What would you do if
an elderly relative gave you
an heirloom piece of furniture -
I don't know, a beautiful clock?
Well, obviously, not to hurt their feelings,
you would have to repair it, and keep it running,
polish it and look after it, just as you would cherish
and hand polish a beautiful piece of old furniture.
But, what if they gifted you
a brick water cistern on the side of a hill?
I mean, what on Earth would you do with that?
I know!
You could live in it!
Along this Herefordshire valley
once ran a bustling steam railway,
from the late 1800s until the mid-20th century.
Not that you'd know today.
Except that on a nearby hillside
sits an engineering relic from this steam age -
a disused water reservoir that once fed
the thirsty steam engines running in the valley below.
The reservoir and surrounding fields are a special place for Rosa,
whose family have lived in the valley for generations.
The fields overlook my mum's home, where she grew up,
overlook my grandad's home, where he grew up.
The reservoir and the fields to me mean everything.
It's all my memories, from every time I finished school,
I had my horse up here, ride around the fields,
and then when I was young, grandad used to take me up here,
every day when he used to pick me up from school.
Now elderly and living nearby,
Grandad Leo is not, in fact, Rosa's relative,
but became a grandfather figure to her when she was very young.
I don't actually remember life without him.
He's just always been there
and I've always thought of him as my family.
And he always will be my family.
He's such a fantastic man.
The family bought the reservoir and the surrounding fields
from a local farmer, and Grandad Leo long dreamt
of one day converting it into a home.
My grandad's always talked about,
"one day we will have a home here".
He'd always say, "It'll never be in my lifetime,
"but one day you'll live up here."
And I thought "OK, Grandad".
Blue-sky thinking perhaps,
but then Rosa, an audiologist,
met Craig, a skydiving instructor.
So, Craig's an avid sky diver.
I say avid - he does it pretty much 24/seven,
and in his sleep,
and encouraged me -
maybe forced me - to do it.
She done a tandem skydive, and then she was hooked from there onwards.
We've been all over the world skydiving together now. Yeah.
Terrified of flying though, still!
Still terrified of flying! Take your parachute with you. Yeah!
Having conquered the skies,
Rosa and Craig now have their sights set
on a no less extreme challenge -
the reinvention of the reservoir as their home.
I think it was about six months after we started seeing each other
properly, Rosa brought me up here one day
and I was instantly in love with the fields,
the reservoir and everything, from that first moment.
It's not hard to see why.
Oh, this has to be it,
This has to be it because it's such a pretty place.
There's just a sort of an amazing natural beauty.
But how on earth Rosa and Craig transform this subterranean,
industrial structure into a comfortable, light-filled home,
I'm intrigued to find out.
Hiya. Hi, lovely to meet you, I'm Rosa. Rosa.
I'm Craig. Craig, how are you? Who's this chap?
This is Truffles. Hello, Truffles.
It looks like a military bunker, doesn't it?
A little. It's... Like an air raid shelter or something.
It is like an air raid shelter that's been fenced off.
It's been empty for about ten years now.
OK. So, it belonged to the water board? It was, yeah,
till about around the 1970s. Can we get in?
Yes, let's go.
Oh, it's full of stuff! Yeah.
It says in big letters there, "danger"!
Where's safe to be? Am I OK here?
You're OK there. That's fine, you're not going to fall through.
How long had your grandfather been working on it?
At least ten, 15 years.
He...he drained it of water, did he?
Yeah. Well, he's written it on the board -
326 barrows of slurry, that he got out from the bottom,
carrying over his shoulder with a wheelbarrow and a bucket.
You're joking? Yeah. On his own.
Can I go down? Yeah!
Oh, err! It's vast!
Come on down.
What's that brick structure there?
So that is the inspection chamber
from when it was a gravity fed reservoir,
and on top of it is a giant ballcock and float.
That we're keeping.
Like you'd find in a toilet cistern.
Both of those are staying -
they're going to be a feature in the reservoir, once it's...
It's so giant, I hadn't actually clocked it,
because at the moment it's quite hard to imagine this place
being lived in. Do you know what I mean?
And it's quite hard to imagine
that it's going to have enough light in this hole in the ground.
Well, what we are doing on this side is cutting some holes into it
and extending that side into the hill.
Punching through this structure, is going to be tough, I imagine.
Yeah. Well, we thought that it was actually concrete poured in,
like formwork essentially,
but we've done some ground investigation on other side of it
and its stone.
