Big House and Calverton 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.

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.

We are revisiting two of our restoration homes today.

The first was an ancient manor on the verge of falling down.

The second was a 19th-century mansion that already had.

Both would take a lot of money to save.

Big House was a ruin with a history.

Alun Lewis fell in love with it as a boy,

but now, as a man, could he save it?

He has no money, but a lot of enthusiasm.

We're ordinary people attempting the impossible with next to nothing.

One year on, Alun is still spending all his time and money

on the restoration,

so what progress has he made, and will he ever finish his dream home?

Our second house, Calverton Manor, dates back to Tudor times,

when it was the home of a powerful businessman,

but its recent history is one of neglect and decay.

It ended up as a rundown farmhouse on the verge of collapse.

Our restoration champions allocated £1 million to do it up,

but would it be enough?

The fact is, every week overrun does cost real pound notes.

Last time, David and Jeanette hadn't moved into the manor,

so one year on, is their costly restoration

everything they dreamed of?

Our first building is Big House, or Ty Mawr in Welsh.

It sits on the bank of the River Cleddau on the Pembroke Estuary.

Once a building of stature and influence,

it was unloved and abandoned for over a hundred years,

home only to wild birds and weeds.

So, who would want to tackle a rescue job as enormous as this?

Meet Alun Lewis.

Alun's lived in this part of the world all his life,

and he's dreamed of owning Big House ever since he was a little boy.

I was fishing up there with a compass net early one morning,

came down the river one morning,

and the mist just hanging on the river. It was just sitting there,

and I just thought, "I'm going to buy it."

So I sold everything - business, home, house, everything -

and bought it.

Alun's dream ruin cost £275,000 to buy.

It came with nearly four acres by the river,

and a row of derelict cottages attached.

The mission to rescue Big House had begun under previous owners.

When they sold up, Alun took on the challenge with his ex-partner.

Together they publicised the house's importance,

and secured planning permission to take the restoration dream further.

His friends wished him the best of luck.

I hope he gets it and does it. It'll be nice, like.

Not the sort of thing I'd take on, anyhow.

THEY LAUGH

But take it on he did, now with his new partner, Claire.

I think the house is fantastic, absolutely fantastic,

and when it's done, it'll be even better. Hard work, though.

Kieran Long is an architectural expert.

He first visited Big House two years ago to see the task Alun faced.

Well, it's just amazing to see a building almost completely ruined.

I mean, it looks like it's about to fall down,

and that's just really intimidating.

I'm really glad I'm not doing this restoration.

We can see this symmetrical arrangement,

and that there would have been these two completed semicircular bays,

these wings, if you like, on either side,

although this one has almost half fallen down now.

Well, this room is just fantastic, isn't it?

It's a wonderful space, and totally focussed on the landscape.

There's not a window in the room

that doesn't look out to the river and to the estuary.

You can imagine this being a beautiful place to sit.

And you wonder whether a room like this,

in its size, its kind of grandeur, its symmetry,

had a function that was to do with, you know, display

and inviting people to it, perhaps business colleagues or...

'Who knows what this room was used for?

'On the waterside is a large quay, what looks like a big dock.

'We don't really know when it arrived on the site

'and what relationship it had with the house,

'and we'll have to do more digging to really understand those things.'

Alun didn't have a budget for the restoration.

When he has money, he spends it on the house.

At other times, he uses what he can find,

and living next to the river has been very useful.

This is an old oak beam we found at the bottom of the river bed.

I've had it drying out for ten years. We hauled it up years ago and dried it out.

It means more to me to have something like that you've hauled out yourself.

Plus, I couldn't afford to buy a new one.

To help fund the restoration, Alun works all the hours he can.

He juggles his time between Big House

and maintenance jobs at the port of Milford Haven 20 miles away.

Trouble is you're trying to earn some money to go and spend on the house,

but when you're down here, you're not working on the house,

and when you're up there, you're not earning money here,

so it's difficult sometimes to get the balance right.

He may have little money, but he does have loads of enthusiasm

for the building and its setting.

