Stoke Hall and Nutbourne Pumping Station Restoration Home - One Year On

One year ago, we followed the stories of six historic buildings,

each crumbling and at risk of being lost forever.

Six brave new owners made a commitment to save them,

attempting to transform them into their dream home.

Well, she found it. HE LAUGHS

But there was more to rescuing these incredible buildings than anyone imagined.

-HE GROANS

-I don't think we'd ever buy another listed building.

Ever.

With architectural expert, Kieran Long,

and historian, Dr Kate Williams, we've not only been following

the restoration of these magnificent buildings, we've dug deep

into their history, and uncovered some extraordinary stories.

One thing led to another, and they murdered her in this hall, somewhere.

Now we're going back to discover what happened to these buildings and their owners - one year on.

Today we're revisiting two of our great restoration projects.

Stoke Hall was the grandest of them all.

Nutbourne Pumping Station, the most controversial.

One year on, we'll discover what new stories have come to light...

Constant tennis parties in the summer.

I often had to be ball boy, which I quite enjoyed.

..what new work has been completed...

What an extraordinary room this is.

..and just what it's like living in our Restoration Homes.

I still get exactly the same buzz that we got when we first moved in.

I'm glad we're doing this.

I'm glad we live here.

Our first restoration story is Stoke Hall,

a 30-room Georgian mansion in the Peak District National Park

in Derbyshire.

When our cameras first arrived, its future had been

dangling by a thread for decades.

A leaking roof and widespread dry rot had been eating away

at the building for years.

At risk of being lost was the original 18th-century decor,

which gives the hall a Grade II star listing, which means it's

a building of special historic interest,

and all plans must be approved by the heritage bodies.

Saving such a building, with its rare and ornate interiors,

was going to be not just difficult, but also incredibly expensive.

It was in need of a saviour with deep pockets.

In stepped Steve and Natalie Drury and their children, Tom and Laura.

They bought Stoke Hall in 2009,

after a search for their perfect family home.

This one was the one we loved. This was the house,

so this was going to be our home.

-This was the house to bring the family up in.

-Yeah. Yes, definitely.

Steve and Natalie started life together in a three-bed semi,

but since then, Steve's become a self-made millionaire,

with a successful business supplying hi-tech products to the energy industry.

Full-time mum, Natalie, is also from a modest background. Her dad's a plumber.

They hope Stoke Hall will be their home for life.

You do get a very good feel.

When you drive over the hill and you can see it in the distance, and you see the striped lawns,

you do think, "Yeah, actually, you've done well".

Stoke Hall's last owner had started to restore parts of the building,

but sadly, he died with work still in progress.

Steve and Natalie paid 2.5 million just to buy Stoke Hall

and knew the restoration wasn't going to come cheap.

We're looking to spend £4 million in total,

an extra £1.5 million over what we bought.

The rooms they plan to transform include one on the first floor

with an original ceiling, earmarked to be the master bedroom.

The 1980s kitchen, which faced a total revamp.

And the two ground-floor rooms on the south side of the house

with their spectacular Georgian decor.

This is the room that gives me the most apprehension about the house.

I'm used to the painted walls and the plain ceilings and quite modern lights,

so when I first came in this room I thought, "Oh, my goodness!"

I don't think we'd ever take anything away from the house.

The house is amazing.

But we just want to make it more ours, more of a home.

Whilst Steve and Natalie started their work to make it a home,

our architectural expert, Kieran Long,

started his investigation to uncover more about the building.

So it's just a simply beautiful, old Georgian mansion in the landscape,

a really, really, really beautiful Palladian villa, in Derbyshire.

It was clear it had been built with appearances in mind.

You arrive from the south, and you see

the corner of the building, and all of the money and design effort

was spent on making those two facades as impressive as they can be,

making the building seem perhaps more grand than it is.

Whilst it is impressive on the outside,

it's what's on the inside that makes it so unique.

Well, this is an incredible room.

The fire surround is a really high quality, I think.

This is timber carving, and whoever did this is a very fine craftsman.

Two other features of the fireplace suggest it was inspired

by someone with rather racy artistic tastes.

There's a pair of young men,

made of plaster, who look somehow like they're in a kind of ecstasy,

running their hands through their hair.

This guy seems to have a moustache.

It's like a footballer or a '70s porn star. I'm not sure which.

But who was it who commissioned these interiors

and built this house?

Kieran needed to do more digging to find out.

To do justice to such quality interiors, Steve put together a band

of highly-skilled local craftsmen to lovingly restore each detail.

This small team soon became part of the household.

They love having the workmen here, Tom especially,

because he likes to help them.

