This country, being the cradle of
the Industrial Revolution that it was,
is now littered with old industrial hulks,
buildings that don't serve a purpose any more,
but which are beautiful in the landscape.
We admire them, we love them, and we visit them.
The question is, what do we do with them?
How do we look after them?
Do we preserve, conserve, restore?
Or do we just let them fall into the ground again?
I mean, buildings like this old Cornish tin mine.
What could they be? Five years ago,
I met a couple who wanted to preserve their building,
and keep it from disappearing into a pile of rubble,
by turning it into a house.
In 2017 Leigh and Richard went on holiday to Cornwall,
and returned determined to become
the proud owners of this derelict flour mill.
We're complete novices.
We just fell in love with it, it was instant.
The old girl was in a far worse state then they'd feared.
Part of the floor did collapse.
More damage than we would have liked.
It can tip clients over the edge financially.
The listed building quickly hoovered up their spare change,
leaving Richard and Leigh to provide the muscle on site.
How are we going to lift them out? Magic.
But in the absence of a magic wand,
the demands of the build soon took their toll.
I'm absolutely knackered.
There isn't any money left.
Two and a half years ago,
Richard and Leigh had barely limped over the finish line.
And I've come back to find out what life is like living in
an old converted ruin.
But first, here's their story.
This is one of Blake's original dark satanic mills, isn't it? Whoa.
This old flourmill has been left abandoned for almost 60 years
but it was once a critical hub for this rural Cornish community.
These are the mill races that fed the wheel I guess,
or wheels, more than one.
Holy Moley.
There are now plans to convert this listed old hulk into a home.
I mean this is... This ain't no domestic project, is it?
This is an industrial building,
probably never lived in,
never designed to be lived in,
and probably a building which is going to resist being lived in.
Wait there, Luna.
The two behind this high-risk project... Come on, Luna.
..Leigh and Richard, until recently, lived in Derbyshire,
where they ran a small, rare plant nursery,
and Richard was a part-time maths teacher.
There's no trolley service on this train, is there?
They don't seem like big risk-takers. Good girl, Luna.
But oh, how looks can be deceptive.
Because Leigh and Richard met 27 years ago,
jumping out of an aircraft.
Some of the things that we've done
you might consider dangerous.
We've both competed at national level,
both been part of record attempts.
We don't tend to take the easy option,
you've got to push yourself.
If you don't push yourself you don't know how far you can go.
These former daredevils have now cut the ties
with their old lives in Derbyshire,
and have moved 250 miles away to the wilds of the Cornish coast.
I just love being down here,
I think we're so lucky to have a beach like this on
the doorstep.
Never lived by the sea, this has always been a dream.
Having sold their house to finance this project,
they're about to sink everything they've ever worked for,
and their future happiness,
into a building on the verge of collapse.
The amount of work that needs to be done,
there has to be an element of risk.
The biggest concern is running out money
and being Mrs Impatient,
it not quite being ready when I want to move in.
We've never done anything on this scale before.
We're bound to make a few mistakes but...
Hopefully not expensive ones.
You've bitten off a big hunk of building here
to work on, haven't you?
It's a big project but one we're looking forward to.
Have you done this before?
No, complete novices. We just fell in love with it,
it was instant. We were on our way home to Derby,
I picked up a free newspaper outside an estate agent.
You were supposed to be navigating.
Yes, dear. I opened it up and went, "That's it."
What are you hoping to do with it?
Well, it's been here for several hundred years,
and it's redundant as a mill, so it's never going to be
a mill again. So we're make it,
and convert it into a beautiful home.
But, obviously, try and maintain some of its heritage
and, you know, show people that it was a mill,
you know, we're not going to rip everything out.
Old buildings like this, you fall in love with them.
They often don't repay that.
She's old and tired and sad,
and I think she's crying out for a little bit of help
to nudge her into the future.
We can't put off going in any longer, can we? Come on in, then.
Is it safe? It depends on your assessment of risk, really.
Hey, hey, this is rather nice. I mean it's old.
