A few previously unencountered bumps in the road on John and Sue’s fifth project were no match for these seasoned self-builders
TEXT Jayne Dowle IMAGES CillaCam Photography
As a veteran self-builder, John Askew has plenty of advice to share. When he and his wife, Sue, built their current home – the fifth self-build they have completed – they opted to sell their previous house and move into an onsite caravan for nine months.
“We got one with an apex roof, rather than the flat-roofed kind,” says 69-year-old John. “There is no insulation in a flat-roof caravan, so you don’t want one of those. It was quite cosy, but however you sealed it up you couldn’t keep the dust out.”
This was at the end of February 2022, when building work on their new detached farmhouse had been going on for around four months. John couldn’t wait to get closer to the action – he and Sue, also 69, have always been hands-on, doing everything from digging foundations to driving plant hire. It was difficult to source a caravan to buy in the first place, John says, because in the aftermath of Covid, there was huge demand from holiday parks and people opting to take a break at home instead of travelling abroad.
Such challenges are all in a day’s work for John, an arable farmer with 550 acres, and Sue, a retired practice manager, who have two adult sons with their own families; one lives 3,500 miles away in New York, the other in the nearby village of Guyhirn.
John and Sue’s new home, Beech House, in Marshland St James, near Downham Market, Norfolk, was finished in September 2022. It’s called Beech House because John and Sue planted a row of native beech around the perimeter, to provide an attractive natural hedge and help shield their home from the winds that race across the tranquil East Anglian landscape.
Beech House, its garage and an accompanying agricultural shed was built under Paragraph 79 (now Paragraph 80) and agricultural provision planning permissions, another challenge to be negotiated. The new house would stand a significant distance of a couple of miles from the development area boundary around the village of Marshland St James, but needed to be there as it is central to John’s farming operations.
This presented an issue with the rules of Paragraph 79, which allows individual new-build homes in rural areas only in exceptional circumstances and when a number of conditions, including external appearance and sustainability, have been met.
The Askews’ architect, James Burton at Swann Edwards, an architecture practice in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, explains that the justification for agricultural provision was hard to achieve because John’s farming business is arable; as such there is no requirement for him to be present on the site to tend to livestock.
James argued that in appearance and sustainable terms, the new house would meet the criteria of Paragraph 79. “John and Sue have lived in the local area all their lives. Their brief was for a modern home that reflects the fen landscape and its agricultural nature,” he says. “We spent time exploring the area and the typology of agricultural buildings, in particular grain stores and how they have evolved over time. Typically, these will be a single span building with concrete grain store walling up to a height, with a simple cladded structure above.”
The house is faced with steel trapezoidal cladding to reflect the rural vernacular. John and Sue and their architect discussed the potential construction options available and the pros and cons of each.
John was wary of building on a steel frame, for example, partly because of the cost and partly because he admits he’s a traditionalist who likes “solid walls”. So masonry construction with a suspended block and beam ground floor and timber upper floors and roof was chosen as the build method.
A masonry build allowed John to best utilise his wide range of local contacts in the building trade, who were all familiar with this traditional way of housebuilding. It also created “decent levels of thermal mass,” James adds, to contribute to the sustainable performance of the building.
To help meet the terms of Paragraph 79, in terms of energy demand, maximum efficiency has been achieved by designing Beech House around the path of the sun, reducing the frequency and size of openings to the north, east and west sides of the house, which are the most exposed to colder temperatures and strong winds.
Good levels of insulation and airtightness were non-negotiable. For the floor, 150 mm Kingspan K103 was chosen to provide high thermal performance balanced with the overall thickness and cost.
The walls are insulated with Knauf Dritherm 32 to provide full fill insulation. “This is a commonly used product, understood by all and simple to use and install, ensuring thermal continuity can be maintained,” says James. This material is also non-combustible so is a safe and fire regulations-approved choice.
The multi-pitched roof is constructed from Kingspan KS1000 RW, steel-faced composite roof panels that provide good levels of insulation and airtightness. It also achieves the desired rustic appearance for the new house. “Again, this is a material that is readily used in agriculture and John and the local workforce are experienced at using this,” says James. John adds that he didn’t want a strictly ‘tin roof’ because the noise of rain would drive him mad.
The flat roof of the balcony, off the main bedroom, comprises Kingspan Kooltherm K107 and K1118 insulated plasterboard to provide a level threshold from bedroom to balcony.
A Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5 kW air source heat pump and water cylinder powers ground floor underfloor heating, radiators upstairs and hot water. There is also a ground-mounted solar PV array. With efficient additions such as LED lighting, the resulting operational energy of the dwelling is as low as possible.
To add weight to the agricultural aspect of the planning proposal, the land on which Beech House and its new farm building was to be built on included a former farmyard, so it was classed as brownfield. Also, there had been a farm dwelling on the site previously and neighbours nearby.
