Original subtitles

You wouldn't, would you, buy a second-hand car

without having seen it,

without even taking it for a test drive?

And equally you'd be foolish or fearless to buy a plot of land

on the other side of the planet that you'd never seen.

But, hey, you know, why not live a little?

We all need to take a chance in life now and again.

ENGINE FAILS TO START

HE SIGHS

Oh.

Gill and Jon Flewers have recently moved to the Malvern Hills

in Worcestershire with their three young sons.

Just look at that view.

This is the landscape that inspired Elgar.

It's just stunning.

But Gill and Jon chose it because it reminds them

of New Zealand, where they've spent the last four years.

Living in New Zealand had some really great aspects to it.

It's an absolutely beautiful country

and the views from our plot of land were amazing.

An ex-RAF pilot, Jon did a stint in the New Zealand Air Force,

but Gill, a GP, missed home.

I really struggled with the distance from family and close friends.

And Jon said to me,

"If you can find me a plot of land that has a view,

"I will consider moving back."

So while still on the other side of the world,

Gill and Jon took an extraordinary gamble - to buy a building plot

here in Malvern without even visiting it first.

Mum. Yeah.

Where will the new house be?

Just beyond the golf course.

People thought we were a little bit deranged

to spend money on a piece of land on which we'd never stood.

Fortune favours the brave, right?

But bravery and foolhardiness are close bedfellows.

By harnessing the adventurous spirit that saw them travel

halfway around the world,

Jon and Gill are now taking a fresh leap into the unknown.

I have zero house-building experience, apart from

what I've made with Lego and Meccano as a child.

Go on, then. Run down the hill.

So this is a 100% completely new experience for us.

We are house-building virgins, and God help us.

I can see why Jon and Gill thought these hills could perhaps rival

the landscape of New Zealand.

But the plot they've bought here

looks like a whole heap of trouble to me.

Hello. Hello.

This is your site.

It is. Come up.

It's quite steep, isn't it?

Something like a 45-degree slope. Yeah.

We're trying to bring the spirit of New Zealand into it, really.

And if the Kiwis can build on the side of a hill, why can't we?

It's just a bit of a hill. How hard can it be?

We'll work round it.

You have to admire their fearlessness.

But this is one of the steepest plots I've ever seen.

And it's not just the gradient of this hill that's worrying,

it's all the bedrock they'll need to excavate.

600-million-year-old fractured granite.

Is that what the Malvern Hills are made of?

Apparently so. Granite.

No wonder they're still here.

Wow. That's going to take some work, isn't it?

So, if you're wondering what on earth possessed Jon and Gill

to buy such a difficult site, well, there's one big payoff.

The view gets better and better, of course, as you come up.

It's absolutely stunning. It certainly does.

You can probably see as far as the Cotswolds and up

into the Midlands.

And what is it you're going to build?

We're trying to bring some of the ideas that we saw in New Zealand

to England and make it happen here.

Clean, sleek lines. Simple forms. You know, wooden structures.

Stylistically, this represents something that you're familiar with,

but how familiar will it be to the people of this area?

It'll be like Marmite. Some will love it.

Some will absolutely hate it.

I think it's Vegemite. THEY LAUGH

Trying to perch a house on a granite hill this steep is a perilous task.

Jon and Gill are hoping to excavate as little as possible -

right next to the road to keep costs down.

Six metres up, they'll cut a small platform to support the top floor

of the building.

Their tiny ground floor will be made from insulating formwork -

polystyrene blocks filled with concrete.

Just enough space for a carport, entrance hall and store room.

Supported by a single steel column,

the floor above will be twice the size.

This is where the family will sleep,

with three equally sized rooms for the boys

and a master suite for Jon and Gill at the corner of the building.

The top floor will be much bigger

with large expanses of glazing at the front and back.

A spare bedroom, bathroom, study and utility room

will run down one side of the building.

But the heart of this home will be the large open-plan living space

with a sleek modern kitchen, which looks onto a large deck

high up in the tree canopy,

and a sunken seating area that opens onto the hillside behind them.

The building will be clad in natural materials to respect the landscape -

untreated timber and the local red granite.