When you've got this, you can't buy anything else, can you?

This is worth everything.

One of Alun's first priorities was to make the building watertight.

He started with the windowsills.

He was quoted a couple of thousand pounds to reinstate them

in traditional Welsh slate,

but he found a way of doing the same for a fraction of the price.

I managed to buy an old slate water tank...

..which was all in five-foot-square slabs.

The whole lot cost me about 160 quid for the lot,

and I can get three, six, nine... 11 sills out of it.

Get that end. If you can grab the end... Right. You got that end?

-ALUN GRUNTS

-That's it.

See, O ye of little faith! I told you it would fit, didn't I?

Aye. More luck than judgement.

They did all this years ago with no machinery, no power tools.

This was all done by hand, by sweat,

and the simple way we're doing it is probably the way it was done in the first place.

While the restoration was getting underway,

we still had a mystery to solve.

Why was such a large and impressive house built here in the first place?

On a 19th-century map in the local archives,

Kieran found the answer.

This map is 1819,

and at Landshipping Quay, we have right next to it, labelled here,

"coal works".

Landshipping sits right on top of the coal field

that was Pembrokeshire's fortune in the early 1800s.

The 1819 map shows the spot where Big House is situated was at its heart.

We can see, just in the outline of the coastline,

the dockside, and a collection of dots, really,

tiny references to buildings, which are our house,

or at least the roots of our house. May even be the house itself.

But at the very least, this is a kind of logistical centre

of the coal industry for this area,

and suggests, in a way, that Big House had a functional relationship to the river,

and before railways and motorways and so on,

that river really was the main line of communication

with the rest of the country and the important markets for that product.

On a tithe map, which lists the taxable value of properties,

Kieran found the name of the person who owned Big House.

The most interesting thing of all to us is the column labelled "landowners",

and under that, faintly, it says "Owen, Sir John".

Historian Dr Kate Williams knew where to look

to find out more about Sir John Owen.

Quite a lot of them. Quite a lot of Owens.

Quite a lot of John Owens.

It would be easier, in history,

if they all called each other and their children different names.

Here we are. "Owen family of Orielton".

They played a prominent part in the history of Pembrokeshire

for nearly three centuries,

so they were a terribly powerful family who owned the Big House -

sheriff, MPs here, baronets...

There's a huge amount of power and money going on in this family,

and we've got our most important one here -

John Owen, created a baronet in 1813.

It was a major discovery.

Sir John Owen was one of the most controversial political figures

of his time, and he was Pembrokeshire's King of Coal,

with the riverside village of Landshipping

at the centre of his coal empire.

The Landshipping colliery is fascinating.

It's been mined since the 1500s,

but it's only at the beginning of the 19th century

that it becomes so important.

In the early 1800s,

the Landshipping colliery was the most profitable in the whole county,

employing a hundred men,

so it really is an incredibly profitable possession

for Sir John to have.

-Do I come out this way?

-Yeah.

-It's OK.

-Agh!

'Five months into the restoration,

'I went down to Landshipping to see how Alun and Claire were getting on.

'Progress had been steady but slow,

'and even with the new slate window sills,

'that voluptuous riverside facade looked pretty much unchanged.

'Inside, though, Alun's talent for improvisation

'had begun to fill the empty shell.'

-Hurray! Stairs!

-Yeah.

That was almost our first job. They closed the village hall,

and dismantled the building, and it fits here perfectly.

-This is the very big front door.

-I know.

What's a door like that costing?

HE EXHALES

-He didn't tell me yet.

-1,800 quid.

-1,800...

-Yeah.

I know it's a lot of money, but trying to do it properly.

That's a nice feeling, isn't it, coming upstairs in your house!

And this'll be your upstairs hall, will it?

-This is the bottom landing, yeah.

-Bottom landing.

There'll be another stairs here, going up again.

Where will you get those from? Find another village hall?

-Haven't found one yet. I might have to make one.

-Yeah.

-This is the master bedroom, then.

-Yeah.

-This will be your bedroom.

-Yeah.