It's a big space, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like your floor.
Yeah, these were laid down about 100 years ago.
Were they?
And I think it's things like that that, you know, reflect
the use that it's had in its past.
Yeah, do these remain in this place in situ? Not in this place. No.
Because you've got very little head height here,
we are going to dig out and go down.
But the plan for these is to use two of them to make
the dining room table.
I still want to make it look like it's an industrial building.
Yes.
To me that's quite important.
Looking at these beams, their condition,
the fact that they haven't sagged too much or dropped at
the ends, its... It's great.
We're going to get them inspected as to what can be saved and re-used.
But what's your gut feeling about how much you can save? 80%.
I think you can save 80% at least.
Oh, great big floor.
This is what? A milling floor, presumably. Yes.
Yeah. What's it going to be?
It's going to be our living room. Wow. Lovely space.
What stays here? So what about the hoppers?
No, so the hoppers will be removed.
And these posts supporting this beam?
So the big beam's staying in.
We're not disposing of any of the wood that's usable,
it will be repurposed.
I suppose my question here is, when you start removing the details,
you start to remove the character.
But everything moves forward it can't be stuck in the past.
We've got to be realistic, because it has got to be... A home.
A home. It's not going to be a mill again.
And there's the rub.
How to save every scrap of this precious place,
repair it sensitively and yet,
convert it to live in comfortably,
without trashing it.
For just over 400 years,
this building was grinding flour and animal feed,
and was still working in the 1960s.
But for over half a century it's been left abandoned.
Partial collapse has helped damp get into the masonry,
the windows and window lintels have rotted out.
Leigh and Richard 's most urgent job will be to tackle the stonework,
rake out every inch of damp, rotten mortar,
made from earth and lime,
rebuild areas of wall near collapse,
and restore some structural integrity.
Inside, the old timber workings of the mill will
need to be carefully treated, as they're still helping
to brace the walls. Leigh and Richard want to keep them,
but will jumble them up as they reorganise the layout.
All the slates will need to come off,
the trusses underneath carefully rebuilt,
and the building re-roofed, to make it watertight again.
An architect has helped them reconfigure the layout.
In the roof, there'll be two en-suite guest bedrooms,
and the second floor below will house their bedroom suite.
On the first floor, their open-plan living room will
retain some elements of the old mill,
and give them access to the garden over the rear wheel pit.
The ground floor will see the most radical change,
those beautiful millstones get removed
to be reused somewhere else,
and a new concrete floor installed.
A new kitchen and dining room will be lit by two new windows
for which they have permission.
And ground-mounted solar panels will help power this very
21st century conversion.
Leigh and Richard clearly have the passion
to create something spellbinding here,
but they have no experience. Not of ancient buildings,
not even of building.
You have got your work cut out here, I think, haven't you?
I think so. How much did you pay for the site? 235,000.
£235,000 for this.
How much is the project going to cost? 250,000.
I could put my money somewhere slightly sounder than this.
£250,000 is not enough.
Nor is their small contingency of 50,000.
Old buildings aren't just smelly and damp.
They're also greedy and ungrateful.
You two met falling out of an aircraft, yeah?
Which suggests that you are not risk-averse.
You are... You are risk enthusiasts.
Ah, we're risk managers.
But you are taking a risk here? You are novices.
But there isn't any reward without an element of risk.
Leigh and Richard have given themselves a year
to resurrect this broken building but, of course,
if they move too quickly, they could destroy
the very thing they've fallen in love with.
This newel post and this handrail have been polished to a gloss by
the action of thousands of hands grabbing hold of it over
the centuries it's been here. The magic of the place,
that magic lies in details like this,
in tens of thousands of them around the place.
Remove these, change, adapt and actually, quite quickly, you begin
to chip away at that magic and that spirit of place.
And there's a tremendous poignancy in that
because, once this is gone, it's gone forever.
By Spring, Leigh and Richard have moved into
a small holiday let just across the road from their site.
Where the scaffold is up,
and the work of saving this listed local landmark can begin.