And Laura likes them to be here...

-..cos she's a little bit bossy!

-SHE LAUGHS

You have to work extra hard.

Or you're fired!

Some work moved ahead quickly.

Up on the leaking roof, £150,000 worth of urgent repairs had finally made it watertight.

But inside, work was not moving as fast.

The Grade II star listing, which recognised Stoke Hall's

architectural and historic importance, also meant

all plans had to be approved by the conservation bodies.

They do their best to protect our heritage,

but their views don't always coincide with those of the owners.

Everything's ready, but we can't cut the wood to size,

because we don't know how high the floor's going to be,

what kind of floor it's going to be yet.

We have to wait for a decision to be made,

so we're in limbo land, really, at the moment, for this room.

And it wasn't just in the Georgian rooms that decisions were out of their hands.

Even replacing the 1980s vinyl floor tiles in the kitchen

needed approval by the conservation body.

Steve and Natalie wanted a polished limestone floor.

They think it should be flagstones

because that's what would have been down.

Putting the flags down would just make it feel really cold.

I really think it would totally change the dynamic of it,

and it would really, really upset me, to be fair.

Agreement on restoration plans is often a matter of negotiation.

But with work stalled, and so many decisions still to be resolved,

the stress was taking its toll on Natalie.

We've never owned a listed building before.

If we did have to sell this house for whatever reason,

and it would not be our choice, I don't think, but if we did,

I don't think we'd ever buy another listed building.

Ever. So...

Whilst Steve and Natalie were deep in negotiations over listed building consent,

incredibly, at the other end of the country,

the owners of our second building

had no such problems with their plans.

That's because, despite being a part of our nation's industrial heritage,

Nutbourne Pumping Station in West Sussex had never been listed.

In its day, it had been a building that pumped fresh water

to the surrounding population, but by the 1970s,

it was defunct.

Unused and neglected, it soon became a wreck.

Who on earth wanted to make it their home?

Hello, my name is Nick Sweet, and this is my wife.

Hello, my name's Brigitte, and we've bought Nutbourne...

BOTH: Pumping Station!

THEY LAUGH

With their five-year-old twins, Francesca and Willem,

they wanted to turn this large industrial building

into a family home.

Nobody's ever used it as a home,

and that's why I feel it's easier to make it into a home,

because you're not following anybody else's design.

To transform the building, Nick had his own professional expertise to draw on.

He's a partner in an international urban design consultancy.

Computer-generated images showed how the building might look

as a home, and there was no sentimental attachment

to its former life as a pumping station.

The notion of keeping some sort of twee pump in the middle of the room

or hoist in the ceiling, out of some deferential reference

to the original use of the building is stupid, as far as I'm concerned.

As the pumping station wasn't a listed building,

Nick and Brigitte had full planning permission for the conversion.

Bought for £260,000, their further £400,000 budget

included the removal of all the pumping machinery,

and the installation of a new concrete floor

over the old basement.

To maximise space, the industrial staircase

and walkway would be stripped out.

The old water filtration tanks at the back would become bedrooms.

It's going to be lovely. And there won't be any stairs.

It's like a giant bungalow.

Don't tell him I said "bungalow". He'd die!

And up on the roof of his giant bungalow, Nick planned

to install solar panels to create a carbon-efficient home.

I quite like the idea of going "nil-bill".

You know, where you have no gas bills, no power bills.

Ultimately and potentially, no water bills.

You just get the Council Tax, which is, I suppose, unavoidable.

With his modern eco technologies, Nick hoped to turn the pumping station

into a 21st-century, ground-breaking, nil-bill home.

But when it was built, back in the 1930s,

the pumping station's machinery was equally ground-breaking.

Its pumps and filters were instrumental in the fight

against a terrible killer, typhoid.

At the turn of the century, contaminated water sources

led to the death of huge numbers of people.

Buildings like Nutbourne Pumping Station were to change all that,

bringing safe, clean water to the local population.

Our historian, Kate Williams, uncovered evidence

that the opening day was a grand VIP event.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

We found the pictures of the day!

Lord Leconfield, the Lord Lieutenant of the county,

is coming to see the pumping station open.

So this is a marvellous moment.

And this is my favourite.

Lord Leconfield is turning on the tap.

The first drop of clean, pure water that is safe to drink.

It would revolutionise society, revolutionise health.

Infant mortality would drop.

The pumping station, the saviour of Nutbourne.

And it was felt that such a modern, revolutionary building

should be built in the modern architectural style.

The 1930s was a heyday for British architecture and design,

giving us the BBC's Broadcasting House,

Battersea Power Station, the iconic red telephone box,

and stations like Cockfosters, on London's Piccadilly line,

opened in 1933,

where our architectural expert, Kieran, went to investigate.