Rubble stone from the field, literally. From this field, yes.
Amazing! How remarkable - you've got a stone building!
So, people pay a lot of money for that finish,
and when we cut out into the courtyard, we'll have it there
already waiting for us.
Rosa and Craig have enlisted the architects Loyn and Co
to realise the transformation of the reservoir,
and it's every bit as audacious as you might imagine.
The first stage will be the excavation of 3,000 tonnes of earth,
mostly from the hillside to the north,
exposing some of the reservoir's stone walls for the first time.
Three large openings will be punched through
the exposed flank wall -
two for large picture windows,
the third for a walkway to connect an entirely new,
all-concrete wing to house a dining room and the bedrooms.
This new extension will be then part re-buried under 200 tonnes of earth
so that it all but disappears into the hill.
What remains exposed is the centrepiece - the reservoir.
The dilapidated roof gets replaced with
a super insulated version, on a new steel frame.
Clerestory windows will slot between the original brick piers,
and some half-moon curved glass walls will fill the gable ends.
Inside, a sleek, new mezzanine underneath
the arched ceiling will connect
via a steel framed bridge to an airborne snug,
from where there'll be some extraordinary views
over the valley.
The steel bridge structure also connects to
a steel staircase that will drop through the open space
to one large, kitchen and sitting room below,
embellished with the reservoir's giant ballcock,
and lit, not just from above,
but by the two enormous glazed openings that will reveal
a delightful new courtyard garden
that will sit at the heart of this home.
The connecting walkway will tie the old reservoir
to the new extension via a glass-walled dining room.
Beyond it will lie the more private spaces
in the concrete wing - family bathroom and four bedrooms,
the largest of which will be Rosa and Craig's.
I do hope they have deep pockets,
because I'd expect that pulling off this ambitious reinvention
is going to cost well over £1 million.
How much did it cost to get the land, if anything?
£800. £800 yeah, just the changeover fees. Wow!
Wow, OK. To pass it into your title. That is the miracle...
We're very blessed.
..of living in a valley where your family have lived for however long.
Yeah. And have you got a contractor organised for that yet? No.
Oh, right. Nobody appointed yet.
No. OK.
When you do appoint a contractor, on what basis is it going to be?
Is it going to be a full contract -
are they just going to do the whole thing? Yeah, full contract.
How much it this going to cost to do this? Do you know yet?
The contract value will be about 700,000.
What you're saying is you've got 700,000 that you want to spend. Yes.
What happens if the contractor comes in and says 900?
Then we'll have to rethink things, I suppose,
because that is us at the very limit of our funding source.
Is it? Yeah. OK, 700. So how much are you borrowing?
Around 500,000.
Yeeee, half a million quid!
That's a lot by anybody's imagination, isn't it?
Yep. Wow!
It means so much to us, it means so much to my family.
We're not just building a house,
we're building...we're building our future,
building our children's future and their children's future.
But when do you actually start?
Start building in March next year.
When do you finish?
12 months we're giving the project date for.
That's the aim. And if its longer?
My grandad's health has deteriorated a lot,
especially in the last four years.
It would mean the world for me for him to be able
to come up here, and show him what we have done... Yeah.
So that is also a deadline as well.
You'd like him to see the finished house. Yeah. How old is he now?
He's 86 now.
Oh, wow. Yes, he's a good ripe age!
Yeah, a good ripe age.
Yeah, that would mean a great deal to him, I'm sure.
Rosa and Craig will be living with Grandad Leo,
the man whose idea this project was,
until their new home's complete.
So, it's worth talking to him, and Rosa's mum, Tessa.
Leo, when was last time you were up there?
About six months ago, wasn't it?
Yeah. To me it's paradise there. It is paradise, you know?
When did you buy it, the field?
About 13 years ago, it was a dream come true,
for Rosa to keep her horse on there.
So, Rosa was sort of part of the reason
for buying it in the first place? Yeah. Yeah.
So, she was always involved, in other words.
Oh, she was the boss. She was the boss.
A good little girl.
It must be pretty exciting, to think of Rosa actually getting
planning permission and actually doing it.
Oh, it was unbelievable, out of this world.
This is your dream come true wasn't it,
that one day, we thought, not in my lifetime,
she might get permission.
That was marvellous.
To be fair, I have to keep pinching myself.
I don't think I can really believe it now.
I think, "She's done it. Wow."