I cannot imagine a more beautiful place to live.

I really can't. I find it actually quite...

It's quite magical out there, isn't it?

Will you have curtains,

or will you just watch the sun come up every morning?

Well, there's nobody looking in. You're not overlooked here.

You're really not overlooked. You might have the odd otter.

Alun, this house may not be finished for 20 years.

No, but I'll be happy doing it.

THEY LAUGH

Big House may well take two decades to complete,

but 225 miles away in Buckinghamshire,

our second restoration home was on a much tighter schedule,

and a much, much bigger budget.

Calverton Manor lies on the outskirts of Milton Keynes.

It's a listed building, Grade II*.

That's only one grade down from places like Blenheim Palace

and Westminster Abbey.

But unlike those national treasures, Calverton was in a dire state.

The manor had ended up a broken-down farmhouse,

uncared-for and on the verge of collapse.

It desperately needed a saviour,

and that's when David and Jeanette Lock entered the story.

'We stumbled over the advert.'

Soon as I saw an aerial photograph,

I went, "Oh, it's obvious. We're going to have to do this."

It was clear. We came up here one night, one summer's evening.

We walked across the fields down here.

-It was absolutely gorgeous.

-And we said to each other,

"We're going to have to give this wheel a spin, aren't we?"

They bought Calverton, which came with 45 acres of land,

three dilapidated cottages and several old farm buildings,

for £2.2 million.

The restoration was going to cost a further million pounds,

and it took them three years to raise the money.

So we've had to convert the cottages, sell those,

get permission to convert the barns and sell those,

but one of them, which is this one, we've converted ourselves,

so we've got somewhere to live while the house is being done up.

Taking this wall down...

David and Jeanette wanted to create their dream home

with five bedrooms, modern comforts

and plenty of space for all the children and grandchildren to visit.

But because it's a listed building,

all proposed work had to be cleared by the conservation officers

from English Heritage.

Everything had to be done in keeping with the historic building.

Some people find the regulations a hindrance,

but for David and Jeanette,

the history is the reason they bought the place.

In a way, we'd like to find a few problems.

We'd like to find a bit more archaeology.

It would be exciting, even if it WAS a pain.

Kieran first visited Calverton in March 2010,

when the restoration work had only just begun.

So, it's hard to say how old this building is,

but, of course, we have a pretty good clue above us

that 1659 was the moment where this element,

this kind of portico entrance, this porch was built.

At a certain point in the 17th century,

you start to get people who are interested in making an impression.

You need to arrive at the entrance facade and be impressed.

From the outside, we know that it's at least partly a 17th-century house,

but when you start to look at the thickness of these walls,

you start to suspect something much more ancient.

Normally you would expect a wall this size to be an external wall.

If it is solid masonry,

then you would expect it to be the former external wall, perhaps,

of a much older building.

It's clear the house had been altered and adapted

by almost every generation that lived there.

For example, the drawing room has Georgian windows

and a Tudor fireplace.

Strangely, the only really grand room is the servants' hall,

which was built on the back, like an extension.

Every time you walk round a corner in this house,

you find another thing that poses yet another question.

Why did they build this quite large hall?

At what point did they need this size of accommodation,

which is nearly as big as the rest of the ground floor of the house?

Going by the windows and the details,

the servants' hall appears to date from the mid-1600s,

the same period as the portico round the front.

With such an old building in such a decrepit state,

there was lots to do.

David and Jeanette had carefully planned the restoration.

It was scheduled to take ten months to complete,

and everything had to be done properly...

..from repairing the original plasterwork in the attics...

..to exploring hidden passageways and rooms below stairs.

-Found the bottom yet, Smudge?

-No.

We have found, beneath several layers of building work,

inside the building but once which was outside,

some steps leading down into the ground.

Outside, David and Jeanette wanted to restore an old window

that had previously been bricked up.

But for building conservationist Alan Walker,

it was quite a challenge!

Yeah. It is a very tricky operation.

Certainly we need an awful lot of supports

so we can retain as much of the original stone facade as possible.