We're in exactly the world of Nutbourne Pumping Station here.

We're in the world of the early '30s municipal modern, if you like.

Architectural details at Cockfosters

have uncanny echoes of the pumping station.

From the shape of the handrails, to the design of the skylights.

These buildings are really important to Britain's architectural heritage, and they demonstrate that,

in the '30s, we really had an idea of civic pride in infrastructure.

The way that the water was pumped to and from houses was something

that people were proud of. "It's amazing technology that we can do it at all."

And so they almost built monuments to that.

One person who was incredibly proud of this building was the engineer

resident at Nutbourne for over a quarter of a century, Mr Brown.

His widow, Marjorie, is one of the few people who remembers it

as a working pumping station.

Oh, my goodness me!

Oh! I can't believe it could be so different.

Look at it.

Her late husband maintained all the machinery

until the pumps fell silent in the 1970s.

Gosh.

So quiet. And yet it was always noisy.

Alive, if you like,

with the noise of the pumps and everything.

Marjorie will never forget the pride her husband took in this building.

You could have eaten your meal off the floor.

It was all clean.

Beautiful.

All the handrails were all cream,

and it was just always spotlessly clean.

And now it's just a wreck.

Sad, isn't it, how anything can deteriorate like this?

But Marjorie believed the past was the past, and that Nick

and Brigitte's restoration plans were just what the building needed.

I don't think it does matter if everything goes.

It's much better that it should be something totally different

than see it in this sad and sorry state.

And it was just as well,

because two weeks later, the demolition boys were in.

15 tons of seriously heavy pumping machinery was dismantled

and lifted out of the building.

And the pumping station's past was carried off to be

reincarnated at the scrap yard.

Whilst Nick and Brigitte

were junking many of its original features,

200 miles away, Steve and Natalie were striving to save

every last surviving detail at Stoke Hall.

And there had been good news.

Five months in, and after weeks of delay,

the conservation body had approved the plans for their floors.

We've been told we can put oak all the way through and take that pine up,

so now we can start doing these two rooms.

And the 1980s vinyl floor in the kitchen could also be replaced.

But Steve and Natalie weren't to get their polished limestone floor.

It had to be black slate instead.

They did agree to the black slate.

Not exactly what we wanted, but...

We either wait three months and argue about the floor we want, or we find a compromise.

So... we compromised.

'I thought it was about time I paid them a visit.'

Steve and Natalie have been working on their house for months now,

so I'll go inside and find out how they're coping

with this massive,

massive refurbishment.

'But first, I found out they were going to be coping with

'a little extra something, too.'

Natalie's expecting a baby,

and by November, we'll have filled another one of the bedrooms.

-Congratulations!

-Thank you.

-That's really fantastic.

'But with just four months till the baby was due,

'it wasn't looking like Steve and Natalie would be in their new master bedroom by that deadline.'

This is the ceiling that's caused you all the grief, isn't it?

-Oh! Yeah. We're not sure if it's going to stay up.

-Really?

-Yeah.

There's still a long way to go, isn't there, Natalie?

Erm, I mean, it looks that way.

It looks that way. If you look around and you see

the exposed stonework and everything,

but it's going to be fine. It's going to be absolutely fine.

Is that fear?

Is that hysteria?

'Saving precious interiors like these is a mammoth task.'

But Natalie has never known who chose them originally.

So, who might have lived in Stoke Hall 250 years ago?

I imagine they'd be very well to do,

maybe, you know, aristocracy sort of thing, you know, Lord of the Manor.

Had to go and open garden fetes or something like that, you know.

But our historian, Kate, had discovered

that contrary to Natalie's suspicions,

the man who'd built their mansion wasn't an aristocrat at all.

He was a man of the cloth. A Reverend John Simpson.

She traced his origins to the country parish of Babworth in Nottinghamshire,

30 miles from Stoke Hall.

Here's our man.

"Within the family vault of this Church are deposited the remains of

the Reverend John Simpson, late of Stoke Hall in the County of Derby."

John Simpson was a member of the English gentry,

who, in the 18th century, were on their way up the social ladder.

He made a very good marriage to the granddaughter

of English Naval hero Admiral Benbow,

and inherited Stoke Hall Estate as part of his marriage settlement.

In the 1750s, the up-and-coming Reverend

built his fashionable new mansion, Stoke Hall.

But who designed the house was still a mystery.

Architects often leave a tell-tale signature of their work

and Stoke Hall had given Kieran a great lead.

To me, the biggest clue is this kind of central arch surround

to the main central bay of the facade.