And I think it's a next chapter for the reservoir.
It'll breathe new life into it.
It's up to them now, you know? I wouldn't want to interfere.
Our dream's come true.
While Rosa and Craig wait for quotes to come in,
they form an access track from the reservoir to the nearest road.
First bit of work that we're starting on site,
we're starting with removing a 50-metre section of hedge
before we can create the access to come into the field
before construction actually happens -
that's costing about £600 total, so pretty good.
But any optimism about costs evaporates
when the builders' quotes start coming in -
way above the £700,000 Rosa and Craig can just about afford.
The highest tender out of three that came back
was £1.4 million.
And then our cheapest one
out of the three was £1.1 million.
Which, again, is ridiculous.
It's a hammer blow to their dreams.
Not in a million years we thought that they'd come back
at what they did.
We can't afford it.
If you'd said to me, this is how much this house is going to cost,
this is how much you know, the dream that you've both got is going to be,
we'd have said no. There's no way.
There's just no way that we can do it.
But all that was before sadness filled their lives.
SHE SOBS
I feel very sad because it's all his stuff.
His bike that's in there, and everything.
All his cards that I've ever written him.
All saying "Grandad". All his pictures.
Everything in there that he's ever kept.
I just feel so proud to actually be his granddaughter.
Grandad Leo, the inspiration behind so much of this project,
passed away suddenly in late December.
It was a complete shock.
It was on the Tuesday he was fine,
then on the Wednesday he wasn't.
We had the horses.
They come down, and all the dogs were with him,
me and my mum were with him,
and then he quietly just slipped away then.
The desire to honour Leo's memory
suddenly becomes a powerful motivator.
The land, it does take on a different meaning to me.
I think we are doing the right thing by building his home.
It's what I always spoke about with him.
We are going to live there
because I almost see it as his legacy.
But how on earth they're going to pick up
the project from here, I have no idea.
A full year since I met Rosa and Craig,
a year of emotional recovery
and financial head-scratching,
a colossal earth excavation has begun
next to the old, Herefordshire railway reservoir.
It's been stripped back to a bare shell.
It's absolutely massive down there.
It is massive.
The footprint of that's bigger than the house we're in at the moment.
After protracted negotiations,
Rosa and Craig managed to get
the construction price down to £950,000,
primarily by compromising on the exterior landscaping.
But they're still spending 250 grand more than they wanted.
I'm not going to lie,
I have had sleepless nights thinking about are we actually able
to achieve this, or are we going to
put ourselves into bankruptcy because of it?
I don't think Rosa kind of sees that at times.
She's just like, "Oh, it'll be all right in the end",
but there's serious consequences to taking out loans
and mortgages, and borrowing money off people.
You know, you've got to pay it back at some point.
Grandad Leo bequeathed his home to Rosa,
the sale of which will help cover some of the extra costs.
But they still need to borrow an extra 100 grand
from the bank - a whopping 600 grand in total,
at a time when another life-changing development is on the horizon.
We're now expecting a little baby in about three months' time.
Just to add to the absolute terror that I'm feeling already!
The financial stakes couldn't be higher.
Yet, after just five weeks,
the excavation phase is complete
and the builders are cutting out three huge holes in
the reservoir's flank wall for the picture windows and walkway.
Seeing the reservoir exposed to the elements for the first time...
Hello!
..is quite a sight?
Hey! This is astonishing, isn't it?
Yes, it's outstanding!
I was prepared for this but it's so strong
and it looks so much like a proper house, a building.
I just love the stonework on it. I think it's beautiful.
It's remarkable.
It's like you've built a house in the 18th century
and then buried it, and then uncovered it!
There's one thing I'm dying to do,
and it wasn't ever possible before
and that is to actually enter a building.
Before, we were climbing down a ladder into a hole!
Oh, yeah. Oh, this is a ready-made house!
It's so different. This is... This is magnificent.
So, thinking about this,
you're not building a house, I've just realised.
This is archaeology,
excavation,
civil engineering,
landscaping,
new build,
repair and restoration,
Yeah?
So, no wonder it's costing what it's costing!
A terrifying £950,000.
Which reminds me, how on earth are Rosa and Craig
intending to service a 600 grand mortgage,
in the height of Covid, and with a nipper due in three months?
So, the start of the pandemic,
Craig started up a business that we're working from home.
So we've done an online confectionery shop.
So... Really? Yup!
See, it's so obvious for a skydiver to do that!