A quarter of the total budget, £60,000,
is being spent on a team of conservation builders, who'll repair
and rebuild the stonework.
They start by removing the old and broken pointing,
and any hard cement repairs.
Some people will look at this and think, "Knock it down."
Leigh and Richard have undertaken quite an extensive amount of work.
This is hard manual labour,
but it needs to be judicious,
so as not to disturb loose and dangerous stonework.
Only when these walls are secure can they start on
the timber structure inside.
Which it seems is in far worse shape than anyone thought.
Part of the floor did collapse,
one of the big joists just dropped out.
In places, the floor really is quite unsafe.
And these ancient timbers seem to be suffering new stresses.
Three days ago, the split in this joist was a millimetre,
we've now got cracks in it that you can put your hand in.
Every new problem discovered means a new cost.
We're only a short while into the project,
and I can see that it is already going to run over
the figure that we had in mind. So somehow,
we've got to claw that back from other areas.
Leigh is already projecting an overspend of £15,000.
They're only two weeks in,
and there could be plenty of nasty surprises yet to come.
Leigh and Richard are three weeks into their mill conversion,
and the repair of the crumbling stonework has gobbled
a quarter of all their cash. However,
the work is beginning to bear fruit.
It's good to see the old beauty being brought back to life.
The restoration contractors have found
so many areas of serious damage,
as well as some temporary remediations
made by previous custodians.
I daren't actually touch a single stone in this
for fear that the entire section will fall out.
It must have been like this for the past 50 years,
judging by the moss but, look, it's sitting on a lintel
which almost isn't doing a job at all.
And the best thing of all is that someone has tried
to affect a repair previously up here, which is even better.
So it's a two-part preventive measure involving
an old hinge and, above it, gas pipe.
What a fantastic piece of improvisation that is.
There will be no gas pipe lintels in this renovation.
48 new solid oak lintels are now being fitted over
the window and door openings.
Presumably you're prepared to sacrifice, you know,
the beautiful kitchen and the expensive fixtures
and fittings in order to be able to get the building sorted.
The building being sorted is the absolute priority,
but there'll be no sacrificial kitchens.
Well, good luck with that.
Leigh and Richard's 250 grand is ebbing away fast,
and they haven't even begun on the decaying interior.
A job entrusted to their highly-experienced
conservation joiner, James.
And his less-experienced jobbing assistant, Richard.
Richard is like my helper, my apprentice,
he's an extra pair of hands.
It's unusual to have a client assisting you in this way.
The first task for this crack team is to dismantle
the charming ancient staircase.
Ready, steady, go. You all right? Yeah.
Yeah, we'll see how he is at the end, you know what I mean?
He's learning a lot as he goes but we've had no problems so far.
I suggest you come down now.
I wouldn't give him a job yet.
Even my precious newel post isn't safe...
It's a nice bit of wood.
..from the exuberance of Richard's crowbar.
There we go.
They had hoped to keep 80% of these timbers in situ.
But the building hadn't told Leigh and Richard the full story.
Even though this beam, on the whole, may look good and solid,
the critical area of it is where it goes into the wall.
That's rotted away and, as you can see,
it's just turning to dust.
So you can't use that.
In the following month,
there is at least some good news about the stonework.
All the structural repairs have been made
and the restoration contractors have begun repointing
the walls with a traditional lime mortar.
Protecting it from sun wind rain,
you know, everything,, all the elements.
Yeah, good for another hundred years.
But this careful approach of gentle, slow repair and conservation
won't now be replicated inside.
Leigh and Richard have now decided that almost every single beam
and joist will be replaced with new timber.
It's a German softwood apparently,
it's come from a local timber yard.
The new, straight and somewhat characterless timber
goes in quickly. They use steel tension ties to help strengthen
the floors and lock the building together.
This helps the structure,
and the choice of softwood helps the somewhat stressed budget.
In a desperate attempt to save even more cash,
Leigh and Richard have now moved out of the holiday let and into..
Lily, come on.
..the world's tiniest caravan.