Jon and Gill have given themselves a generous 18 months to finish

this upside-down Antipodean hill house.

So how much did all this cost, then, the plot?

£145,000 for the plot. Good value.

And what about the construction costs?

420,000. And where's that all come from, the money?

Selling the house in New Zealand.

Air Force pension. All our savings.

Um... Everything. Yeah, absolutely everything.

Are there local builders who've had experience of doing these kind of things?

We believe we've got someone now.

The builders are OK with building the house.

They're just scared of the hill. Worried about the hill.

And the groundwork. Scared of the hill.

Within weeks of my visit, it becomes clear just how scared they are

when Jon and Gill's builders pull out. The search is now on

for a contractor who is prepared to tackle the steep slope.

Hi there. We're building a house on Malvern Hills.

It's a little bit special, so don't let that put you off.

Over the next eight agonising months,

a dozen firms refuse the job

and nothing happens on site.

We've just got to find someone who's brave.

It's not the first house that's ever been built on the side of a hill.

Eventually, they run out of options, so Jon makes a drastic decision.

He quits his job and takes on the role of contractor himself.

I don't have a plan in life.

But when I decide I'm going to do something, I jolly well do it

and I don't give up.

I'm more driven than ever, really, to make it happen.

So I can say to the kids, "I didn't lie. We did build this house."

Pop your arm down. Sit back in your chair.

Think of something nice.

And it'll now be down to Gill, who works long hours as a doctor,

to bring in the family's only income.

Jon's first task is tracking down

some particularly fearless groundworkers.

This is the kind of guiding I like.

Operating a digger on such steep terrain

is not for the faint-hearted.

When you're up on the top,

spinning round -

pretty scary, really.

If I put too much weight on it, I could go down with it.

So...

The thing to try and make sure is that you don't get too brave.

And hills aren't just dangerous places to build,

they're also expensive.

Very dramatic. It's a lot more than you think.

Unfortunately, Jon's only got £50,000 to spend on groundworks

but he's hoping to make it stretch with some clever design.

This is my scale model of the Malvern Hills.

Frank Lloyd Wright said that no house should ever be on a hill.

It should be OF the hill.

It should belong to the hill.

And, traditionally, the way of dealing with that

was to take a steep slope like this and to burrow into it

and to remove rock

and from that make some kind of platform.

So, as well as cutting away a bit of space

you'd also make a bit of a ledge

and on that you could then safely build

your house, you see?

And so the house would belong to the hill.

However, that's not what they're doing here

because they haven't got enough money. So what they're doing instead

is they're leaving most of the hill intact

and instead excavating just a little bit of it

down here

and then plonking a rather modest ground floor

on top of which will sit

a larger first floor

and then finally the top floor

with all the living accommodation on up here.

It's the same footprint as the previous building

but it's only half the volume,

because it follows the slope of the hill down.

From this side, relatively elegant.

From this side, from the road,

really quite big.

It looks like Jon's military training is paying dividends.

Within a month of taking the helm,

he's finished excavating.

Stop.

And he's ready to pour concrete.

All in the foundations.

Everybody tells me from here it's easy. Definitely.

Haven't you got any more control over your hose?

His architect and engineer's design means Jon has a way

to anchor the house to the hill with just two small foundations -

a modest ground-floor slab

no bigger than your average studio flat

is positioned right next to the road.

Six metres above it, a long strip foundation is poured,

which will ultimately support the second floor of the building.

It's very, very exciting. Very exciting.

That's where our house is going to be.

It's real.

It does make me quite emotional.

I just think actually he has achieved this and I always knew

he could, but I don't think either of us would pretend

it's been an easy ride.

He's living, sleeping, breathing and just putting every ounce

of his soul into this. You know, he said to me,

"I'm building our family home. I've got to get it right."

Jon's determination is admirable.

But his learning curve is probably going to be as steep as his hill.

Ten months have already elapsed on this project,

and Jon and Gill are still grappling with their hill.

Today, their walling system is arriving on a lorry.

This is ICF - or insulating concrete formwork

It's a system of hollow, interlocking polystyrene blocks -

basically Lego for grown-ups.