We had to get creative, didn't we?
Online sweeties?
Yeah. You're going to have to sell a lot of Sherbet Dabs aren't you,
to pay for anything like this? How amazing.
Is it going to make a serious contribution to the house?
It will help during Covid times, definitely.
OK. God help your baby child.
I know! You're going to have to put a lock on that door, aren't you?
He'll be the coolest kid in the school, with a sweet store!
He'll be the fattest!
THEY LAUGH
Well, I hadn't seen that one coming.
There we go.
Three months into their anticipated 12-month project they start on
the reservoir's new earth sheltered wing, made from exposed concrete.
It will house the dining room and bedrooms,
and cost £260,000.
Once you come out of there, we'll go round the back
and we'll just double check off the back again.
Naturally, Rosa and Craig want the concrete to look as smooth
and as beautiful as possible.
Which is why they've employed Darren,
who has a fine pedigree in the field,
having helped build the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff.
They brought in a new specification especially for that job.
It's basically because it was all exposed concrete,
they wanted to take it to the next level of exposed concrete.
So, this is cabinet making level of joinery.
It is really, really precise. Yes. And beautiful and detailed.
We really pride ourselves on these types of projects.
We're building this house for somebody who's
going to live here for generations to come.
Their family, their grandchildren.
If you put that time and effort and love into it,
you can make something special.
But not everyone here's convinced that exposed concrete
is the right material to build a home with.
It's a Teletubby house really, isn't it?
It's under the ground. It's all going to be buried.
I don't know. Not for me.
I think it's just a multistorey car park at the end
of the day, isn't it?
Yeah. I don't like it.
That's me.
But Rosa and Craig's architects, Loyn and Co,
have established an award-winning reputation
designing earth-sheltered homes from concrete,
including this one 80-miles away on the Gower Peninsula.
You know, if James Bond ever retired and took up organic gardening,
he'd live here.
This is a hunkered lair.
This is a very different building to Rosa and Craig's,
but it's also hunkered into a hill, yeah?
It is, and the driving force for all of our architecture
is context.
A lovely Frank Lloyd Wright quote -
"A house should not be on a hill. It should be of the hill."
Hill and house, the better for each other.
I mean when you're in Gower it's the landscape.
It's an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty,
that's so important,
and instead of putting ON the site,
we lift the site up,
we insert, and we put the site back.
Yeah. Therefore, we're taking nothing and we're giving something.
Boy, is this place beautiful.
I mean. It's exquisite.
It is cherished,
and it makes this fantastic connection to its context,
it's setting, and it has one other quality,
which is that it's finished!
Whereas Rosa and Craig's house clearly is not.
I mean, it's just as ambitious in a way as this building is -
it shares some of the same DNA,
the same architect
but their resources, of course, are finite and at the moment...
Well, at the moment their project is more mud than concrete.
But mud and concrete will have to wait.
Meet, baby Leo!
He was born on 6th April at 6:46.
And he weighed 8lbs 4oz.
He's a bit of a chunk.
LEO CRIES Oh, here he is, right on cue!
Even though my grandfather's here in spirit,
He's also here in baby name.
He's going to grow with the structure now
as it starts to come out from the foundation. Hang on!
We'd better be in before he's walking!
Yeah!
Crawling. Crawling.
Just as well then, that the first concrete walls of
the bedroom wing are ready to be admired.
Oh, my God.
It's nice, isn't it? Yeah, that is absolutely amazing. Feel it.
Touch it.
Yeah, it's lovely, isn't it?
So soft, it's incredible.
I'm so excited for the whole...
Do you like it Leo?
It's going to be your nursery.
Compared to brick and mortar, it's about ten times the price.
You get what you pay for, though, I suppose.
I just want to get it finished now, get in here and live here with him.
Do you know what I mean? We've obviously sold the house
and moved in with Rosa's mum now, so it's more of a reason
to get this done on time
and kind of move in and have our own space with Leo.
By May, a mere six weeks since Darren's team started,
the concrete extension is complete.
So, what does Rosa's mum, Tessa, make of it?
Who would ever have thought that that has been buried
for all those years?
I know. And it's part of our family
and I look at that as the older generation.
Then what's to come is, you know,
represents the new life, the next generation kind of thing.
Exactly, because my heart is in here.
Yeah. I look at that...
..and I can't quite feel
the connection what I feel to this building.
Now, what do you think Leo,
were he around now, would think of this?