It's a little cramped and cosy. Luna!
Normally, I like accommodation with stars,
and the more of them the better.
I've no idea how long they'll call this minute space home,
that's up to the mill.
A little over two months since work began,
the roofers are on site to tackle
the last big structural element of this building's salvation.
I'm not sure I'm brave enough to do it.
When they said it was coming off in a day I thought, "No."
Fingers crossed that, underneath these slates,
they don't find another nasty surprise.
Yeah, so, it's probably more damage than we would have liked.
We've got to see what it... How deep it goes.
If these seven A-frame roof trusses can be salvaged,
they'll probably be the only original timbers
to survive Richard and Leigh's renovation.
Oh, goodness me, bits of building,
bits of building out in the rain.
Bits of building that maybe, in some cases,
should have stayed in the building.
Thousands of bits that made it what it was.
The speed of change on this project brings undesirable impacts for me.
All my life I have loved old things,
and loved them for their cantankerousness,
and their wonkiness, and their history,
and the stories they tell, and the narratives they weave,
and here it's just been ripped apart.
I'm not sure what means anything any more here.
The stonework showed just how conservation repair work can be
considerate and respectful.
Inside, I think there's been too much change,
that's happened too quickly.
Balancing a modest £250,000 budget
with the authentic restoration of an old Cornish flour mill
has not been easy for Leigh and Richard.
Can you hold the window?
I've got the screw now.
They're now fitting 18 new beautifully-made timber windows.
It's cost 14,000 to repair and clad the entire roof,
and an extra eight grand in the end to retain
the old timber A-frame trusses.
Now, after a frantic six months,
this building is watertight for the first time in 60 years,
and the shroud of scaffolding can begin to come down.
I suppose it's like the butterfly coming from the chrysalis, isn't it?
Just beautiful. Bloody amazing.
Hiya. Brilliant, isn't it? Looking good.
Over the years you've just watched it slowly crumble away,
and now it's lovely.
A positive reaction from the community and, three weeks later,
even the hardline conservationists are changing their tune.
Well, how picturesque is that?
What a lovely thing.
They've really used their judgment with this pointing,
they haven't tried to rebuild these walls
to make them straight, they're still wonky and wobbly.
And it's lovely. It's got loads of personality.
But these restored walls are only a shell
and now all the professional craftsmen have left,
the completion of this project rests solely
with its inexperienced owners.
You've been by yourselves, on your tod, for how long?
About three weeks now we've been on our own. Yeah, about three weeks.
Was that... It must have been something of a shock?
Yeah, I think the first morning you wake up
and realise no-one's coming to hold your hand,
it's like, "Blimey what do we do next?"
Now £30,000 over budget,
Leigh and Richard take on the rest of the work themselves.
Within the month, Richard makes a start on the internal stonework,
using skills he's picked up from working with the contractors.
But that still leaves the insulation, rendering,
plastering and underfloor heating,
all jobs that rest in their unpractised hands.
You have so many jobs sometimes you actually don't know where to start.
The first monumental challenge they tackle alone is
the millstone floor.
These stones need to be exhumed, since they need to dig down
to form more height in the dining room.
How are we going to lift them out?
Magic. You know, if we'd got
a team of people in here now you'd probably get this floor out in
a day, whereas it's going to take me...
Probably take me a week.
Progress moving the stone floor is going very, very slow.
A lot slower than I anticipated.
I think Richard thought that it would be quite simple.
They're really, really heavy
and I think that we're going to have to get people in to help us which,
you know, is another expense that we hadn't budgeted for.
You know, there's no way that's going to move,
not much we can do about it.
It's now four weeks since Richard began excavating the ground floor
and the cavalry have been called in to help.
By the looks of it this one is the main one, the heavy one.
Attaching a block and tackle to a second-floor beam means
Richard's new timbers are given a real test.
Yes, a very heavy piece of kit.
The planning conditions
for this listed landmark mean that two of
the millstones have to be retained within the building.
They're clearly reluctant to leave their ancient home.
We're all a little bit surprised about the size of this millstone.
