Episode 1 A Pembrokeshire Farm

This is Wales.

My country.

I suppose you'd be forgiven for not guessing that,

because I am a bit of a bogus Welshman.

I was born in Cardiff and my family moved away

for some unaccountable reason when I was six months old.

But my mother, Gwyneth, and my father, Elwyn,

called me Griffith Rhys Jones so I'd never forget my Welsh roots.

And I never have.

I was raised in Essex as one of the Epping Welsh.

It's only recently that I've returned to Wales

and realised exactly what I've been missing

particularly amid the rugged beauty of north Pembrokeshire.

A few miles up the coast there

is a little fishing village called Llangrannog.

All I really know about my roots

is that my grandfather had a house there at some time.

Before that they were farming stock from North Wales.

This is as good a place as any to try and set down my roots,

to rediscover where I come from.

I'm standing on a granite outcrop

surrounded by a fringe of bracken and heather.

What's absolutely extraordinary from up here

is the view, the vista that's spread out.

With these little grey farmsteads

dotted in what is almost an alarming green.

It's one of those farms that's brought me here.

It's called Trehilyn.

It stands on 70 acres of farmland

and I've bought it as a going concern - a working farm.

Now, I'm actually not a farmer,

but it wasn't the land that interested me first of all.

All over Wales, farm buildings like these have been disappearing

at an alarming rate.

The problem is they're too small for modern farming methods

and they don't meet EC regulations.

They don't get anywhere near the same level of protection

as country houses or castles,

but I think they're just as important to our Welsh landscape

and our heritage.

I want to have a go

at putting these buildings to new use, restoring them.

And the really big question is

what should they look like and how do you do that?

Trehilyn is a typical small Pembrokeshire farm.

The main house was built about 1840,

but I think it's been extended over the years.

The courtyard looks to me as if it was built at the same time,

although here too there are modern additions.

It was a mixed farm, sheep and cows, horses and chickens were kept,

and potatoes and corn were grown.

And there was a building for all of them.

Isn't that fantastic? This is great.

When you come from London,

and life is a series of living in pokey little houses,

what can be better than discovering

you've got extra little sheds and rooms tagged on at the end.

Marvellous.

Down the lane there are two more buildings -

a cattle shed and a building used as a barn, but originally a mill.

At one time, all the farms around here had their own mill.

They wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible.

The mill was used for grinding corn to feed the cows and also the horses

which worked the land until the mid 20th Century

when machinery first came in.

So I've started fantasising about getting this place working again,

maybe to generate electricity.

Lastly, about half a mile away

is this ruined cottage, which is much older than the other buildings,

and stands as a sort of symbol

for what could happen to the rest of the place if left to nature.

I want to restore the main house to live in it.

I feel responsible to the other structures.

They will have to earn their keep, but how?

Pembrokeshire is littered with derelict outbuildings like these.

I've come to another farm just down the road

to meet someone who's going to give me some expert help.

There is a huge problem in Wales. People, developers are buying farms.

They're splitting them up into units,

the cowshed, the hay barn, the stables, the mill maybe.

All being sold for £150,000 a piece.

Someone is making £500,000 profit.

We're ending up with miniature villages.

You get to a point with an outbuilding where you can say

you can't convert this into a house.

You can convert it into something else which might be useful.

What can you convert it into?

Some kind of business use.

Is that to retain the space?

To retain the space, where the doors are.

If you've got a wall without any windows and you put in windows,

you might as well knock it down and build your bungalow.

You're doing fundamentally the same thing. What are we going to do?

You could have a string of holiday cottages on the courtyard,

which is what every other person does around here.

That was on the back of my mind, I must admit.

If it was one or two people, I wouldn't be so touchy about it.

We need to look at the use of those.

Hmm. This might not be as straightforward as I thought.

Trehilyn is also listed and inside the National Park area.

Permits, paperwork, permissions.

I've turned to local conservation architect, Martin Davies

who has plenty of experience of dealing with these things.

What we're talking about here is specialist sort of work.

It's building restoration work. It's not building bungalows,

or even bog standard extending a building,

or doing a place up and gutting it.

This is much more sensitive restoration type work that's wanted.

Some architects like doing it, some don't.

Some will do it, but maybe aren't used to doing it.

If you get the wrong architect, you might end up doing more damage.

Yes. But will you do it, Martin?

Luckily, the answer is yes.

I've discovered that coming up with a new use for the outbuildings

needs a lot of consideration,

so perhaps I'd better concentrate first on the main house.

I'm not going to live at Trehilyn, at least not full time.

I want to use it as rented accommodation of some kind,

although I should be slightly nervous about the ethics of this.

I'd rather see a building having a use than falling down.

When people come to Pembrokeshire and buy second homes

and leaving them empty most of the year,

that makes me sick, quite angry.