Oh, my goodness he would have probably thought like me.
Yeah. I mean, I'm sure Leo wouldn't perhaps have liked that.
Just looks like, um, a bunker.
Ever more pressure, then, on getting the renovation
of Leo's beloved reservoir right.
Rosa and Craig are going to have to make this place
true to Leo somehow.
Over 18 months
since Rosa and Craig began their Herefordshire reservoir project,
the concrete extension is being buried under 200 tonnes of earth.
Lift your end up there Craig.
Meanwhile, the reservoir's transformation into
a serious bit of contemporary architecture kicks off
with the installation of the first-floor steel frame.
It'll be the jewel in the crown of the new reservoir,
creating the dramatic entrance, the bridge,
and the steel staircase to the living space below.
The pressure's now on for Rosa, Craig and baby Leo
to move in in six months.
Until then, they're living with Rosa's mum, Tessa.
That looks like chocolate!
Oh, I know - it looks like them gold bullions, doesn't it?
Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, that's disgusting.
It's proving to be a bit of a squeeze.
I'd have tiles.
We're not having tiles.
We've gone through that. It's not your house.
No. True.
You can't have tiles, can you?
No. We're so grateful,
but at same time we are living on top of each other.
It's very...
Every conversation is a three-way conversation.
You can have garden floor tiles.
We don't like any.
Well, use ordinary bricks.
We've just covered that about two minutes ago!
It will be so great to have our own space.
I do also think how we're going to afford
to get to the end of the build,
and whenever I speak to Craig about it,
he always says that's "future us" problems.
Money worries are a big part of their lives now.
They're spending 50 grand alone
on the reservoir's new steel-framed roof,
being fabricated 15 miles away in Hereford.
Oh, my God. That is very thick.
That's pretty big, isn't it?
I don't think the roof's going anywhere any time soon with those.
Is this a roof or a bunker?
I reckon we could survive a hurricane with that roof
the way it's been built.
Yeah, that's where your money's gone.
Indeed.
Financing a 950 grand project,
PLUS fees, is starting to take its toll.
So, that's where we're at with the figures.
It's pretty sickening - 720,000 - and we've got no windows or doors.
Or roof! Or roof.
I've got no windows door, or a roof for that!
You know when like you've always said,
this is "future us" problems?
I feel like "future us" is now current us.
There's nothing we can do. We can't change anything now.
Like you say, we are fully committed but it's spiralled.
We could have bought three houses for that.
I just don't see how we've spent that much money.
But proper architecture rarely comes cheap.
Come the autumn, the roof's curved steel frame is ready to go in.
With the help of the odd podger or two.
A podger is a marvellous invention.
It's a pointy spanner,
so when you've got sort of half a hole lined up,
you can put podger in and just use it to wiggle the steel around
and align the hole, so the bolts slide straight through.
Looks wonky. It does look wonky, doesn't it?
I was actually just thinking that.
Maybe it's just the way we're looking at it.
If you stand at this angle, it looks all right.
By November, almost two years since they began this scheme...
Inside's amazing, honestly.
..the reservoir's vaulted roof has been skinned out
with plasterboard, to epic effect.
Oh, my word!
A world of pink! Yeah, look at it!
What do you call this area? Airborne snug?
Airborne snug. Somewhere to sit and watch the sun go down, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's lovely.
Have a coffee in mornings up here, looking out there.
Yeah, for sure.
It's amazing, like, how your love for the building
and everything changes,
and how it's actually progressed,
with how the building has come on -
you form a different connection with it.
That's what I feel - we formed a new connection as a family,
the way that it's started to come together now,
and even though it's the shape of the old reservoir,
we've almost put our own take on it.
Of course,
Rosa and Craig won't be moving in by Christmas as they
dearly hoped - the house is nowhere near watertight yet.
But that's the least of their worries.
So, how is the money?
As in, how much it's going to cost to finish? Yeah.
250,000 I believe.
It's all within your reach, this? You can afford it all?
There's still a deficit of about 50,000
because the kitchen and bathrooms weren't in the contract,
so we've had to pay for that on top of contract.
We've used the mortgage money to pay for that,
which means that when it gets to last month of paying for the site,
we're going to have to have around 50,000 to pay for that.
That problem's eight, 12 weeks away, so... Oh, right.
See, this is part of the curse with legacy, isn't it? Yeah.
That you inherit something very beautiful,
and you have to honour it. Yeah. And you have to do something
properly because the site demands it.