You know, just the way that geometrically, the arch

interacts with these kind of drapery-like surrounds on the sides of the window.

There's something geometrically pleasing about it that is not an accident.

The hunt was on to find the same detail

on another mid 18th-century building.

In the library of the Royal Institute of British Architects,

Kieran found an astonishing link.

It was in a book by 18th century architect James Paine,

whose latest house designs were the talk of Georgian high society.

This is almost identical to the window surrounds

on the exterior of Stoke Hall.

James Paine was one of the hottest architects around.

As a subscriber to the book, Reverend Simpson could pick

and choose from his trendy designs.

It's likely the Reverend hired a local man, a Mr Booth,

to build Stoke Hall.

And it's the designer, Paine, and builder, Booth,

who connect Stoke Hall to one of the grandest houses of all.

Chatsworth. Just a few miles away.

What we have down the road is one of the most important houses in this country

or any other country, Chatsworth, which Paine and Booth were involved in,

so it's a great discovery that Stoke Hall has this link

with one of the greatest works of architecture in the country.

So, it seems the Reverend Simpson had been inspired

by the big house up the road.

And 250 years later, his stunning interiors at Stoke Hall

were proving to be a huge challenge

in Steve and Natalie's restoration plans.

Countless coats of paint needed to be very delicately removed.

As a test, the cornice above one of the doors was encased

with a chemical stripper to see if it stood up

to having two and a half centuries of paint removed in one go.

It should come off with the paper and strip all the paint off.

We shall have a look.

We've got to be very careful.

If things went wrong, the Reverend's precious interior

was at risk of being damaged even further.

That's right down to the original plaster.

On this piece here, it's not damaged anything. so...

I'm not as nervous now.

It was still going to be a huge job

to reveal all the decorative detail in this extraordinary room.

And whilst careful restoration of the plasterwork

was being carried out at Stoke Hall,

down at the Pumping Station,

two weeks of demolition had come to an end.

'By the time I went back,

'all evidence of the Pumping Station's former life had vanished.'

-Well, this is a bit different, isn't it?

-It is, isn't it?

This is looking absolutely awesome.

With so much flexible space, the debate about the layout had started

and Brigitte had won the first battle.

-So, in here...

-This is the kitchen.

-Very good.

And then that's the new back door going out into the garden.

That's fantastic, isn't it?

This has opened it up. You can get out, get the children out.

-It was the other way round.

-Was it?

-Yes.

I kept saying I wanted the kitchen by the back door. Strange, that!

-Got to have it.

-But Nick decided, no - we're going to have it there.

The interior designer, first thing she came down and said,

"Why are you having the kitchen at the front and not by the back door?"

So, now we're having it.

'Whilst there were differences of opinion downstairs...'

-Ooh, I say!

-Are you all right?

-Yeah, I think so. Thank you.

'..up on the roof, it was all Nick's world.'

-Wow!

-This is an area of opportunity for us,

now that it's all been fixed and laid,

in that we can retro-fit the photovoltaic array up here.

What are you talking about?

-You know solar cells?

-Yeah.

-OK. We generate enough electricity up here

through solar cells - with about a third of the roof area -

to sort out the needs of the house.

The other two thirds - on the remaining area -

we can generate electricity and feed it back into the Grid.

So, in the end, we get no bills - ever. For anything.

You love all that stuff, don't you, Nick?

That makes you so happy, doesn't it?

I would say smug, more than happy, actually.

A few weeks later and the inside of the building was coming together.

For the first time, the family could see what it would be like as a home.

There was even a new addition to the family -

a gigantic puppy called Mulligan.

And there had been a slight change of heart too.

Nick and Brigitte had decided

to hang onto some of the original features after all.

They had planned to replace the old teak windows and doors

with aluminium versions. But not now.

We were going to lose them.

I think they're heavily varnished and Tony, our blessed site manager,

who knows everybody, found someone who could bring them back to life.

This is one of the original handles on the front door.

Oh, right, OK.

-They dip it to get it back to clean and then polish it up - buff it right up.

-Beautiful!

For Brigitte, it was a small but significant gesture

to their building's proud origins.

So, these wonderful people, who made this building,

I think they put a lot of care into it.

They didn't have to use something as stunning as this,

and it would have been a shame to replace it

with something 21st-century that wasn't quite so beautiful.

Whilst cutting edge techniques, such as spray plastering,

were putting the finishing touches on the Pumping Station's interior,

over at Stoke Hall, the slow, traditional methods

of lime plastering were adding time and money to the schedule.

Just to re-plaster the study cost a whopping £8,000.