You can have a holiday let business where you keep it full

every single night of the year if you can.

Maybe a week off for maintenance.

That way you bring people into an area, they spend money all year.

If you have a holiday business which employs local people

and is full all year,

you're making a contribution to the economy. That's acceptable.

Good! Above all, I want to do a conscientious,

historically correct restoration for historical reasons of my own.

I need a damn good builder.

Martin has brought in Gill Wickenden.

Once we know how much we're going to re-do,

we'll get these people to bring the stuff in.

We would look at this farmhouse from a conservation point of view,

wanting to conserve every element that we can.

Looking at the technologies that were used in the building of it,

in the stone, lime etc, and working with those materials.

Using the same materials again.

Martin is already drawing up plans,

so perhaps I ought to have a bit of a look around.

So, Greg, can we call this a classic Pembrokeshire farmhouse?

Absolutely. Late 18th Century, early 19th Century.

There were hundreds built like this.

They'd have been built by unqualified people, no architects,

they do follow the same pattern time after time.

This is a substantial building today.

It's a vernacular building, built by the people.

This is a large farm. There would have been money here.

Let's go and have a look. Come on.

Come on!

The house is split into three sections

suggesting it might have been extended at least twice.

The front door opens straight onto the main living room

which has a large bricked up fireplace in one corner.

This was the heart of the house, the Cegin Fawr, or great kitchen.

You can see that wonderful beam, the simne fawr, great chimney.

If you imagine a fire roaring away in there,

you've got a settle here, another one there, maybe for that side.

A partition here. It's a huge house this one.

You've got a really warm heart.

This is a lump of concrete that's been stuck in.

It's probably a breeze block. It appears to have been put up in 1983.

I can't wait to knock that out.

But there are traces down here of paint. It was painted at one point.

This room would have been that red colour.

We wouldn't have had a nice 80s aluminum glass door either.

No light coming from that direction and that deep red colour.

This was a very dark space.

They were showing off that they could buy the pigment.

A lot of people were in and out of here.

What my father used to say was they'd got a nice fug up in here.

I don't where it came from, but he was very keen on getting a fug up.

Let's go on through here.

Next to the Cegin Fawr is a single-storey shed

which is definitely a later addition.

This goes through here.

And this is the storage room, is it?

They used what they had to hand.

Telegraph poles being used for purlins.

One of them up there has even got the old warning sign.

I love walls like this. It's been cobbled together again. Cemented in.

The real stuff, they should use this stuff,

which is the original lime.

Yeah, if we have a look at this.

-This is a...this is a...

-Ah!

This is a soily mortar here.

There will be some lime in it, but it's not a very strong mix.

Just there, we've got some more cement.

That to me, speaking as a layman,

I'd have said that was stronger for holding the wall up.

It's hard, that is, it's hard.

As soon as you start adding cement to it, which is too hard,

either it's going to cause damage to the stone,

or it's going to crack the cement.

Once it cracks, water will get behind it

and you start getting problems with damp and deterioration of the stone.

I might have to make a few tiny alterations to the layout.

The only bathroom is in a cold unwelcoming corner.

To get to it, you have to negotiate the Cegin Fawr and the kitchen.

The other rooms on the ground floor lie in wait

like overdecorated bandits.

Ooh!

You definitely need sunglasses in here.

This is gorgeous, isn't it? It's fantastic.

The combination of colours. It's like Van Gogh.

We look up though, and we've got hooks

in the ceiling. Mysterious those.

That seems to imply there were hands hanging in here.

It suggests it was a kitchen. This house has had different periods.

We can see it's had periods of neglect and of great wealth.

Across the hallway is the posh front parlour.

Not so posh these days.

Now what have we got? We've got damp problems, big damp problems.

A major problem in this chimney. There's damp along here.

You've got a bigger problem over here.

It's subsidence of some description.

Another bit of old patching here.

Yeah, and our joist is rotting out in the wall.

I suspect... Do you think the lintel has gone?

Prop that up. It could collapse.

I'm always being told you don't have damp problems in an old house.

-Some of the damp...

-Don't put a damp course in.

-This is not rising damp.

-This is falling damp.

Most of the damp that is in the base of the wall got there by gravity.

So this is to do with the wall collapsing a bit,

holes appearing between the roof and the wall.

The moisture gets in and falls down.

If there's been any kind of cement or coating put on the house,

-the water can't escape again.

-This wall is in bad nick.

The house is in bad nick.

Yes, yes, Griff. Grandmother, eggs and sucking come to mind.

And in the room next door, falling, rising,

damp is advancing in battle formation.

Yes. Oh, that's pretty horrible, isn't it?

What's happened here then?

You've got a concrete yard that's higher than the ground level here.