If I'd known how much this was ever going to cost
in the first place, we'd have never done it.
But we're committed now.
Live with our decisions.
Alas, the project is entering its perilous phase.
Right, let me boom out.
86 grand's worth of hi-spec glazing
starts getting installed in December.
If I move that back now, it's going to pull the top out as well.
We want to start bringing it back up now, don't we?
The picture window for the living space is the largest.
While between the reservoir's original brick piers,
12 rectangular slot windows are going in.
Yep, right. To your right.
Meanwhile, on top of the now insulated steel roof,
they're fitting new curved aluminium sheets
to match the reservoir's original ones.
But, come the new year,
green shoots on site bely troubling news.
Rosa and Craig have run out of money.
We couldn't pay one of the bills which we owed the builders.
There was a misunderstanding around the VAT situation for the build.
Last month, just before Christmas,
we were told that the whole build would have to pay 5% VAT -
about 50,000 that we've had to find on top.
They've been forced to borrow an additional 80 grand from the bank.
But there's so much this won't cover - oak flooring
and a balustrade for the mezzanine,
the steel stairs, decorating,
and the courtyard landscaping.
The amount of debt that we've taken on is horrendous.
I never thought I'd take on this amount of debt
to be able to finish the project.
It's actually sickening.
For the whole time of the build this has been
the most stressful point for us.
1843 and 1840 we've got.
You don't want it tight tight, do you?
One, two, three...
One thing they can still afford is the curved glazing
for the reservoir's gable ends,
which means the building is finally watertight.
And Rosa, Craig, and no-longer-a-baby Leo,
are able to move into the far from complete home.
It's not ideal.
Come on, climb under!
It does make me more aware of time passing
because Leo is growing up
and I feel like the build is at a standstill.
Your priorities in life change. As Leo's come along,
I'm more focused now on spending time as a family,
doing this with Leo, and not thinking,
"I need to paint that wall tonight or today."
But painting is exactly what they have to do.
It's fun though, isn't it? It's fun painting.
And lots of it.
Tickle tickle on his tummy!
It's not how it was meant to turn out.
And we still look at the amount we've got to do on the house,
and we don't have the money to finish it at the moment -
having that looming over us is quite... Yeah, it's daunting.
But, come the summer of 2023...
Yeah, forward.
..there's a sudden flurry of activity.
A steel staircase with oak treads is being fitted in the reservoir.
And the courtyard is getting landscaped.
So, we went to our family
to try and get more money basically and everybody's chipped in.
That's going to allow us to finish the project
hopefully to a decent standard.
And to save money, Craig's getting stuck in as well.
The builders wanted 25,000 to fit the flooring
and by doing it myself and using my friends to help me
with the labour, I think I've bought it in at about 14,000, so...
That's better, isn't it? Yeah.
It's been nice to be able to get my dad, who's an engineer as well,
to actually come up and give me a hand
and do the flooring with me.
It's hard work - I think he's found that out today.
I have put oak flooring down in my own house
but nothing like the thickness of this.
This is another level. This is industrial level.
It's been that long since we started,
I just want to enjoy the house and relax now.
Looks amazing, doesn't it? Yes.
After three and a half tortuous years,
will grandad Leo's legacy finally be realised?
This secluded corner of Herefordshire is magnificent
and it's where Rosa and Grandad Leo
long ago dreamt of transforming their abandoned
and much-loved railway reservoir into a home.
It's nearly four years since Rosa
and her partner Craig set out to do just that,
so has the reservoir's radical reinvention finally come good?
Well, I could swear
that when I first came here all those years ago that roof was green.
Of course, it was green. That's a new roof!
That's not an industrial structure any more. That is a new building.
Yet one that, in honour of its heritage,
looks from outside much like it did when I first came here.
Well, I say it's a new building, but actually I think the brickwork
and stonework, that was always here.
And, as for the roof, I mean it's an exact reproduction in crinkly tin.
So, this building, it appears really, really modest.
Until you turn the corner,
and then it starts getting really interesting.
Look at that.
The great, curving black shapes of the roof gables
now form a powerful viewing frame for the landscape.
And they tease glimpses of the interior too.
Hello, you two.
Hi! Look at you. Look at your house!
You must be dead chuffed. Yeah, so happy.
It's so nice to be in and finished.
We have to pinch ourselves when we pull up on the drive
and walk down here and get that view every single day.
Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't feel real.
It doesn't feel like an old building. It feels like a home.
Interesting. It feels like we've lived there forever.
Like it was completely meant to be.
Well, look, congratulations,
because there's something about this building which I think
is very spectacular, which bears no relation to how it was.
And that is that you can look through what appears to be
a glass building, supporting a tin roof.
It's very simple, but it's very, very elegant.
It's like a sort of black rainbow.
The curved roof's amazing and it looks amazing -
even better inside as well.
Well, come on then. Let's have a look inside.
Oh.
Oh...wow!
That's epic.
It's so clear and clean.
Beautiful sheer surface.
To have this sort of uninterrupted view
without kind of bracing or anything like that -
just this curve of the roof.
But there's plenty of fun here,
I mean, the balustrade is just a transparent piece of glass,
nothing else.
And that thing - the magnificent ballcock...
And actually, it's a really weird talking point.
Everybody that comes round asks about it,
and it's just a reminder of what the building once was
and what it has become now.
It's actually quite nice when you come in here -
people don't even see the staircase because of this view,
it draws the eye almost across the bridge.
Yeah, it's like a runway this, isn't it?
Kind of inviting you to land.
Taking you to...what's this place called?
Takes you to the airborne snug.
Airborne snug. That's very nice.
It's all about that uninterrupted view out.
Brilliant.
This is my favourite spot of the house
because I can see where my grandad grew up.
I can see where my mum grew up.
Goodness me. So it's so meaningful.
I just don't think there can be many families
who can look out of their window
and have these memories planted into the landscape
and associated with it.
It stops just being a beautiful place
and becomes a meaningful place, doesn't it? Yes.
When he was cleaning out the reservoir,
this is where he used to sit and have his lunch every day.
So, this was his part of the reservoir,
so that is why it's also so important.
Yeah, wow. Feel the energy, eh?
I do miss him so much.
But there's so many reminders every day.
The mezzanine triumphs in honouring this family's personal history,
but how has their architect, Chris Loyn, fared
in transforming the reservoir's once dark,
dank lower reaches into something habitable?
OK. Down we go. The next chapter.
My goodness me!
It's another world down here, isn't it?
I thought it would feel a little bit subterranean
but it's the opposite.
You come down and the building actually opens out more.
And not a hint that you're in any way buried. It's really terrific.
This space is better than I ever imagined it to be down here.
I think having that double height space makes it as well,
having the open air, being able to see the roof from down here still.
Yeah. That's an important point, isn't it?
If the bridge were a mezzanine,
if it were covering half of the ceiling,
you wouldn't get the light in from the ends,
or from the both sides, from these clerestory windows.
It would be darker.
And that marble. My goodness me!
Where's that from?
I mean, which weird mountain?
I think it's Italian. It is Italian. Yes, yes.
In the black bat mountains, somewhere!
The Urals, whatever it is. It's crazy, isn't it?
I love it. It's so striking.
And it really gives you the wow factor when you walk down.
What's really interesting, though,
is that sometimes people take old buildings
and they do them up and they kill the building. You know what I mean?
But here, what Chris has done is basically just knock
the building around, punched big holes in the side walls,
create open garden spaces where there were none,
and yet still the building says, "No, I'm still here".
It's as if Chris knew what the buried power
of the old structure was -
knew it needed the courtyard to humanise it,
and the new connecting spaces like the dining room.
It's very generous, you know?
It is, isn't it? It's the connection point.
Yet, the most startling views are out,
back to the reservoir, to the stone walls,
so carefully repointed.
And to the superb courtyard garden.
Well, what a delight that is.
You've put these great gabions in, a wall of them.
Yeah. 11 metres of gabion baskets. Oh, wow!
All that stone came out of here when we dug out.
Seriously?
I have to remind myself that a whopping 3,000 tonnes of stone
and earth were excavated to make way for the courtyard
and the concrete extension.
So, down the corridor
into this - this is properly the new wing, isn't it?
Yes. All in poured concrete.
It's sheer and perfect.
Like a hotel.
THEY CHUCKLE
Rooms off here include a spare room,
and, of course, a bedroom for the toddler, Leo.
But the highlight is Rosa and Craig's.
This is your room at the end, yeah? Yeah.
Oh, with its own walk-in...
What's that? A kind of rainy-shower... It's built in.
Yeah. Yes, it's rainfall.
Wow, and what's the other side? Is that the loo, is it?