It is a bit heavy.
Four men take four hours to remove
the largest of these granite beasts from the floor.
I was dreading moving them, if I'm being honest,
but now they're out it's... Yeah, you know,
I think this bit will go quite quickly.
As this project creeps towards winter,
Leigh and Richard have given themselves just four months
to complete the interior, and escape the dreaded caravan,
which has now been moved into the garage to offer
a little more protection from the elements.
Life in the caravan, generally chaotic.
It would have been nice to have had a bigger caravan.
Hopefully, just a few more months
and we'll be in the mill.
And I'm never, ever staying in a caravan again, ever.
And Leigh isn't the only one feeling confined.
Luna, come here, sweetie. Lily. Come here, Lily.
Lily, I can't believe you did that.
Oh, you silly... Lily!
The dog's very independent.
Lily! Lily! Lily!
Right now!
While Leigh manages the schedule and the budget,
it's left to Richard to labour on site.
He's installing the latest low-profile
underfloor heating boards.
It's a welcome relief from digging out almost 25 tonnes of rubble from
the ground floor, but the demands
of this building are taking their toll.
I'm absolutely knackered.
Just... tired.
The word I would choose to use would be...
Yeah, I'd say exhausted,
but he has finally got the ground floor lowered.
Richard thought that might take two weeks,
but getting ready for today's concrete pour
has taken two months.
I'll let the guys do the heavy shovelling,
I'll make them a cup of tea in a minute.
All right? Terrific.
But now this monster of a job is complete.
Progress on this project has been so slow.
By the new year,
Leigh's moving-in date of March is becoming more uncertain.
Hello, hello. Hello. Hi, Kevin. Good to see you again.
And you, how are you? Fine, thank you. Good to see you.
I still can't get used to this idea. Winter residence.
Yeah, it's our winter retreat.
It's one thing to live in a caravan, quite another
to live in a caravan in a box with no views.
It's been quite tedious at times, with all the rain,
and hopefully it won't have to be there that long.
When's that, then? Well.
I reckon we're about three months late.
So that's June, July time then.
Outside, you can read
the narrative history of this building.
Inside, however, it's a work of fiction.
New floor, new ceiling, new joists and beams,
new walls because you're plastering them all, and new windows.
I mean, internally it's going to be a new building.
If you look at some of the posts here,
these were original floor joists.
The ones we've actually put back into the wall.
Has a floor joist become a post? Yeah.
The purists will be horrified
but, actually, when you look at them, they weren't usable.
You know which camp I fit into, don't you? It begins with a P.
He's a purist. Purist.
There is, of course, one part
of this building that is more in line
with my conservation stance, the roof.
This is all going to be underfloor heating.
Yep. You've laid your boards in readiness for it.
Originally it was meant to be two definite bedrooms,
but we loved it so much we're actually
going to leave it as one big open-plan room.
You like this beautifully conserved roof.
I love it. This is one of my favourite places.
It's the best timber in the building, by a long way.
I think it's the best timber in the building
because it's the old timber.
Most of that old timber is now piled up in the garden,
its final purpose, to keep all those new timbers warm.
But as Leigh and Richard struggle on, they're
suddenly given their biggest test yet,
not by schedule or budget,
but rather an event so huge not even remote corners
of Cornwall can hide from the impact, the pandemic.
And so, after months of disruption and chaos,
I paid them my last visit,
at the height of the second lockdown,
with a sense of trepidation.
Had they managed to fashion a home from the rubble,
and had their blind optimism paid off?
Well, I can't fault the outside.
The outward appearance of the mill had undergone
the most spectacular transformation.
But despite Richard and Leigh's green fingers,
they hadn't begun to landscape
the thicket of weeds that might one day become a garden.
And opposite the handsome frontage of the house sat
the ugliest of breeze block garages.
Hello. Hello, Kevin. Hi, Kevin, how are you?
I'm really well, thank you
but, more importantly, how are you both? Tired. Busy. Tired.
