I’ve always loved the mountains and moors of Northern England. Which is just as well, because I’ll be spending quite a bit of time up there with our new project! It’s a fabulous old stone-built barn near the highest market town in England – Alston (good pub-quiz knowledge!), and it’s part-way through conversion into three wonderful homes. With views across the valley over the river Nent, it’s a truly special place.

We’ve been scouring the auctions for a new project, and have our eye on something pretty different & exciting! Watch this space …

We’re proud of the two Smarden properties. We’ve named them The Swifts, after the birds that soared over us all summer and brought joy during what was a pretty difficult time for everyone.
With the airtight & well-insulated SIPs construction, air-source heat pumps (installed by specialist contractors AirTemp) is the perfect fit. It’s the first time we’ve used these, and I’m looking forward to seeing how well they work.
The rental agents are lining up viewings for next weekend – we’re ready to welcome new tenants by Christmas!

It’s been a challenging time to build, with material shortages, price volatility and the constant juggling of manpower and deliveries to keep everyone safe this year, but we’re almost done! We’ve ordered the fruit trees (apples, since you asked, to complement the artisan cider producer at the end of the lane), and the bare-root hedging will be lifted for us in November. We always use Hope’s Grove Nurseries for our hedging – they do an amazing native species mix, with dog rose, blackthorn, field maple and hazel providing food and habitat for a huge range of wildlife.

Our ecological survey didn’t identify any requirement for us to install bird boxes on this one, but we enjoyed watching the swifts soaring above us so much when they arrived on site in May we’re tucking some in behind the weatherboarding. We’ve put in some bat boxes for good measure – with the ponds at the bottom of our meadow this is perfect habitat for them,

We’ve used SIPs panels before, and I really like them. They’re marginally more expensive than a traditional build, but allow you to get watertight faster, with fewer dependencies – particularly with the weather! The excellent team from SIPS@Clays are on site, and the buildings are flying up. Crane is due tomorrow to get the larger roof panels in place, and then we’ll wrap the buildings and be dry.

This is not the ideal time of year to be digging trenches! Nevertheless, our team are persevering and we should be pouring the foundations next week!

We’ve taken possession of a used-but-functional caravan which is doing duty as site office. This seems to mostly involve storing industrial quantities of hand wash, and many many posters about how to operate safely on site. With only one team of subcontractors on site at once (to limit cross-infection between teams), progress isn’t as fast as we might like – but things are moving!

Work has finally started on the Smarden site. The old ramshackle buildings are now down, and site is being cleared for new works. We’re rolling!

Despite the lack of updates, we’ve been working hard moving the Smarden project forward. Things aren’t easy right now – for any of us – but we’re hopeful for the future!