If it was in a modern situation, it would be huge,

great big sheets of plasterboard and then it would just be a skim

and this would all be done in a day,

whereas this takes up to a week to do a wall.

And there were some other noticeable changes in the Drury household.

His hair's all puffed up.

No, he likes it puffed up!

This is our newborn, Stanley.

Just to make it a little bit more interesting,

restoring a house, working full time, having a hectic life

with the kids, we have an additional baby to look after,

just to fill those hours between ten and six

which aren't filled at the moment!

But with one project delivered on time,

it was clear the restoration project was going to stretch on

well beyond the Christmas 2010 deadline.

But on my last visit, Steve and Natalie had finished lots of rooms.

My tour started in the old 1980s kitchen.

-Do you want to go and have a look?

-May I?

-You may.

-Thank you very much.

Oh, yeah. This is fantastic!

It had been transformed into a light, modern, family kitchen.

A whole series of other family rooms had been completed.

And one of the original Georgian rooms

had been spectacularly finished.

Steve's home study had been fully restored.

Oh, this is completely different!

This had mud on the floor.

There was nothing on the walls. The walls were just bare stone.

Go and sit in the chair. Come on!

Ready to take on bank managers.

This is a huge desk. This is like a ship's desk.

-This is a drawer?

-It's a drawer with my secret button in.

Am I about to explode, Mr Bond?

CAROLINE LAUGHS

I have to say, I didn't expect that to happen!

Just like Stoke's first owner, the 21st-century one

liked to live in some style.

His state-of-the-art desk didn't come cheap.

It's quite a complicated bit of kit, so what did it cost?

It cost over £10,000. So...

But Reverend Simpson's ornate drawing room

was still giving them the biggest headache.

He's costing you a fortune, isn't he? It's all his stuff that needs to be renovated, isn't it?

Perhaps it is expensive, but perhaps that's where the value of the house is as well.

Because we understand a lot of the history now,

I think doing it right is what matters and, you know,

we're not quite ready to fully decide, you know, what colours and...

-Before we commit to colours, we need to research it a little bit more, don't we?

-We do, yeah.

Steve and Natalie weren't finished but they were well on their way

to returning their Georgian mansion back to a family house.

It's now one year on, and Steve and Natalie's team of craftsmen

are still on the job,

two and a half years after they first arrived on site.

We could get a big company in, I suppose, and then be done in so many months.

But, I mean, here,

we've tried to go about things quite a bit more particularly,

quite a lot of patience has had to go into it -

in doing individual things -

but then you can see the rewards afterwards, like, really.

John Bacon has re-pointed every inch of the house's walls.

I love this. This is my favourite thing.

They all think I'm barmy, but I love doing this.

Quiet, away from them all.

In my little corner, pointing away.

They all think it's boring but I love this bit.

I feel lucky to work here.

I do feel proud of it coming together.

Especially with some of the more decorative rooms

I've been able to work on, it gives you an idea

of how it would have looked originally.

It's going to be like that for a long time as well.

Being a listed building, they won't let them knock it about

in the future. I have put my name on the back of a lot of panels.

My name, my date of birth, and where I live,

so, in years to come, somebody will say, "Blooming heck,

"Steve Birds, he only lived down the road."

And there have been some other developments with the Drury family too.

Big piece of news is that we're expecting another baby, so number four.

We're looking forward to it.

We've still got eight bedrooms,

-so, we've got the space.

-No more.

-No more.

Since the programme went out, some fascinating stories

have come out of the woodwork.

We had some lovely letters from quite a few different people.

People who grew up here, just saying how much

it brings back memories for them and what they remember.

Which was really interesting and really lovely,

to see what it was like all those years ago.

Some of the responses have brought incredible treasures to light.

When one lady saw the programme,

she got in touch with Steve and Natalie and was able

to do more than just describe her childhood memories at Stoke Hall.

Remarkably, she was able to show them.

From her family's cinefilm collection,

she dug out unique footage of Stoke Hall in its heyday.

Lindsey Baxendale was born at the house in 1931,

when her family, the Hunters, owned it,

and lived there until the age of seven.

I remember very happy days there.

And having races with my brother,

he in his pedal car and me on my tricycle.

There were constant tennis parties in the summer.

I very often had to be ball boy, which I quite enjoyed.

In the 1930s, life at Stoke Hall was a real Upstairs Downstairs affair.

To keep a house like this running, more than 15 permanent staff

were needed, as a book recording all the servants' wages reveals.

That is my governess, who came in 1934, when I was three years old.

She got paid £70 per annum.

Housemaid here, £18 per annum.

And a person who was with us a very long time was the butler.