I bet you are. I'm sorry about this social distancing,
we're now filming at four metres which is kind of... It's crazy.
Are you living in it? Not quite, no.
Still in the caravan still in the shed? Yes, yeah.
And how have you found lockdown? How have you found the isolation?
Yeah, it's been tough, hasn't it? There's been a lot of challenges.
We've had shortages of materials, that sort of stuff.
Do you mind if I look around it by myself? No, no.
Is that all right? I'm looking forward to this. Just want to say.
Touring a house solo, a Covid-inspired first for me.
Nice.
Inside it wasn't so much a new chapter for the building,
as an entirely new story.
Although some traces remained.
What an amazing dining table, it's bonkers.
And, up in the first floor living room,
they'd managed to make a crafted, home-spun, even cosy, space.
It's a really nice job.
But further up, it was a different story.
The guest bedrooms were still
a pile of building materials. And up top,
the main bedroom was still empty and unoccupied.
Leigh and Richard came here in search of adventure,
and were thus far £50,000 over budget.
With much still to do,
I wondered how much drive they still had left in them.
You moved from the other end of the country to do this,
you changed your lives to do this,
you put everything you had into this one thing.
It is everything,
it's taken every penny of
the resources and time and energy, hasn't it? Yeah.
You seem quite, both of you, quite emotional about it?
Go on, you can answer that.
OK?
Hmm. Pillock.
This project had clearly taken an emotional toll.
The heartbeat was again palpable in these ancient walls,
but the site wasn't yet fully born.
It felt wrong leaving their epic renovation prematurely,
I had to come back.
I last saw Leigh and Richard two and a half years ago,
in the teeth of the second COVID lockdown.
Yeah, they'd almost finished,
but there were still bedrooms and bathrooms to do.
They were green-fingered, but they had this mud bath of a landscape
to convert into a garden.
And they were still living in the caravan,
which was inside the garden shed. I mean, goodness me,
life must have improved since then, surely?
It was in 2018 that Richard and Leigh set out to renovate
an old watermill in Cornwall. But on my last visit here,
plans had been kiboshed by the pandemic.
They hadn't moved in yet, and were exhausted.
I'm back to see if, at last, they have a finished home.
Yes, that's what this building needed.
It needed the healing effects of
the one thing that had kept it going all these centuries.
It needed the passage of time.
I was always impressed with the love
and attention lavished on the faithful repair of
the exterior stonework.
And how Leigh and Richard risked everything to try
and save this wonderful old workhorse of a building.
When I last visited,
it was adrift in a sea of building materials,
brambles and collapsed out-buildings. But now...
All the smelly garages have gone, and lo, there's a landscape.
Well. This is all as it should be,
surrounded by beauty and gardens.
A Cornish cornucopia.
Even the solar panels are nestled among flowers.
The mill is finally rooted in its surroundings,
and looks like it's flourishing against this backdrop of abundance.
I wonder if its occupants are too. Hello. Hello!
How are you? We're good, thank you. Good to see you.
Good to see you. And you. And you, hey. Hey, Kevin, how are you?
Yeah, very well. Look at these two. Now, this is a new addition.
Yeah, this is Lola. We lost Lily, didn't we? Earlier in the year.
Oh, did you? I'm sorry.
Introduced some chaos into our lives. Why not?
Not that life is chaotic for you, it seems,
because look at this. It's all exquisite.
Thank you. This is not overnight quick trickery.
This is mature planting.
This is... It's taken a while. ..two years of heavy work.
That looks like a drystone wall behind that caging. It's beautiful.
So I moved 30 ton of stone.
Wow. I think it works really nicely with the mill as well.
Of course. Yeah... Yeah. It's industrial.
So you've got a car parking space where the old garage was. Yeah.
We managed to buy the old garage and knock it down,
and that was my best Christmas present, that was,
knocking that down. And the shipping container,
which I think is a work of total majesty.
It's makes it look better, doesn't it?
We're using up all the materials on site.
It's just brilliant. It's a kind of object lesson on how to do it.
It just worked nice didn't it? With what we'd got. Yeah.