We've got probably about three quarters of a ton above of stonework

and we can't take out a lintel without supporting it properly

so we can get a new lintel in its position.

It's always a nerve-racking job

when you're dealing with historic buildings.

They were putting in modern lintels of steel and concrete,

bedded into new mortar, but there was a snag.

Little problem there.

Might have to take this out.

The scaffolding prop was in the way, so they had to move it.

It's quite fragile, provided...

You only notice how fragile it is when you haven't got it supported,

and then obviously you find out pretty fast.

The only thing holding up the gable end

was a few centuries of tradition.

'Five months into the restoration,

'I went to see how they were getting on.'

David, Jeanette, how far have you got?

The contractor assures us we're exactly halfway through the contract,

22 weeks into a 44-week contract, more or less exactly today.

Are you aching to move into the house?

I really do want to see it moving on.

I really do want to get in.

-Can I come and have a look?

-Yeah. We love showing people round.

-Come on.

-Thank you.

-Let's have a look.

-Lovely.

Right! Yes. So, you're exactly halfway through, you say?

Yes, but it does look a mess, doesn't it, at the moment?

Well, it's... It's... It's got a way to go, hasn't it?

This room's not much further on, is it?

-No.

-This one's still quite...

-You need a great deal of imagination now.

-Yeah.

We thought this room was going to be the one

that would need least intervention,

but it's been like pulling a thread on a jumper.

The architect wanted to take the 1970s plasterboard off,

and that led then to the stud partition...

you know, stud work to be pulled off,

and then a lot of the plaster came off.

It's like peeling a house back and tracing its history that way.

Now we have much more information about the house.

-You love this house, don't you?

-Yeah, I do. I do.

-You do love it.

-Yeah. It's just a very welcoming house,

and it's full of interest.

We love our history, as well, and I love architecture,

and I love the idea that people have stood here like this,

discussing, you know,

the Battle of Waterloo and the Battle of Bosworth,

and the Battle of Britain...

All these conversations have taken place in this very place.

It was clear that this 17th-century building was going to take a lot of work.

It had once been a very imposing house,

but who had owned it, and who was SB?

In the local library, Kieran found the answer.

Our first step has been to consult a county history of Buckinghamshire,

and in this text we've now found out who the SB was -

a Mr Simon Bennett.

And the Bennetts weren't always the lords of the manor round here.

They'd bought their way into the landed gentry

two generations before.

Simon Bennett was a successful businessman,

and he completely remodelled Calverton,

turning it into much of what we see today.

He died at the age of 60, and is buried in a local church.

The carving on his memorial is actually taken from his death mask.

Simon left behind a widow, Grace Bennett,

and as David had discovered, she wasn't very popular.

She wasn't at all liked. She'd done some bad things in the village,

upset people,

and the butcher from Stony Stratford and his apprentice

decided she must have some money up here hidden away,

so they came up for it, and she insisted there wasn't any,

and one thing led to another, and they murdered her

in this hall somewhere.

They caught the butcher and his apprentice

in a wood near Beachampton, not far from here.

They were both hung at Galley Hill about half a mile away.

Their bodies were put in gibbets, hanging on Gib Lane,

which was the old lane past the village,

and then their skulls were exhibited on our garden wall,

where there's a carved gallows, as a warning to other people.

300 years later, this may sound like an unlikely tale,

but it's all true.

In the archives, Kate found the accounts for what was spent

on the trial and the execution of Grace Bennett's murderers.

Curiously, the whole thing was paid for by the Bennett family.

Grace Bennett was so hated by the people around her,

the local people, that there was no sympathy for her,

and in fact no-one would give evidence at the trial, it seems,

so every witness had to be paid to testify.

The Bennett family want a special gallows made for the murderer

where he can be hanged. The bill for the building of the gallows,

two guineas 12,

and they also paid for the body to be taken away.

Three centuries later, though, the crime scene was falling to bits,

particularly the big stone windows.

They date from when the servants' hall was first built

in the mid-1600s.

The limestone sills and mullions were badly eroded,

and needed replacing.

