Today (14 January 2017) I decided to set up a blog, to report progress on our new house.
This first post is a brief catch up covering the last 2 years.
This first post is a brief catch up covering the last 2 years.
1 October 2014 – This
is the day I first contacted George Batterham of Batterham Matthews Design, who
quickly became our chosen architect. I had found his company by tracking down
the architects of this spectacular house – Cranham Lodge in the Cotswolds.
George soon came up with a set of sketches – some more
whacky than others, but we rather liked the idea of curves.
We quite quickly settled on the basic design – with a curved
outline with about half of the footprint single storey half two-storey.
24 February 2015
– George and I had our first meeting with one of the Bromsgrove planning
officers, Helena Plant. It turns out to have been a lucky chance that she was
on duty that day, as she was interested in the design concept from the start,
and mentioned that she would have thrown out anything less exciting. The
complication was that we live within the Alvechurch conservation zone and the
new house is to be on land adjacent to the 12th Century grade II* listed St
Laurence’s Church. Over the next 6 months, with several site visits and with discussions
with Helena, the conservation officer, Mary Worsfold, and Heritage England, we gradually
moved towards a full planning application, which Helena subsequently steered to
approval without getting us bogged down with the whole committee.
30 October 2015 –
we finally submit the full application for planning. There are then several frustrating
delays - the application was not even formally acknowledged until 10 December.
And before we reached the finish, we had agreed to three successive extensions of
the deadline with the planning office. This seemed prudent to keep them
on-board, as they have to hit various performance targets! During the waiting, I
spent a happy couple of evenings building a model of the site and house, much
to Stephanie’s scorn… but it actually went down well with the planning office.
We included a photo of my model in our 2016 Christmas letter, and someone said
they thought it was a photo of broccoli, so maybe Stephanie wasn’t too far off!
11 January 2016 -
we have an interesting meeting with the full council of Alvechurch parish, at
which our plan was the main item on the agenda. We were allowed our three
minutes to present the plan, but several neighbours also spoke, and objected.
After quite a lot of discussion the council also decide to object. Luckily
parish councils can only object, and cannot actually reject applications, and
Bromsgrove County Council has the final say. However, based on some of the
views expressed, and after further discussion with Helena and Mary Worsfold, the
conservation officer, we go on to revise the size and location of the house for
the third time, and get indicative approval from Helena and Mary that they are
now happy with it.
9 March 2016 – Hooray!
We get the approval, along with 12 conditions that we will need to discharge
during the build process. These mainly reflect the protection of the remaining
trees, and keeping the driveway access sightlines open.
The house will look rather posh, we think!
The house will look rather posh, we think!
But I am now getting impatient. So over the summer I start to
divide the plot of land, take out a few hedges, and begin to widen the entrance
to the site.
We also get rid of about 40 trees - I take out about 25 smaller ones and the
professionals take out the bigger ones. Our wood-pile is quite impressive by
then end of the summer.
26 October 2016 –
after a very slow process, Ben Smith and George have all the final drawings and
specs ready, and we send these out to several builders to tender. One rather unknown part of the original
design was the issue of the building now sitting on the steeply sloping part of
the site. So we had to have a series of test holes drilled to see what sort of
stuff is under the grass – basically pretty low quality clay. But the
foundations will need to be substantial.
3 January 2017 – after
eventually getting two quite different quotes back from all the various
companies we approached, we agree the price with Bickford Builders, from Solihull, and feel
like we are actually on the way. We had been recommended Bickfords by friends, and they seem keen to take on this unusual building challenge. One problem will be our steep driveway up to the site. Encouragingly, almost the next day Bickford
Builders sent a chap with a very large fork-lift truck to test if he could get
up the driveway … he could!
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