Right. I'll bet you'd like to come in, and... I'd love to,
because the last time I looked around your house,
it was in the teeth of lockdown. I was by myself, on my tod.
Yeah. I'll get the door.
Come on, let's go in.
On the ground floor,
the Fred Flintstone dining tables still hint at
the history of this place. And the simple,
unfussy kitchen has remained surprisingly cosy for
an old stone building,
I'd have thought it prone to cold and damp.
Talking of which, how are you now heating it?
There's a biomass boiler in the back of the dining room.
Underfloor heating on every floor.
It's actually a low-cost building to run. It's very energy efficient.
The big thing for us is the insulating lime render.
Yeah, it's a Cornish product... Yeah, made from Bodmin.
It's on an inch thick on the walls.
So you've got some fibre in it,
and some foam glass beads,
and a lime product and that effectively insulates.
But any moisture that is in this old stone building, it dissipates it,
and it's breathing, it's breathing all the time.
It can still breathe. What have your energy bills been roughly?
We pay about £60 a month for electricity
and that includes running an electric car as well.
So I have no fuel costs.
OK. That's... Congratulations.
That's very cool.
But what we're really saying is huge stone building, really thick walls.
And the right choices of heating technologies here,
using a combination of underfloor,
which is low temperature, pellet boiler.
Solar panels, a key component here
and that keeps your living costs manageable.
I'm surprised, I don't think we thought it'd be this good.
Up a level, the generous living room,
as busy and open plan as it would have been when it was
the milling area, is still as cosy as I remember it.
This wall here, this is ancient. Is that right?
Yeah. The archaeologists dated it late 1400s, early 1500s.
Last time, I could see a few traces of the past here in
the old exposed timbers,
but the stickler for conservation in me still wants
to ask them how much of it is for real.
So tell me, how much of this space here is where it was?
Not that post, but a similar one was.
So this rail, did this connect to this post?
Is this all new joinery?
It's new joinery,
but with existing wood that was in the mill.
OK. It's that kind of thing about puzzling over what's...
What's new and what's...
Yeah, but what was working in the mill and what wasn't,
and how it was doing it, you know.
We totally, totally understand that, but the state of the timbers in
the building was shocking.
So, to make the building survive. I just likened it to,
it's like somebody having a major organ transplant,
and that's what we had to do
to make sure she survived.
I mean the building has always evolved, hasn't it?
It's... It's evolved masses, hasn't it?
How they used to add bits on and floors and things.
The wheel originally was on the roadside.
And then when it got busier,
they put a second wheel on this end,
so it has changed an awful lot.
Right. So we're saying,
there's been so much in the way of alteration over
the centuries, hasn't there? Because it was industrial.
I guess it's impossible to know exactly what's always been where.
Yeah. We saved what we could.
And gave it a new purpose. Yeah.
Good, good.
Two and a half years on,
I almost take Richard and Leigh's point that they are merely
the most recent in a long line of occupants,
to have tinkered, tweaked and rebuilt this mill.
There's one big improvement since my last visit.
The bedrooms are finished.
Two guest rooms occupy the second floor, each with an en-suite.
And up top, Leigh and Richard's bedroom,
nestled under the beautiful old trusses they managed to retain,
complete with the original grain pulleys.
Gosh. This floor just benefits so much,
doesn't it, from these hexagonal shapes?
You know, each truss is a repetition of the next,
and so nicely done and properly repaired.
The beams provide the appropriate framing for
the views out to the valley beyond.
It's really nice.
There's a bathroom too,
with a surprisingly appropriate bath,
like an industrial tub.
I get the sense that these two are beginning to feel
a strong connection to
the long lineage of this mill's inhabitants.
Oh, I want to show you something, Kevin, a lovely photo of the mill.
The miller! Is that him?
Yeah, that's him. That's him. And that's his wagon.
I think about that every day.
You know, what's happened here, what it's seen.
An old guy came to see us
and he remembers playing here as a child.
He said the millers used to chase us and put flour sacks over our heads.