I...have here two, just two sections

from the corner of this walling system,

and you can see really easily how very much like

children's building blocks it is.

Literally using these poppers, just...

connect them, like that,

which allows for concrete to be poured into this space.

This is the internal skin of the building - lightly insulated -

but of course the bulk of the insulation is on the outside

to prevent heat from the building escaping.

And to assemble this stuff is of course simplicity itself.

It's upside down.

It's upside down? Yeah.

What, you mean it's meant to go that way up?

What's the difference?

Oh, I see. Yeah. No, no, it looks really like...

It does look like children's building blocks now.

The little nipples have got to go on the... That's right. Right, OK.

Yeah, it's simplicity itself - as they say in the catalogue -

except I've already screwed it up.

ICF was actually first developed in Europe after World War II

as a quick way to repair damaged buildings,

and it's now gaining ground in the UK.

Oh, goodness.

One window. In the hands of people who know what they're doing,

the walls are flying up.

So, it really is child's play.

It's the self-builder's friend.

Highly energy-efficient, sometimes cheaper and often quicker than more

labour-intensive building methods,

it's also lightweight - ideal for Jon's hilly site.

Once you've got them all on site, you know, it goes up in no time.

The ground-floor blocks are assembled in just one day,

then filled with concrete.

But just as this building's beginning to grow,

Jon and Gill's architect, Nick Carroll,

is proposing a last-minute design change.

This is the hard corner here overlooking the view. Yeah.

I reckon we should take our pen and do something like that -

just to soften that hard corner.

And how much more is that going to cost, Nick?

NICK INHALES SHARPLY Erm...

At the... I don't know.

Curves, constructionally, are difficult. When I mean difficult,

I mean expensive.

Is it worth it?

I think so.

These kind of buildings are... They're an experiment.

Yes, experimenting with my life savings, and some.

That's what I'm agonising about. Yeah.

Jon and Gill bravely decide to go ahead with the curve,

but just forming the base of it requires five days

of extra engineering and steelwork.

Give an engineer nice square angles - easy. Then architect,

11th hour, "Let's put a curve."

It wasn't the architect who said, "Let's put a curve in." It was you

as client saying, "Yeah, we'd love that."

No, he suggested it and we went, "OK, well, let's investigate."

So, you know, it's going to be a really nice feature, but...

But it's a pain in the neck to form. Complete... I turned to Gill

and said, "How do you feel about getting rid of the curve?"

And she said, "No, the curve is staying.

"I don't care how much it costs or how complex it is."

Costly and complex it most certainly is.

As the next two floors are constructed,

the curve continues up the building -

requiring extra labour and materials at every stage.

Curve's looking good.

Looking real good.

So, definitely curved TV, then.

It adds ?15,000 to their already tight budget.

I know it costs a lot of money and it's a bit of a design frivolity,

but...

Yeah, it's looking pretty good.

Very pleased with it now.

It's taken a year to get to this point, but the structural phase

of the project is finally coming to an end.

The second-floor concrete is poured and the roof is fitted.

Jon and Gill's upside-down house has been designed

with the main living area on the top floor to capitalise on those views.

Yeah, so it's big and...

It's now possible to get a sense of this vast open-plan space

for the first time.

Hand?

What a gentleman.

So, this is... This room? Sitting room. Sitting room.

Up the step to...? Kitchen-dining room.

HE SIGHS Ah!

Yes. This is magical, because this is like Hobbit land.

This is like... Yes. This is like New Zealand.

New Zealand, North Island.

Yes. But I think they're missing a trick here, because at the curved

corner of the building where there are even better views,

there are just two narrow holes for windows.

I'm just trying to kind of understand why you haven't

kind of taken this right round.

I would have probably enlarged one of those windows,

exploiting that view and looking down the ridge of the Malverns here,

cos you see the epic quality to it. I take your point.

Part of it is a privacy issue, cos the house next door is quite close.

OK, yeah. So, having a big window in that corner perhaps

is not appropriate. Yeah.

All very considerate,

but this wasn't demanded by the planners.

And even more bizarrely, Jon and Gill are planning to wall these

windows off to form a guest bedroom.

So, the bedhead will come to here? Yeah.

