to be done.
The straw bales must be lime plastered.
Lime's a perfect match for the straw.
It breathes moisture,
so the bales will stay dry.
It's pretty rodent-proof.
And unlike conventional hard plasters,
this one will set slowly and flex.
Ideal in a wooden straw house
that'll move and creak over time.
The determination has paid off.
By the end of November,
his house is up and ready.
It's taken just seven months.
I am so relieved
that Ben doesn't have
to spend another
winter in this shack.
And I'm also very
interested to see how
the inside of this
place has turned out.
- Hi, Kevin. - Ben, how are you?
- Well, thanks. - Nice to see you.
- Yeah. - How's your house?
It's coming over local.
Well, what a place.
Do you know, the outside
just doesn't prepare you for this.
- No, it's quite a contra, also.
- It is, it is.
It's like Beverly Hillbilly outside.
This is more like something
out of... It's like a fairy tale, really.
It's beautiful.
That big window makes it, doesn't it?
It's like a medieval house.
It's like a medieval
house, but it's much,
much lighter.
- Yeah. - It's flooded with light.
Yeah, medieval houses, you
come in and they're very dark.
Yeah, this is entirely different.
The upper level
will eventually have
floorboard at each end
to make storage areas,
but the round wood frame
will still be totally visible.
And you've even done the fireplace.
Is that Clay?
- It is indeed, yeah. - Yeah.
- Where are you sleeping?
- In the hammock at the moment, yeah.
- I haven't made the bed yet.
- The kitchen?
- Yep. - That's all in.
That's up and running.
Mmm. Yes, not exactly
the most, how should I say,
luxuriously appointed kitchen, this, is it?
It is to me.
In general, this is as much
as I need for a kitchen.
Rayburn?
- Water and staff. - Absolutely.
- But no fridge? - If there is.
- Is there always that? - Outside.
It's wintertime.
You don't need a fridge in the winter.
- Water? - Yep.
- This is... - The spring water.
This just comes from up the hill.
- Indeed, yeah. - This is hot.
- Yep. - This is rainwater.
- Yep. - It's coming through the wall.
- It's getting there. - It's getting there.
- It'll be burning in a minute.
- The water is running off a back boiler
and it goes through the wall. - Yeah?
- Into the bathroom.
- Just the other side of the wall?
- Yeah. - What about the shower?
I'll tile that out, but all the
plumbing's there ready to go.
- Or mod cons. - Absolutely.
Or mod cons, except, I noticed, this
is where your lav is supposed to be.
- That's right. - Yeah?
- Yeah. - But it's not here?
- It's not here yet.
- What do you do for bodily functions?
Basically, at the moment, I'm
still using the outside compost bin.
You're not still using that
privy up the hill, are you?
- I am still using it. - Really?
- So what's this room?
- This is the bedroom.
- Oh. - Oh, Ben, it's red.
- Yeah. - Wonderful colour.
This is what?
This is a limewash of iron
oxide mixed with turmeric.
- The spice?
- Yeah, cos that's what we had to hand
and I know they've used it in
temples in India for colouring.
- Mmm, tasty wall. - Yeah, absolutely.
- So where's this wood come from?
- This is out of the woods here.
I've used, really, pieces I've
had stacked around for a while
and which I'd normally make
into seats or furniture to sell
and thought, "Well, that'll do nicely."
Ben's house is half a
mile from the nearest
road and cut off
from main services,
so Ben taps into a free
local power supply - the sun.
- Show me these solar panels.
- OK, you've got them.
- Where do they come from?
- They came off the Big Brother half.
- They did not! - Yeah.
How much power do they generate?
- That's half a kilowatt up there.
- That sounds like quite a lot.
It is a lot, yeah.
So what happens to the
electricity once it's generated there?
- The electricity from there
then runs into my battery storage.
- Yeah? Where are they? - Just around here.
These are the batteries.
- Oh, goodness me, they are huge!
- They are.
They're two volts each
from an ex-submarine.
- Submarine batteries. - 920 amp-hour.
So they've got very long storage.
If I don't get any sun or wind for a week,
I'm still going to have a bit of
power in there to give me lights.
- And that's without using the
wind-generated power you've got?