Perhaps not nowadays. Perhaps not nowadays.
So you're beginning to kind of feel that you're
part of something bigger, longer?
We can trace the people that have leased it
and owned it back to 1610. So really,
we're just another name at the bottom of the list,
and there will be names after us.
The spirit of the ancestors has infused
the current inhabitants,
a spell only a building
with such deep roots has the power to perform.
And under their influence,
Richard and Leigh have transformed the garden to the rear,
with a pond for fish,
landscaping that sensitively traces
the original water channels,
and a clever means of connecting back to the house.
Eh!
I thought I might fall into the water, but no.
No, no. Dog safe. Big grill and, yeah, love this.
It's clearly a piece of modern industrial language,
and it just suits a mill. It fits it. Yeah, absolutely bang-on.
Richard's sweat and toil has transformed this old mill.
I wonder if it, in turn, has transformed him.
Are you through the emotional roller-coaster yet?
When we spoke last,
you said you were sort of emotionally overwhelmed by it.
It's changed me a lot, I think.
Has it? Yeah.
We had a wedding anniversary. I cried.
We lost Lily. I cried.
Yeah... Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know whether I find it
a bit overwhelming at times, but, yeah,
just everything about, I just love it here.
Do you see it as an admission of strength almost,
that you're able to be in touch with your emotions more?
An improvement, I reckon. Yeah.
An improvement.
It's just getting used to it because I'm not...
That's not what I was. Mm.
Being involved with the building was,
it's got to be one of the best things I've ever done.
We saved her but, at the same time, she...
She's given us so much back.
And for Leigh, who's now chairwoman of the local gardening club,
has saving the old building helped to build wider connections?
People have welcomed us with open arms
and made us feel very welcome. Because of what you've done.
Yeah, I think because of what we've done and because, you know,
for 60 years, they saw a significant building deteriorate
and, you know, at least someone's put something back.
The reanimating of this old mill has been
a sort of lightning rod,
jolting its occupants
and all that surrounds it back to life.
I get the feeling, Richard, that you...
Although, actually, you love the zen, the flow of the work here,
and that was something you particularly enjoyed,
what emerged from that is an emotional relationship
with this place, which I can't imagine
you quickly wanting to give up.
That physical contact,
even if it was just sweeping the floor,
because we were involved in it...
..it was a much more rewarding experience. I think if you'd have
just handed over the cash and let somebody get...
Well, you begin to own it.
It wouldn't be the same.
Yeah, I understand that.
These are moments when you feel physically, emotionally,
spiritually, connected to something other than just the everyday.
Yeah, it's not just four walls and a roof, is it? No, it's not,
it's definitely a home now, isn't it?
I just think she's looking after us.
Yeah, we're happy. That's all that matters.
The mill may have struggled to get used
to its new incarnation as a home,
but it has embraced its new role.
Always a place of industry,
it has gone to work on its latest occupants.
Revitalising and embracing them with warmth and comfort
and the resonance of its history.
So I know I've given Leigh
and Richard a hard time over the course of this project,
but only because I was interested in the best possible outcome.
And actually, I think the outcomes here are pretty darn good.
And what I thoroughly respect them for is
an approach which really respects
the history of this place,
the fact that they are just custodians.
The magic that, for centuries, has flowed through
the waters around this site,
I think now courses through their veins.
They are romantically attached to this place.
They've been seduced by it.
And that cuts to the very essence of what it is we do when we connect
to old buildings and want to repair them.
You know, we love them rather like children or pets,
unconditionally.
We continue to love them unconditionally.
They do not thank us,
and yet we continue to love them still.
That is the nature of the relationship.
Three years ago,
Olaf and Fritha took on a crazy triangular plot.
This is just our dream. We can do whatever we want here.
Olaf's carpentry skills were tested to the max.
Can't fit that window in.
With successful IVF spurring him on.
But in the end, after the baby arrived,
money had run out to fully finish the house,
as well as their mad double decker bus workshop experiment.
Oh, Christ. Now, I'm back. Whoa.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media