I think that's a good place for the visitors to stay.

I think I'd probably demolish this wall and...

..put, you know, put a little snug in here for the kitchen.

We're quite happy. Good.

And there's another strange layout decision here.

The main sitting area isn't near the big views at the front.

It's tucked away at the back of the house.

So, your lounge faces the hill.

Why have all this glazing facing this way, facing the slope?

The way the house is put together, you do get different views

in different places.

So, it's going to be a pretty nice garden.

I know it doesn't look it at the moment, but it will be.

It's going to be a cliff.

You're going to look out the window at a cliff. No, we're not.

Trust me, it will be different. Give it time.

It will be a thing of great beauty. OK.

I think we're quite happy. Good.

You have to be, cos you're going to live here. Yeah. Good.

THEY LAUGH

A month later, the windows arrive.

And a long stretch of glazing is fitted

facing straight into the hill.

It's a decision Jon and Gill's architect, Nick Carroll,

must have thought long and hard about.

Some would say that the best view from this building is across

over towards Cheltenham. It's that way. Yeah.

How come the majority of the windows are facing this way

and there's very little that way and there's almost nothing that way?

What's the idea behind that?

Well, you can see all the views - whether it's through a window

or on a terrace like this.

Most of the glazing is orientated towards the sun,

the south-west direction, to benefit from solar gain.

So, as the sun treks round, the building warms up. Warms up.

Whichever way you orientate this building,

you're going to get a cracking view. Yeah.

Well, other than that way, of course, I guess.

Well, even there, you're going to get, not a view,

but you're going to get a sense of enclosure there and intimacy.

It's not a one-trick pony. Yeah.

You want to feel you're maximising that view,

and you want to feel a bit more private,

connected to your own private garden at the back.

I can absolutely see where Nick's coming from,

and I champion energy-efficient buildings,

but these guys moved here from New Zealand for the views.

So, the Old English word for window is...

..e-e-e-agbyrl,

E-A-G-B-Y-R-L, which means eye hole.

Literally, a hole out of which you could see.

And here, look what you can see across these great plains.

It's exciting. It's epic,

but it's a view that this building,

with the eye holes it has, doesn't exactly grab.

Ex-RAF pilot Jon, who once spent his life in the air,

now only flies occasionally.

You won't get a better day than today. No, stunning, isn't it?

He's given up his career as a pilot

to now pour all his training, abilities and discipline

into becoming a project manager.

There's the house down there, look.

Looks pretty spectacular, doesn't it?

Absolutely fantastic.

14 months in,

the house is beginning to be clad in poplar,

an affordable rough-grained timber.

I'm actually a marksman, believe it or not. Just don't shoot me.

With a small team of just two builders on site,

Jon's doing much of the work himself.

Jon's learning a lot.

And it's just like having

an apprentice or someone like that with you

except he's paying my bills, the end of the day, as well.

Progress is slow, and their 18-month schedule

seems somewhat fictional now.

When you're making a house as unique as this

with no experience of building a house,

on a difficult site, with only a couple of builders,

I soon learned that having a schedule doesn't necessarily work.

I walked around last week and thought,

"When will it ever be in a liveable state?"

But I guess we're at least halfway through now

and of course we'll get there.

But sometimes you do wonder.

Jon's control over the ?420,000 budget is also slipping.

Thing is, you can always find something to spend the money on.

So, the fabric of the house is highly insulated.

Quality of the windows, the quality of the cladding,

you know, has had a big impact on the budget.

And building, even slowly, demands that you spend in very large chunks.

Well, it's not all counted but I know I've spent a lot of money.

I just see the numbers going down on the bank account.

I've lost a lot of sleep. I'm finding it hard.

HE SIGHS

In the autumn, the scaffolding comes down and the wooden skin

of their hill house is fully revealed for the first time.

It's got a real presence, this house, on the road, hasn't it?

It's bang, it's right there.

From down there, it looks massive.

Could be a cinema or shopping centre from here.

No way!

I don't think it's that big. It's a statement but I think

it's mellowing off now the wood is starting to soften.

Yeah. And that's the nature of wood, isn't it? It's snuggling

back into the hillside. Snuggling? I think it's a crag.