Yeah, that's the toilet. Nice.
I do love this room.
It's the most concrete that you can see in any room.
We just walked in here and were like, you can't cover that up.
Ha. It's too good! Yeah, it's too good. We love it.
Yeah, yeah. No, this is generally a better quality
than you find in your average car park,
and I'd be really happy waking up to that in the morning.
And you step out onto a beautifully polished concrete floor.
This is super glamorous, particularly this side,
you know? I mean, in fact the whole thing is bloody,
super glamorous the moment you walk in. It's glamorous!
There's so many things that make you feel...
just better and more... Do you know what I mean? More... Yes.
I'm just happy to be in here, and living here, just enjoying it.
Yeah.
Sitting back and taking it all in.
Remarkably, they've done it.
Thanks in no small part to Grandad Leo,
whose generosity contributed so much
to the construction of this remarkable home.
Leo, he loved this building.
He knew every stone in this building.
He lived and he breathed it.
So, what do you think he would have made of it now?
He would have been absolutely over the moon with it.
When we last talked, you were quite dismissive of the concrete.
I was, but now I understand.
It represents our family.
I feel that Leo and I are in this old bit,
and I feel that, tucked in beside it there... Yeah.
..looks a cheeky building with a big smile on its face
and it's shining, and it reminds me of Rosa,
and it reminds me of how Rosa and Craig met,
captured each other's hearts.
And along came Leo.
Yeah. And I think the courage and determination that
they have shown to see this building through
is absolutely wonderful.
I am so proud of them.
They've given this building its life back.
And what greater gift can you give than that?
Yeah. Indeed.
But my, pulling it off has exacted its toll on Rosa and Craig.
Nearly four years to get to this point -
three more than anticipated,
and a stomach-churning financial burden.
First of all, congratulations for finishing
because I think anybody who can finish a house these days
is a miracle worker. Thank you.
Tell me though about the money.
You thought originally 700,000.
I think build cost alone is just over a million.
Plus, all your prelims
and your architect's fees and your engineers...
That takes us up to about £1.2 million I think,
including that. Yeah. And a mortgage of 600 and...
600,000. We then borrowed another 80,000.
Put in about 100,000 of our own money.
Then unfortunate circumstances around Rosa's grandad passing away
helped us basically to finish build.
So, were you able to make up all that you needed,
thanks to Leo, or have you had to go elsewhere as well?
We've had to go elsewhere as well!
Every friend and every family member on both sides of the family.
Yeah.
So, you're spending a few grand a month at least on your mortgage.
Yeah, it's a ridiculous amount of money.
It's way more than we ever thought we would spend or wanted to spend.
It's horrendous, because I think if you'd said to me
four or five years ago,
this is the amount of money that you're going to spend,
I would have said, "No. No way."
It's not a decision we've made lightly, having to get ourselves
in this much debt, but it's worth it, definitely.
Yeah. It's so nice having our own bubble here.
It really does feel like that.
Seeing how happy little Leo is running around...
Just getting to chase him and see his face.
I'm just like, this is it - this is why we've done it, I think.
Yeah. And actually, little Leo is starting to learn.
We tell him about my grandad,
and we actually tell him about the buckets of slurry that he dug.
And we've got a picture that my grandad wrote of it.
And actually, if you ask Leo, he'll say, "Grandad did that".
Thanks to Rosa and Craig's epic efforts,
the family's relationship with this beguiling landscape
has been safeguarded, with a home.
You know as long as I've known this project,
I've thought there's a problem associated with it,
to do with the fact that it was Leo who planted
the original idea in Rosa's mind
that something magical could be done with this site.
And, as a consequence, I think she felt the burden
of having to do something important here, of remembering him.
Of honouring his memory in architecture,
and producing something of real worth.
And you know, in doing that,
it nearly broke her and Craig financially.
But I'm so pleased they succeeded.
I'm so pleased they finished.
Because what it does so brilliantly is not simply
remember the man whose idea it was,
but also embody the imagination of Craig and Rosa.
Amazing what families can do, isn't it?
The house is about the site. A treehouse concept we've gone for.
There seems to be a serious design error somewhere.
I'll be interested to know who's expected to pay for it.
I've literally just run out of money now.
If somebody says to me, "I need some money",
I think I'm going to have to do a few little delaying tactics.
Things can run away very quickly if you don't keep control.
So when do you think you'll be in?
About ten years.
Oh, that's nice!