His name was Todd. He got paid £6.16.8d a month.

Not a week - a month.

Life at the hall today is a world away

from the place of Lindsey's childhood

but she gives the seal of approval to Steve and Natalie's efforts.

I think it's wonderful that they are going to try and make

a family home of it. It's obviously going to be totally different,

as it should be. Life has changed completely.

I think Stoke has had some very sad and difficult times

since we left all those years ago.

Now, if something can be made of it, to make it a happy place again,

where children can grow up and have fun, as I had,

that will be great.

Someone else who felt compelled to get in touch with Steve and Natalie

was Sue Hunt. Her grandparents bought the hall in the 1950s

and she had grown up there until the age of 18.

Sue still lives in the area,

and, driving past one day, she realised

someone new was now caring for the hall.

One of the first things I noticed

was that for the first time since I can remember being there,

they'd actually mown the lawns correctly, and it was in stripes,

just how my great-uncle used to do it, when he kept all the gardens.

I thought, this is it. I have to get in touch with these people

to thank them for taking it on

and hopefully restoring it to its former glory.

-Hi! Hi, I'm Natalie.

-And I'm Sue.

Sue arranged to meet Natalie and see inside the hall

for the first time in decades.

Oh, it's all altered. Yes, this was the cloakroom.

The interiors may have changed but the memories are still strong.

Ah, yes, you've still got the staircase.

-And the banisters that I used to slide down.

-Really?

And Sue has brought with her some incredible family photos

of Stoke Hall's interior for Natalie to see.

Pictures, that's what were in there.

Oh, yes!

It's the first time Natalie has been able to see

what the room looked like more than 50 years ago

and may help her with a dilemma she's been struggling with.

-Mirrors.

-Mirrors put inside.

-Yes.

I prefer that way, don't you?

I don't like the mirrors like that.

I'll talk to my husband but I'm pretty sure

we're going to put that back to how it should be.

That looks so elegant how that is.

So much nicer.

It's a welcome discovery for Natalie and a trip down memory lane for Sue.

My goodness!

And that's Nana, dressed to go to the hunt ball at Chatsworth.

-I'm looking, and...

-Yes!

Well, that's it.

-It's still all there, under everything that happened to it.

-Yeah.

It's just taken me back to my childhood.

And it's just wonderful. It really is. Yes.

I can't believe that they're managing to restore it all.

I think it's fantastic, yes. It's been wonderful.

It does make you think, you know, I'm glad we're doing this.

I'm glad we live here.

It makes you appreciate it a bit more.

In 20 years' time, some of our kids might be bringing grand-kids

and reliving stories about how they fell in the river here,

or went fishing there. That's where I built the treehouse.

And yeah, that'd be a nice legacy,

for our children to have the same feeling towards the house

as the other older people that lived here had when they were young.

Kieran will be going back to Stoke Hall to find out

how the restoration work has been coming along.

But first, it's back to the Pumping Station.

One year ago, on my last visit,

Nick and Brigitte had finished its monumental conversion.

From hopeless wreck

to family home.

SHE LAUGHS

It's amazing!

It is, isn't it? We're done! Nearly, anyway.

It's... I thought I was going to miss the brickwork

but it looks fantastic, doesn't it?

It looks much better.

Oh, you've done it! Well done!

'But it was inside that transformation was greatest.'

When you opened the front door at the start

this was the view that greeted you.

Work all completed, this was how it looked.

Yes! It IS amazing!

The first space is broken up by bookcases

to make two separate areas.

-So that's the sort of evening, sitting, fire.

-Yeah.

And then another bookcase, here.

Sort of kids' art, kids' books and things.

And that's where the kids do,

actually, they don't do their homework there.

It's where they're meant to do their homework!

You know, in years to come, that's where they will. I hope.

The kids' playroom was where the pumps had once been,

giving plenty of play space for a couple of six-year-olds

and a big, friendly dog.

In the second large space at the back

was the finished kitchen and dining area.

Who'd have thought those muddy filtration tanks

at the back of the building could become bedrooms like these?

-Come and see the plant room.

-Thank you.

'And who'd have thought I'd volunteer

'for another seminar with techno wizard Nick,

'to find out exactly how he'd created his nil-bill home?'

It's all to do with harnessing the energy of the sun

with his array of solar cells on the roof.

And, remarkably,

by using the pumping station's original 90-metre deep boreholes

to heat water for free.

Down there, it's a lot warmer than it is up here, OK? Gotcha, right.

So if you run a loop of water and you pump it through, recirculate it,

you pick up all that warmth, and what this machine does,

it extracts the warmth.

The first ten degrees of heat in your water comes via that process.