They are made out of Bath stone,

and the skills and tools used for this work

haven't changed much in the past 2,000 years.

These were first mined by the Romans a couple of thousand years ago,

these mines in Bath, and the actual techniques used by the Romans

were very similar to what are used today.

The wooden mallet head would have been used by Romans.

Some of the metal tools, they're still very similar.

It's a massive, massive thing for me to see my work put into a building,

and to think that will last another few hundred years, hopefully,

and other people are going to get pleasure from that.

Restoring the stone window frames at Calverton Manor

was an expensive business,

but it had all been allowed for in the million-pound restoration plan.

Back at Big House in Pembrokeshire,

Alun was also facing a big bill to replace his windows.

They all had to be specially made

to fit the building's quirky dimensions.

This is the biggest single purchase here, apart from the house.

A dozen windows here, which cost me a lot of money.

They cost £20,000,

but getting them installed would make a big difference

to the whole restoration.

It's a huge step forward to moving in,

and it'll mean that we've got a dry area to work in.

They've all had a couple of coats before they got to us,

but we just thought we'd put another coat on the outside

before they go in, and do the insides once they're in.

Each window was double glazed and extremely heavy.

Alun recruited helpers to fit them, including his dad.

OK. Ready?

Ooh, I got the heavy end.

There we are. That's it! One window.

Others had been helping too.

Alun's mate Nigel Jenkins is a carpenter.

Stud wall coming up here. There's a measure-made storage space above.

Er, four-by-twos rattled together.

Instead of using nail guns, we used the old-fashioned galvanised nails.

They're as cheap as chips, and rattle them in.

Even the floorboards were cheap,

recovered from the local village hall when that was demolished.

It's nice to see an old building coming back to life.

If he's got a bottomless pit of money,

it makes a restoration on this sort of building easy.

But if you haven't got a pot of money,

you've just got to do it and keep thinking about the building,

get it right for the building, you know?

With the big, expensive front door and all the windows in place,

for the first time in living memory,

Big House was beginning to look like a home.

But as Kate discovered in the archives,

160 years ago, the community and Big House suffered a devastating blow,

and Sir John Owen's family fortune would never recover.

This document here, this newspaper article,

was written 50 years later,

and still it clearly resonates in the mind,

and it's so awful. The details here are just terrible.

The local colliery, Garden Pit, ran underneath the estuary.

One afternoon when the tide was coming in,

water burst through to the pit shaft without warning.

HE GASPS

WATER RUSHES HE GASPS

At least 40 people perished just in a moment when the pit was flooded,

and all these miners "were carried headlong with the torrent".

Only a few escaped.

Water filled the pit so quickly

that attempts at rescue proved impossible.

To this day, the bodies of the people mining Owen's coal

on Valentine's Day, 1844 have never been recovered.

The tragedy blighted the whole riverside,

and the Owens' colliery, once the most profitable in the county,

would never recover.

Once upon a time this was bustling, it was busy.

All you could hear was the clanking of machinery,

men going back and forth... It's completely different.

The calamity changed the area almost overnight,

and it also had a great effect on Big House,

because Big House was built on colliery money, on coal money,

and so when the colliery went,

it's very likely that the fortunes of Big House began to fall as well.

Back at Calverton Manor,

David and Jeanette were facing problems of a different kind.

Seven months into their restoration, and the schedule was slipping.

The old building kept throwing up new problems.

Everything here is just totally... Well, it's gone, basically,

hardly held up by anything.

There have been one or two surprises at the last minute.

The main beam running through the centre of the house,

when the electrician lifted a floorboard,

he found the last three feet of it just weren't there.

Peter Howard was the restoration's architect.

Well, we've discovered that the end of this major beam

has been reduced to dust

by, um, worm of some sort or another,

and in fact may well have been just on the point of collapsing

into the room below.

The woodworm is long gone,

so it could've been like this for decades.

But that wasn't the only hidden problem that came to light.

Conservation engineer Ralph Mills was called in

to look at the kitchen fireplace.

What's happened, of course, is, with this being removed from there,

it's weakened the whole construction.