“We worked closely with John and Sue, and Adam Case, a partner at local estate agency and chartered surveyors Cruso Wilkin, to develop the agricultural justification,” says James. “The National Planning Policy Framework had been updated at the time to allow for succession planning and we worked with the local authority – Borough Council King’s Lynn and West Norfolk – and presented the case at the Planning Committee, with the scheme being approved subject to an agricultural tie.”
This is the first time in their self-build history, John says, that he and Sue have stood back and let the architect take the lead.
“Normally, we’d have to work round the dining room furniture!” he laughs. “We’d had it since we were first married, and one of Sue’s rules was that the dining room in any of the houses had to fit her furniture. She has finally allowed us to get rid of it!” Sue and John’s only intervention was to make the house a little bit smaller than James first designed it, so it’s now 317 sq m. “Why?” says John. “It doesn’t cost as much money then, does it?”
The build cost was just under £400,000. Other cost-cutting measures John recommends include keeping everything in a self-build house as square as possible, as curves cost more to design and build. And although he and Sue are utterly delighted with the large windows that provide ever-changing views – “you can see right the way up into the sky, you can watch the birds fly from one side of the view to the other” – John would never go for vast expanses of glazing, again because of the cost: “You can have big windows, but do it in sections. Even though some of these here are big spaces, the spaces have been filled cost-effectively. Huge windows can easily cost £40,000 to £50,000 each which makes a big hole in the budget. There are ways around it.”
Sue especially likes the cosiness of the sitting room, which also benefits from the views, and they both like the free-flowing open-plan space which James designed for them.
The Askews met James when Swann Edwards was appointed to work on the rebuild of a local community centre, and immediately felt that they could trust him to interpret their ideas for a new farmhouse.
“Jamie asked us what we wanted in the house and then drew the house around it,” says Sue. “You need certain rooms, certain things, so the design came from that really.” On the ground floor, the house has an open-plan kitchen/dining/family room, a snug/living room, an office, a utility room and a plant room.
Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and a bathroom. The main bedroom has a dressing room and ensuite, and a balcony leading off, with an additional door also giving access from the landing. This provides panoramic views of the surrounding countryside and offers shade to the terrace below. The balcony is held up on brick pillars that provide an attractive design feature to the exterior of the house.
“Futureproofing was an important part of the design considerations with John and Sue anticipating remaining in this home,” says James. “As such, level access is available throughout the ground floor, from the large front door onwards. Openings are sufficiently wide should wheelchairs be required in future. In addition, the first floor has level access thresholds onto the balcony and there is space incorporated for the future installation of a lift and accessible bathrooms.
The garage has been built with attic trusses and a mezzanine floor. “We’ve got that as a junk room,” John says, “but it could easily be turned into an extra bedroom if required.”
The flexibility he’s learned through a lifetime of farming has equipped John with a very pragmatic attitude to self-build. He uses agricultural suppliers to source materials when he can. One of his top tips is to have all materials onsite a week before they are needed: “As soon as the wheat went out of the shed, we filled it up with stuff.”
He and Sue undertook their first self-build project in the early 1990s, when they needed to upscale for more space for their two growing boys. John remembers an early self-build
project – they started off in a bungalow, then built their first house, followed by four more, as well as many other renovation projects along the way.
“We had the building inspector come round to see the footings one afternoon,” John says. “He wasn’t happy with them and asked for them to be redug. So I sharpened my spade and set to work. I got Sue and my sons taking the muck away with the wheelbarrows and we got it sorted there and then. I rang the building inspector the next morning and told him it was done. He couldn’t believe it.”
All the couple’s projects have been built around this pocket of West Norfolk. Over the years they have assembled a crack team of builders – Warnes and Edwards from King’s Lynn did the brickwork, with Jamie Lunney on windows and roofing – and other local tradespeople they trust, including carpenter/joiner Wayne Jackson, decorator Darren Johnson, and BJ Plant Hire in Wisbech. Everybody pitches in, working together, with professional services brought in as necessary.
For Beech House, 4D Structural Engineered Design Solutions, a structural and civil engineering company in King’s Lynn, were commissioned to undertake a soil test and do the structural design. The soil conditions comprise medium plasticity silty clay so a traditional strip foundation at one metre depth was specified.
“Sue can drive a forklift, she’s got a teleporter (telescopic handling) licence,” John says proudly. “We’ve done groundwork – it’s almost second nature to a farmer, digging foundations. I can weld. As I’ve got older, I’ve done a bit less. I’ll have the trades in, the brickies and the doors, all the finishes, plasterers as well. But there is a hell of a lot you can do, I was on the roof with the chippy, screwing things together. “
Local contacts are vital, he says. “Two of the boys we had on this one said they weren’t going to do any more self-build projects, but they came to work for us, and I think that says something.”
So is this fifth self-build their final project? “Never say ‘never’,” John laughs. “I enjoy it, it’s good fun. You’ve got to organise your finance, you’ve got to organise the boys, and then you’re off. And Sue cannot sit still, she likes a challenge. We enjoy doing them, they fill the Saturdays and Sundays up.”