No. No. It's beautiful.

Yeah, a cliff. It's not a cliff.

The idea is it sort of blends in, very much part of the hill.

Going to be part of the local environment.

This house is perched against the slope.

It doesn't hide in it,

although Jon wants to soften its presence and part-camouflage it

in the material of the hill itself.

He has spent days collecting stone from the site,

to clad three vertical stripes between the windows

on the front of the building.

The idea is that this mixture of timber and stone will root

the house in the landscape.

This is granite, isn't it? It is. Yeah. Malvern...

You've got a sledgehammer.

A good cladding stone should break into large flat pieces

to form a thin skin across the facade.

Look at it - it's rubbish.

You can't clad a building with this.

So, for something so solid...

It's disappointing.

All those hours laboriously collecting stone

and it ain't going to work.

Which is why we have changed the plan slightly. To do what?

We're going to put some aluminium panelling on the side of the house.

Presumably, the whole point about using the stone

from the hillside in the first place was to root the building

and refer to the traditional buildings of the place

and all that stuff? It was. But, you know,

you've got to do what's realistic and what's possible.

You are across all these decisions,

because you're not saying much?

No, I'm not.

But I don't think I fully appreciated...

..the issues.

You are at a very difficult point in the project where so many

decisions need to be made every day.

No, no... I can understand why communication isn't always

as good as it should be.

Communication's obviously the transmission and the reception.

Remember, having been in the military, I'm surprised you don't know this -

you check that the idea that you wanted to communicate

has been received and understood.

Yeah.

Thanks.

They might have a plan for the outside of the building,

but Jon and Gill have yet to make many of the decisions

about the interiors.

So, their architect, Nick,

is taking them to see a finished hill house.

The interiors here are artfully restrained so as not to compete

with the views.

Wow. It is just amazing.

There's a few ideas we can steal from here. What do you reckon?

I'm kind of speechless, really. It's just beautiful.

This is all very tailored and controlled.

But I'm not convinced it's the best idea for family life

with three young boys.

You've got children.

So are you going to have white walls? Yeah.

White walls covered in hand prints?

Nonetheless, Gill is drawn to the white minimalist kitchen.

It's clean, isn't it? It's clean, it's sharp.

It's not too clinical.

Jon, however, is now a seasoned project manager

with a nose for cost.

This is all lovely and something to aim towards

but we...we just don't have the same kind of money. Budget.

I really believe you can achieve this feel

on the budget you've got.

I do hope so.

Cos I know we're going to run out.

Over the next few months, Jon and Gill attempt

their own budget version of glass-walled sleekness.

Gill's choice of kitchen is white and handle-less.

Want me just to hold it? Yeah.

But it's an economy model.

Their one extravagance is the staircase made from ash

and detailed with vertical slats.

All good.

It's moved on a bit since you were last in here.

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, yeah, look! Very, very tall spindles.

As you come up the stairs you'll be able to see through the slats.

Can't wait for that to happen.

It's a lovely piece of craftsmanship.

Bespoke work doesn't come cheap, of course.

The staircase is costing ?5,000.

This is the single most beautiful thing in the house.

So therefore that's why it costs what it costs.

With the end now in sight, Jon and Gill are saving money by taking

the painting and decorating into their own hands.

We are now...

..I think really close to the end, but we're on a bit of timeline now

because we really want to get in. There's still so much to do.

I can't wait to see that, coming up the stairs every day.

But at Christmas, around the time they had hoped to move in,

there's an unexpected sting in the tail of their project.

Just when they least expected it, the groundworkers have returned.

At the moment, we are preparing ourselves to connect

the utilities to the house.

This has been something that should have been sorted out at the beginning of the project.

The biggest problem is the fact that the connection point

to the utilities is quite a long way down the road, and this has proved

to be very expensive.

Even though Jon's plot is surrounded by other houses

which all receive power and water, his site, it seems,

is a rare utility blackspot.

You've been very unlucky, in all fairness, Jon.

You know, you're in, basically, a street, aren't you?

As a layman, you just imagine that everything would be coming by your house.

But, unfortunately, in your instance, you got caught out,

you know, big time. Big time.