Does Brigitte ever come down here, Nick?

She does. She does, to do one thing. To read this meter.

This meter here, which is, this the ladies' meter, this one!

All this one does is shows how much power we've generated.

Selling that power back to the National Grid

will turn it into earnings for Nick and Brigitte.

And coming in at just £10,000 over their £400,000 budget

this house has been a great success for the Sweets.

It's now one year on.

Nick, Brigitte and their two children

have been living in the Pumping Station for the last 12 months.

So has their very spacious and very eco family home remained a success?

So how's life been in the past year?

It's been wonderful. It took a while to get used to the open spaces.

There's a lot of dancing goes around in the open

because we feel the need to fill it.

It's made life a lot easier.

There's less arguments in this house than at other houses

because there's just more space and we've expanded into it.

Techno-wiz Nick was determined to make this an eco 21st-century home.

But has it paid off?

-I made this smug boast in the first programme...

-You?

..about the performance of the building and the earning potential

and the fact that what we were looking to do was to earn money,

such that that covered all the bills we'd otherwise have in the building,

and it does. Last summer, good example.

We got an energy bill for three months for £112.

And the same week got a cheque for £1,600. In the same week.

So Nick's eco dreams have been fulfilled.

But this Restoration Home did cause a certain amount of controversy.

There's been a lot of response about what we did.

And it's very interesting because it's polarised.

There were some people, obviously very passionate about heritage issues

who took the view we should've kept a lot of the pumps and equipment,

and that sort of thing.

Obviously, we didn't take that view. We were converting a building

that had lost its purpose, and that's the theme that we took.

We did it our way. Lots of people would have done it another way.

Everybody's different,

and I think we're very happy with what we've got.

And it's not just Nick and Brigitte who are happy with the result.

The Pumping Station is now an award-winning building.

It won the Sussex Heritage Trust Award

and then it went in for the British Homes Awards

and it got a commendation in that.

And that was a confidence boost for us that we had done the right thing,

because nobody likes criticism,

so I think it really confirmed in our minds we'd done the right thing.

There was another person who agreed a transformation was required.

The old pump-master's widow, Marjorie Brown.

I'd love to see Mrs Brown.

She was just so encouraging.

She was so up for us changing the use and making into a home.

And also just to take her views now that we've done the work we've done,

on whether we did the right thing.

She'll probably say it's dreadful.

HE LAUGHS

It would be nice to get her round and see, actually.

But what will she think of Nick and Brigitte's conversion

of the place she remembers as a working water pumping station?

Hmm, what a difference.

What a difference.

Very light and bright, isn't it?

The inside has altered beyond recognition

since Marjorie's last visit.

I remember more that wall.

There used to be steps up. You used to be able to walk along the top.

And it's not quite the sort of house Marjorie is used to.

I suppose for young people it's got a certain attraction.

If you like that sort of thing.

Can't see how it could have been kept the way it was.

But it's done very well, hasn't it?

It seems after her tour of inspection,

Marjorie has given Nick and Brigitte's new home

her seal of approval.

-Hello.

-Hello.

HE LAUGHS

-Hello, it's Marjorie, isn't it?

-Yes, it is.

-Don't get up.

But what does she think Mr Brown would have thought

of the Sweets' new home?

'I think he would be pleased to see it the way it is.

'I think it's been done very well

'and I think he would appreciate just the finished article.'

Nick and Brigitte started with a rusty, cavernous industrial building

but they now have a light, spacious, 21st century family home.

But a spanner has been thrown into the works

after the Sweets' two children recently changed to a new school.

It's one that's much further away.

Brigitte came back from first day of the school run and said,

"We're going to have to move." I said, "Oh, really?

"I've just spent two years with all the guys sorting this place out

"and here we are settled in, and now we're moving, are we?"

Whilst the family's future at the Pumping Station may be uncertain,

what is certain is that, for now,

they are loving every moment of the home they created.

It's amazing. It's more than what I ever hoped for.

It's just a very uplifting place to be.

I'm really chuffed.

When I come home from work,

I still get exactly the same buzz that we got when we first moved in.

That extraordinary, thrilling feeling

and I think it's a remarkable building.

For our last look at Stoke Hall,

Kieran is heading back to catch up with Steve and Natalie

to find out if they have got any further in the restoration

of their 30-roomed Georgian mansion.

-Hi, Steve.

-Hi, Kieran.

-Nice to see you again.

-Nice to see you.

-Hi, Natalie.

-Hello.

-Great to see you.

On our last visit, Steve and Natalie still had no master bedroom.

It had been a headache from the start.

The walls had been tied together to prevent a collapse.