That could be throwing any amount of water into this room.

There's so much water, it's sitting on the corridor.

That suggests to me there may be a spring, or well under this floor.

Still you tell me we don't need a damp course.

Absolutely. No damp course.

We'll have to get rid of the water sources.

If not, we just grow mushrooms.

For a humble Welsh farmhouse, the staircase is nicely ostentatious,

probably put in when the farm was on the up.

Going up is not an easy option these days.

The house has three bedrooms and a loft above the Cegin Fawr.

But, ah, hold on, there's no bathroom.

Ok, the house has two bedrooms and a loft above the Cegin Fawr.

-Excuse me.

-Feel free.

That's a completely different timber there. That's an earlier timber.

Having this timber here, not matching any of the others

does suggest that this building was partially standing.

A part of it got knocked down and rebuilt.

Every room in the house is in need of a complete and utter restoration.

It's going to be a big job and there's no rule book about doing it.

We'll just have to make it up as we go along.

I suppose what I'm looking for is a way

to help everybody who might be restoring a house

to make value judgements.

These judgements have to be made all the time.

How do you fit a modern lifestyle

into a building where you can't start wearing full-bottom wigs

and...and shoes with buckles on

in order to try and pretend to be an 18th Century farmer living there.

You've got to live in the house.

It's got to have central heating, and a nice warm bath.

And yet, at the same time, you begin to feel a responsibility

to the building itself and the people who use it.

Now, don't faint. I've rustled up a budget of £200,000.

I hope it'll be enough for the whole job.

Our main enemy is water,

so the simplest thing to start with is the roof.

Did I say simple?

Naturally, this is no ordinary roof.

It's a Pembrokeshire grouted roof.

Originally, it was made of slates

which were hung on wooden laths using individual oak pegs.

The slate was locally quarried and was poor quality.

So when it began to deteriorate,

it was covered over with a layer of lime render.

Over the years, further layers of render were added.

There are very few original roofs like this remaining.

But can it be saved?

OK, here is the actual stuff.

-Here is the laminated slate.

-That means, you see,

it's all falling to pieces.

We need to do more inspection.

We need to find out what we can do to save this.

Structural engineers would condemn this roof within five minutes.

-What do you think?

-It's possible to conserve.

You'd never guarantee there wouldn't continue to be

a deterioration of the laths. It would need continuous maintenance.

What makes this house special is its roof.

This is a grouted roof with 170 years of additions and movement.

If we do recreate it, that's what we're doing, recreating it.

If we can conserve it for less money than replacing it,

we may have to come back in ten years and do it again,

but we've stretched its life for another ten years.

Will it be expensive to repair this roof?

If you want to do it in peg slates, yeah.

-Mighty expensive.

-Roughly?

Um, I'm thinking of one,

I'm thinking of one 30,000 quid. Yeah.

One, one what? One roof?

Yes, one similar sized to this, it's not far from here.

It was something like £30,000.

Blimey! That's going to blow a bit of a hole in my budget.

Your recommendation here, Martin, would be

that we take the lot off and rebuild the same thing again?

Yes, that's what building restoration is.

My interest in the project, if we lose this roof,

to me personally, diminishes.

-He's threatening to leave.

-We'll lose our chief advisor.

That's it! If you take the roof off, I'm having no more to do with it.

Argh! It's terrible. We can't make up our mind what we're gonna do.

I'll leave the decision on whether to repair or replace to the experts.

That's what they're there for.

In my new role as lord of the manor, I have other pressing concerns.

I haven't bought a few buildings, I've bought an entire farm.

These are hard times for farmers though.

The previous owners found it difficult to make a living here

which is why they sold up and moved out.

If they couldn't make a go of it, I'm sure I can't.

So I'm renting my 70 acres to Peter George

who keeps sheep and cattle.

As well as owning his own farm, Peter rents land from landowners.

Most of the farms here are owned and farmed by families

that have been on the peninsula for centuries.

Oh, yes. Many years ago,

the farms weren't actually owned by the farmers.

It all belonged to large estates.

People tended to...

..farm for a few years and move to another farm.

Like in a way of bettering themselves, I would say.

And your great uncles once owned this farm?

Yes, that's right.

They came here in the early 20s.

-Right.

-And farmed here then until they died here in the early 60s.

How many acres do you farm at the moment?

In the region of about 350 acres.

That's sort of like a reasonable size for you to manage, is it?

Um, yes, it is at the moment.

But the average size of a farm about 20 years ago

tended to be a little bit smaller.

My farm, my main farm where I was brought up,

the workable land acreage was about 117.

That was big enough for my father to pay his mortgage

and give us a good upbringing.

With increasing competition and expenses,

it makes sense for farms to be put together to form bigger units.