- That's right, yeah.
Together, the wind
turbines and the solar panels
will generate electricity in
most weather conditions.
It's a low-voltage system, but it
provides enough power to run lights,
a stereo and a laptop computer,
which is about all Ben needs.
As well as power, Ben's
also self-sufficient in water.
You've got the rainwater coming
off the roof, down the downpipe,
and then along this orange pipe,
down towards the
rainwater tank at the far end.
- That green one down there? - Yeah.
- What happens if you run out of rainwater?
- I won't run out of rainwater.
I'm confident of that,
because I've worked out
the surface area of the roof,
and if you multiply that by
the average annual rainfall,
I've got enough for probably
half a village, let alone myself.
- So you're self-sufficient in
water because you've got a spring?
- Mm-hm. - Yeah?
You're going to be self-sufficient
in sewerage, obviously,
because you're going to
have a composting toilet.
- Yeah. - Self-sufficient in electricity.
- Yeah.
- In rainwater, rainwater harvesting.
- Yeah. - And fuel, of course.
I mean, you've got,
you know, 100 acres of...
Eating wood, cooking wood.
- It's all here. It's all everything.
- It's all here.
When Ben started this project,
I wasn't quite sure what his
house was going to look like.
After all, this is the first
house he's ever built.
But Ben is a born designer.
There's impeccable
attention to detail
here, and a beautiful
and modest simplicity.
The design of this
house succeeds because
it's basically made
out of one material,
from one place, driven by one
idea - the vision of one man.
You started out with
this extraordinary idea
that you would only spend
£25,000 on this house.
Um... Have you?
Um... No.
- I'm over budget. - By how much?
- £3,000.
I didn't know the price of glazing,
so I put in a total abstract
guess and I was well out.
- By how much?
- By about £800.
- All right. That's significant.
- It is on this budget, yeah.
- Yeah. How do you feel you've done?
To me, it started at a very basic level.
I needed to move out of a leaky
caravan and end up with a shelter.
And at that level, I've
done exceedingly well.
It's a huge achievement.
I didn't doubt I wouldn't get here,
but there were moments in the
middle when it looked a long way away.
So how on earth do you think
you're going to cope living indoors
for the first time in ten years?
Well, I've been indoors
in caravans and yurts.
This is just a slightly bigger indoors
and it's more comfortable indoors,
but the processes
are the same. You've
still got to light
fires to keep warm.
You're cooking over fires.
You've still got that connection of...
- You really want that.
- Oh, yeah. That's essential.
If I cut off from that, I'd lose
track of what I was doing.
That's what makes me work and function.
I'm really enjoying having hot water
without having to boil it in a kettle.
It's such a lovely thing to hear.
It's such a modest ambition
for someone to have.
No, it's great, just knowing I can
turn on a tap and have a hot bath at the
end of the day.
It's fantastic.
It's not a primitive life you're leading.
I'm trying to bring the
best of modern technology,
the most sustainable parts
of technology, into a dwelling,
but at the same time not lose the
essence of the natural materials that it's
built with.
Are you pleased with
the way it's turned out?
Yeah, it's beyond what I dreamt.
It's like walking into a temple to wood.
It's my expression of taking the
woodland and creating a house out of it.
To me that feels very harmonious,
I feel when I'm sitting in here.
It feels curvaceous, it
feels warm, it feels friendly,
it feels like a reflection of
the outside on the inside.
The concept was to create a
dwelling that became part of the wood.
My lifestyle would move straight from
the wood into the house and back out
into the wood.
And yeah, I feel like
we've achieved that already.
I think it's what I've been
looking for for a very long time.
It feels like a completion of a
cycle of what I'm doing here.
And I feel like now I've sort of got
stability in where I'm living and where
I'm operating my life from.
I can now put a lot more energy
out into the woodland, which is what I
really want to do.
This is a house in the
woods, made out of the woods.
But that idea doesn't represent going
back to nature in that kind of hippie
way, or somehow living in the past.
Ben's harnessing modern
technology here, like the solar panels,
which in turn are harnessing the
elements to give him everything he needs.
Heat, light, water and comfort.
I think he's achieved a very rare thing.
A truly modern, truly natural house.