The precious original ceiling had been held in place by Acrow props.

It was in such a perilous state,

there were fears it might never be saved.

But that was then.

Just look at it now.

What an extraordinary room this is.

Steve and Natalie's new bedroom has five windows

looking out over the Derbyshire countryside.

What a beautiful place to wake up in the morning this must be.

Absolutely stunning, isn't it?

After months of careful restoration,

the 250-year-old plaster ceiling is now thankfully out of danger.

People who do the work,

I don't think they fully understand

how skilled a craftsman they are.

You can't tell which parts have been filled and which parts are original.

It looks as though it's just gone up.

Highlighted with white gold, the ceiling is firmly Natalie's domain.

You've gone to town, haven't you, really? It's beautiful.

Yes, I wanted it to look quite elegant and calm.

I'm really pleased with how it's turned out.

He's made a beautiful job. He really has done.

For Steve, it was this room's fireplace

that was to be his most surprising discovery.

I don't know if you remember,

but the fireplace when you came was orange and brown painted.

The craftsmanship of something like this is like living with an artwork.

It was a treasure that we found that we weren't expecting to find.

When the paint came off, it was hand-carved oak.

-I really liked that.

-It was a big discovery.

It was my little part of the house that will always mean a lot to me.

It's also kind of a dreamy room

because you're looking out onto this extraordinary landscape

which is the whole point of the house.

It's got it all, really, hasn't it?

I'm totally envious.

In stark contrast to the light, dreamy bedroom,

is the contemporary, black bathroom.

It's like a nightclub in here.

THEY LAUGH

It's amazing.

Sparkly fittings.

I don't think I've ever seen a black toilet before.

It did have to be specially made.

The tap.

-Which has also got LEDs.

-Yeah.

-Good lord.

-So it changes colour.

That's quite cool.

Even the shower has different colour settings.

Much more fun than my shower.

-Andy painted the doors?

-Yes, these are just wood.

So these wooden panel doors are painted to look like stone?

-Yes, to look like the tiles.

-You've taken such care.

Everything is authentic everywhere in the house and here it's just lies.

All bets are off in here.

Steve and Natalie are having fun with their modern additions.

They're much more cautious with their precious Georgian interiors

but they are still making progress.

The grand Georgian dining room, one year ago, was without a floor

and still looking a little ragged around the edges.

But today it's a very different story.

Well, it's quite a change from when I was last here.

The plasterwork throughout the room has been stripped

of 250 years' worth of paint

and all the mouldings lovingly repaired.

In a way, it looks beautiful white, but what you going to do next?

Some days I think, keep it fairly neutral, put gold leaf everywhere

and really make it quite luxurious and exuberant.

And other days, I think we should pick out the flowers and the leaves.

-So you're still debating?

-Yeah.

I do like the pretty plain colours but I just feel that...

I can't believe those grapes were anything other than grape colour.

I don't envy you the decisions but I envy you the room.

The fireplace has also had its years of paint lifted,

revealing the racy male sculptures to be made not of plaster,

but of wood.

It's this careful attention to detail that has made

the restoration of Stoke Hall so spectacular.

We're very glad we bought it. We think we've done a pretty good job.

-And it's going to be your family home for some time?

-Hopefully, yeah.

I think it's amazing how you've stuck with it.

I'm so impressed with the passion you show for it

and the passion for the craftsmanship.

The thing about this building that's so extraordinary is the interiors.

And you guys have saved and kept it and that's such a compliment to you.

I think you deserve a medal.

The fact it's also got your personality in it

is also something I doubted perhaps at the start was even possible.

With a building like this, most people would have been too scared.

I think what you've done is bring Natalie and Steve to it

but still saved a building of national importance.

I don't know too many people who have achieved that, so really well done.

Steve and Natalie have most definitely saved Stoke Hall

and the building is no longer at risk.

But what they have also done is what they set out to do

and turn this big Georgian mansion into their dream family home.

What fascinated me about Stoke Hall

was how the work of craftsmen 250 years ago

can be so rare and so beautiful

yet be allowed to deteriorate until almost beyond repair.

This is no quick fix.

What Steve and Natalie are doing is a lifelong commitment

to saving a house and to making a home for their family.

It also stands as a monument to all those who have worked on it.

Next time we're revisiting two more epic restoration battles.

The house is in a more precarious condition than even we had imagined.

One year on,

what intriguing new discoveries have been unearthed at Stanwick Hall?

The builders knocked on the door and said, "We've found a tunnel."

Has Thomas a Becket Church become the home its owners dreamt of?

Oh, good lord.

-You've gone to town here a bit.

-We've gone for it, yeah.

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