Unfortunately, there was no water or electric

outside this property. It was 65 metres down the road.

So what should have been quite a, you know, a ?5,000 job,

has cost considerable expense.

Where we're at now is about ?40,000.

You don't want a massive great big bill like that right at the end when...

You're just looking around at your bank balance which started here

and is now bottoming out down there.

For just ?24, Jon could have bought a map of the utilities

back when he bought the plot

and avoided this awful shock.

I spent everything,

and ?40,000 in anybody's money...

..is a lot of money.

Jon and Gill have no choice but to borrow the money from their family.

It's a somewhat humbling debt they can barely afford.

I'll be paying that off for the rest of my life and some.

As a pilot, the guy that ultimately takes responsibility

is the guy that's in charge of the aeroplane, and I guess

I'm in charge of this house build.

I'm aware that the failing isn't somebody else's.

It's all down to me, which adds an extra level of pressure as well.

I guess I just don't want to let the people I love down.

So, now this trench.

How long has the road been closed for? Three weeks so far.

So, to do this at this stage, though,

is particularly galling, isn't it?

It was a mistake.

Um, yeah, basically, the house should be coming up to finishing,

putting the floors in, doing the painting and stuff,

and now I've got the Somme at the front of my house.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Has this tainted the project for you?

Yeah, I certainly fell out of love with the house,

which is a shame.

Who would have thought, eh?

Sometimes you have to go with the gut feeling

when you buy a plot, though.

How much money in this world do you think has been wasted,

has been lost, to those four small words, eh?

"Who would have thought?"

"Who would have thought?" What about, "Who dares wins"?

"Who dares" ends up with a massive utility bill. Well, yeah.

But... "Who dares wins, Rodney. Who dares wins."

I asked Jon and he said that he's out of love

with the building at the moment.

Have you fallen out of love with it?

I've certainly had a lot less love for it recently,

because I see what it does to Jon

and how down he's gotten -

the whole concept of "will it ever end?"

But I hope that once we've built and once we're through,

he'll be able to look at it and go,

"It's still beautiful. It's still stunning.

"I'm glad we've done this."

Even the most beautiful buildings

can sometimes have difficult births.

In construction, a project can be so demanding and unforgiving,

it forces you to ask whether you should have begun.

I never anticipated self-building being this hard.

People have said to me, "Jon, don't be down.

"It's only a house."

But to me it's all the other things -

all the money, all the...future,

the career that's been put on hold for so many years,

um...the move from the other side of the world -

all those things that we gave up.

I so hope the house is worth it.

I hope so.

I really hope so.

It's been two years since I first met Jon and Gill,

since they began their house-building adventure

against the mesmerizing backdrop of the Malvern hills.

Look at that view.

It's not typically British. It's not a patchwork of fields.

It's open. It's woodland and grassland

and there aren't even any visible fences in it.

It's very, very New Zealand.

No wonder that Jon and Gill bought this place

for what it reminded them of.

And look - over there in the corner

is a timber building hugging the hill.

That's also not typically British.

A building that looks positively Antipodean.

Emerging from behind an old oak tree,

what looks like a wooden cliff

seems to have pushed its way out of the hill.

The recessed vertical glazing panels

suggest this place is a lookout.

It is not a light, delicate building.

It's a powerful bruiser that commands the landscape.

Last time I was here,

this road was closed and the whole place was a mud bath.

But it looks like Jon and Gill

may have snatched victory from the jaws of the trench.

Hello. Hello.

You saw me coming. We did.

You look very smart, the pair of you. Thank you.

As well turned out as your house.

Hi, Jon. How are you? Yeah, I'm good, thanks.

It's very, very lovely.

It's very finished.

It looks extremely stylish, in a way, it sort of levitates, you know.

Thank you. As it's kind of just pushing up, hovering.

Set right against the road,

this house was always going to loom over cars and pedestrians,

but its impact is softened by the curved corner.

From here, this looks like the sort of bull-nosed prow of a ship,

this corner. I like it.

I prefer it unglazed. I'm pleased it isn't glazed in the end

because it's kind of more solid like a prow.

You've even given it a nautical name.