Just because I'm renting out my land,

it doesn't mean I don't feel responsible for it.

# Oh, give me land

# Lots of land

# Under starry skies above

# Don't fence me in...#

Land.

It's spectacular. Of course, I'm not really going to farm it,

I'm a toy farmer - the Marie Antoinette of this operation.

I should get myself a porcelain shepherd's crook

with a little silvery blue silk bow on it.

I'll leave the actual looking after of the sheep to Peter George.

But of course, this is a real farm.

I can't help noticing that there's...

..there's quite a lot of stuff lying around.

In fact, there's junk all over the shop. It makes me nervous.

Someone could impale themselves on an old plough,

or get stuck in one of these fridges.

I need a little help to clear the rubbish,

hack down the undergrowth, and generally tidy the place up.

I'll hire a man and a lorry for a few days.

What have we got on the site then that we have to get rid of?

We do have a lot of metals,

all of which can be recycled,

and various plastics.

There is a small amount of domestic waste.

A lot of it has been put here through resourcefulness.

-Farmers never throw anything away, do they?

-Very often not.

They think they can find a use for it later on.

There is a corner you can hide it in, or a mat you can brush it under.

How many weeks work will it take to get all this done?

I think we might be looking at more than weeks. It might be months.

That's fantastic. Thank you.

OK, so months. Alright, yes.

What the hell, you get going.

Come and tell me how you're getting on in a little bit. Thank you.

-Thank you.

-See you around.

For months, I'll see you around.

Martin and Gill are inspecting the internal roof structure.

I hope they come down with good news.

So what do you think, Gill?

We've got some serious damage to the A frames there.

Complete split.

It looks like it's got woodworm. It's a huge load on the roof

to peg slates on it. Still, for it to snap like that, amazing.

Usually, they bend, or they push out. That one's gone. See?

They may be possible to repair in situ,

but because the wood is so badly damaged, possibly with worm

and other damp, there's not that much to fix to with a repair.

Well, it's nice and clean up here

so we can get a good idea of how broken it is.

Unlike a modern roof which has batons,

and you nail the slates into the batons, and they're quite thick,

these are just laths that are split by hand.

These pegs here hook onto the laths.

To hold the slate on, pegs are fixed through the slate

and they hang off the laths.

They're all diminishing in size from large at the bottom of the roof,

to smaller slates as they get to the top of the roof.

Colin has started clearing the undergrowth by the mill,

which proves handy as the National Park ranger has rolled in.

This is the map created back in the 1950s.

It's the rights of way over which people had a public right to walk.

You can see the footpath comes off the road.

And then sets off this way.

That's right. Off to Llandridian.

Yes, he's discovered an ancient footpath through my land.

Restoring it is fine by me, as long as Peter George doesn't mind.

It must come out down there, down by that gate down there.

According to the map, there's an old footbridge across the stream

somewhere around here.

That's fantastic.

Incredible.

There is a bridge. Unlike the average tourist

who never cleans up after them,

this lot are going to clean up in front of them.

Ian is going to bring volunteers to clear the path

and put up some new stiles and signposts.

But this is one of the few really wild corners of Trehilyn

so I don't want it tidied up too much.

We'll get some experts in to ensure there's nothing special here

so we can add to the biodiversity, rather than reduce it.

The footpath is not a problem for Peter or myself.

I think people should have access to beautiful parts of the countryside.

I simply recommend they come better equipped than me.

We'd better put a notice up saying wear wellingtons.

I'm not wearing wellington boots.

Now, I have sort of... my trousers are completely soaked.

The forensic analysis of the roof continues.

So, Doctor, what is the prognosis?

You can see the slate here, then the layers of lime plaster.

Then cement on top which I can lift off...

..in pieces.

It's very wet under there, and lots of creatures.

The cement may have been simply a wash

as opposed to a plaster coat.

Even that wash is enough to hold too much moisture in

and cause damage to the slates below.

Holding dampness into a building is not a good idea.

Some areas roof do look as if they've got to be re-roofed.

I'm talking about the actual peg slates.

There's a lot of structural work that's got to be done.

So we're thinking to do something like 50% of the main roof

to re-roof it, but for Gill's sake

all the cement off first and whatever's underneath it.

Eventually, we'll get a straight edge of peg slates

which when we've decided what we keep,

then I can measure all the slates and the batons

and work out what we need.

Oh, right, so you mean more tests then?

Well, there's our first decision made.

We'll replace some of the roof

and conserve as much of the original structure as we can.

At last, work can now begin.

Join me next week when nature comes to call.

I should have known about this before I bought the place.

I meet my new neighbours,

and the roof becomes a performance in itself

that not everyone is ready to applaud.

It's a real shock seeing how much has changed

and really how much has gone.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 2006