We did. It was the Endeavour Captain Cook took around New Zealand.

Yes, and we even used the script that he put in his log

for the house name.

What, that's his handwriting?

More or less.

Nice cross-cultural reference

and it describes also the years of energy and pain

that you put into building it.

I just think it encapsulates the whole concept of what we've done

and how we've done it, and what it's required.

And you were able to use the stone.

We were. We did, my own hands!

Now it's sort of like a landscape of terraces.

And they are all of the hills...

From this ground... Taken out, relocated.

..to blend in with the environment,

which is very much what we were trying to achieve

as much as we could.

It's lovely. It's like a sort of vine terrace in Italy.

It's international. Yes. Like you!

Let's go in.

Through the front door, which I've never been through because,

well, you'd never been able to get anywhere. It was a building site.

It was a building site.

Because it's really narrow at this point, isn't it?

Yes. It is. This is a bit like an inverted pyramid.

It's where you begin the journey.

I'm very excited to go up these steps.

The tiny ground floor is a deceptive aperitif.

This house draws you up, expanding as it goes.

On the first floor, the boys have three identical rooms

and the family bathroom looks onto the forest...

..while Jon and Gill's bedroom occupies prime lookout position

at the curved corner of the building.

This is your room, right? It is.

Master bedroom. Little en-suite next door.

Oh, this is great. It's like being in a tower because of that curved wall. Absolutely.

The centrepiece and spiritual core of this place is the ash staircase.

Its open treads and stretched balustrade throw shadows

and light in gently changing shapes.

Staircases and landings are often so dull.

But this - this is completely mesmeric.

The patterns it makes, the light on the wall.

It's the spine of the building. The vertical column connects it all.

It is the spine. It's even got vertebrae.

Really beautifully done.

The staircase propels you upwards

to the family living space on the top floor.

Up into the light - oh, look, under this great skylight.

This floor is semi open-plan with a simple kitchen

that guardedly enjoys that New Zealand landscape outside.

Whoa. This is your main act, isn't it? It is.

No seamless giant panes of glass here, but very organised framing

of the views as though the house protects you from too much exposure.

Wowser.

That is beautiful.

It is quite high, isn't it?

Yes. It's fairly vertiginous looking down onto the road.

You don't ever need to fly again, do you, Jon?

Just look out the window. It is like flying, yeah.

Wonderful as this is, I'm conscious

the kitchen only takes in half the view because

Jon and Gill partitioned this space to make a spare bedroom.

One thing just slightly grates in my mind about this room

and that is that...

that view that way, which you've got in your bedroom,

you've deprived yourself of here.

We don't need that because we've got all this here.

And the guests have a fantastic view. Hmm.

Where would you look if you've got too much to look at?

It's true. You'd cut yourself chopping the vegetables. You would.

JON LAUGHS

And more, a bit out here. Yeah. Absolutely. Come to the treehouse.

This is bigger than a treehouse. It is. Look, it's lovely.

There are so many things going on here.

You look out

and you appear to be in a balloon,

you know, flying over that landscape and then you look back

and you're tucked into the woodland, you know, and then there's the tree

which is right up here.

It's like being up in the canopy, isn't it? There's a whole range

of organised experiences that the building is kind of...

Nudging you around. Yeah, nudging you towards. Yeah.

It's very neat.

You know, people make a big play of massive views and huge windows

and a single statement.

This is more complex, far more constrained, and in a way, I think,

probably more rewarding for it as well, you know.

Do you ever tire of it? No, no.

I've promised myself never to become complacent with the view,

always to marvel at what we have.

Oh, wow.

I think it really delivers.

Yes. Thank you.

But what of the back?

The living room that used to look straight out onto a cliff.

Quite a large room. This is your winter sitting room,

really, isn't it? This is our cosy hideaway.

Interesting. Very deliberately, that dividing wall

which also cuts off half of the view,

it deliberately... Reframes it. ..forces your attention this way.

Actually, I don't know where it's... Where's the hill gone?

How have you managed that?

A trick of the light, perhaps.

No, it's a trick of the excavator, more like.

This was much steeper, much closer.

You have done work to remove and cut this back, haven't you?

With the old digger. It has transformed it.

Grass at the top, so that actually is usable space.

Beautiful swept staircase straight out of Game of Thrones.

And wild flower meadow.

I mean, it's a joy.

It is an absolute joy.

I thought this was going to be a horrible hellhole.

I was expecting to see more of that black plastic.

Oh, come on. How very dare you!

And there's more. Oh, yes. Yeah.

The very continental terraced gardens cool the temper of

this bulwark of a building and soften it.

At the back, where the top of the inverted pyramid kisses the hill,

it seems single-storey.

Do you know what I find here -

wherever I go, whichever corner of the building I come to,

it looks different.

Like completely different properties, almost, from different views. Yeah, that's well done.

I think you've done the right thing.

You did the right thing with the windows.

I think you've done the right thing with the garden at the back. Good.

Thank you. Yeah, that's really nice to hear.

This home does not wear its heart on its sleeve.

It is protective, private and purposeful, with an almost

military guard to it.

It is part ship, anchored to the hill,

part lookout,

and it gives away only what it wants to.

Jon and Gill have produced a commendable building,

rooted to the place.

But was it worth uprooting their lives for?

So how does this house deliver against the expectations you had

at the beginning?

And I don't mean in the UK, I mean in New Zealand all those years ago.

I think the things we wanted to bring back that we had over there

were the ability to have open-plan living -

we've got an amazing view -

and building on the side of a hill, which they do without even blinking.

That is very Antipodean, admittedly.

Yeah. And yet it was so hard to do here.

But we've managed to achieve it.

And I think it completely delivers.

I'm not quite so sure it's...

It's been a really hard journey.

Mentally, emotionally, physically.

And we're... It's still fresh. It's beautiful.

I have no doubt that it's beautiful.

But I'm not sure it's worth the sacrifices that have happened

up to this point, at the moment.

How's this man in your eyes now?

Have you learnt much about him?

Yes. He needs to believe in himself more.

Because he's very capable.

You'll get me crying now. Shush!

If you were to do it again, how would you do it?

I'd start on a flat site.

I'd make sure I would do my homework. I would...

Not buy off the internet, maybe?

You know, you'd go and stand on the land first. But then...

But even then, we wouldn't have thought about the trench thing

and even when we got here, that very first time we stood on the plot,

I didn't think, "Oh, what have we done?"

I just went, "Wow, this is beautiful. We have to be able to do this." Yeah.

It was harder than I expected. It pushed me to the limit.

The very limit.

And how much did it cost in the end?

Everything.

Yeah.

Maybe a couple of hundred thousand more than we wanted.

So you're all in for how much?

Maybe 600,000. 600,000.

That's quite a lot, isn't it?

It is quite a lot, yeah.

How does it compare to flying jets?

But that's, you know, I'm trained to do that. It was...

You know, you take little steps and you get the way.

We took the bigger step with this house.

You know, we didn't build a little bungalow

and then learn some lessons and build something else.

We went, "Hey, let's just do it once and do this

"outlandish building which is elevated on a cliff."

We didn't dip our toe in the water. We went for it,

so, you know, that's...

pretty mad.

We pulled it off, I guess.

Didn't we?

I have to remind myself that

this house is the product of a powerful ambition -

an ambition to move back to the UK to put down roots,

make a new life here.

And boy, does this building do it. I mean, look at it.

It is so powerful.

It's of the hill, it's against the hill, it's in the hill.

It really does put down those roots.

Thing is, though,

ambition can be a dangerous mistress on a project like this.

It can shackle you, suck you dry,

bleed your soul away, even,

as Jon has found,

but then, as another Antipodean explorer, James Cook, put it,

"Ambition leads me not only

"further than any man has gone before me,

"but as far as I think it possible for man to go."

And his ship, like this house, was called Endeavour.

I've always been interested in period architecture.

It doesn't look very pretty.

I love modern architecture.

Now I'm starting to get excited!

The windows do not fit.

The whole thing feels like a fight.

You can't change that window!

All you can see is little compromises.

You are strapped for cash and yet you splurge on this amazing thing.

I could imagine a situation where we run out of money.

It's a nightmare.