This was very serious. The chimney is a supporting structure.

You can see here, you know,

that the construction there is very, very, you know, weak.

This has been planted onto the original mason...

the original masonry.

It seems that the cowboy builder is not just a modern phenomenon.

It is on the point of collapse, really.

In fact, the whole chimney structure was declared unsafe.

Well, obviously it's a load-bearing wall,

cos it goes right upstairs to one of the chimneys, as well.

I think he's estimated about 50 tons above us.

The bottom two metres had to be completely rebuilt.

When David and Jeanette were planning the restoration,

they allowed extra money to cover unforeseen disasters like this,

but still, it was a blow.

I... I'm not depressed by it.

We did our homework. We knew it was going to be expensive.

But I would just like to get in, get it finished, and enjoy it.

The fact is, every week overrun does cost real pound notes.

Outside, things were going better.

The stonemasons had finished carving the new window frames.

Now it was like a heavyweight jigsaw puzzle to put it back together.

The header stone was the last to fit.

It's a privilege to work on a building like this,

all the buildings we have worked on,

because to think of 200, 300 years ago

that your fellow masons, how they worked...

I mean, they wouldn't have had any electric spinners or grinders

or Kangos to take the stone out. They would have done everything by hand.

You just got to keep persevering, keep taking it in and out,

until we get it right.

You would think, it come out of there, it should go back into it,

but it never does.

It looks nice once it goes in.

It's all got to be pointed up and that,

which will really finish it off,

but just to see it go in, and stand back and look at it,

and it looks a decent-enough job.

As Christmas 2010 approached,

it was the weather that was to cause the next delays.

It was the second-coldest December since monthly records began.

Some of the lime mortar and plasterwork was damaged

by the freezing temperatures.

Yeah, the face is gone. It's completely gone.

This will all want raking out and completely repointing,

hundred percent, all over.

So now it needs redoing.

MANY VOICES CHATTERING

David and Jeanette had once been determined to move in by Christmas,

but with the schedule slipping and costs rising, it wasn't to be.

To cheer everyone up, they went ahead with a carol concert

in the servants' hall.

Are we ready?

ALL: # Deck the hall with boughs of holly

# Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la

# 'Tis the season to be jolly #

At Big House, there wasn't much to sing about.

Alun had also hoped to move in for Christmas,

but a shortage of funds held him back.

Money was the problem 150 years previously, too.

Sir John Owen's fortune was built on coal,

but after the mining disaster, he never recovered.

Sir John, he'd lost it all. All of it up for sale

on the 29th of April, 1857, at Garraway's Coffee House in London,

and this was selling the entire Landshipping estate.

Someone could buy it by auction.

Big House, then known as Landshipping House,

was also part of the sale.

The property's description

reads like a Victorian estate agent's dream.

Beautifully situated, it says here,

on the banks of the River Cleddau, opposite Picton Castle,

a lovely view.

Sundry bedrooms, parlour, drawing room.

Big House must have been

one of the most beautiful and most extensive properties

in the whole area.

Sadly, no drawings or plans survive

to tell us exactly how Big House looked in its prime.

But using all the expert references we can gather,

this is how Big House might have looked in its heyday,

inside...

..and outside.

But then under new ownership,

the building entered a tragic downward spiral

over the next 50 years.

An Ordnance Survey map from 1907

confirmed Big House was already abandoned and crumbling.

We can see the outline of the house with its two distinctive bows,

but now the house is just white. It's not shaded in on the map,

and that tells us that by this time it has no roof.

On OS maps, if it's just in white, the building has no roof.

That means the building's a ruin, so already, by 1907,

more than a hundred years ago, this was a ruin.

A century later, though,

a new chapter in Big House's history was being written.

'I went to see Alun one year ago, when they had finished two rooms.

'But the big question was, had they finally moved in?'

You wanted to be in for Christmas. You weren't in for Christmas.

-Are you actually living here now?

-Yep.

-Yes.

Oh, well done! No, that's brilliant. That's fantastic news.

-And that's it? You're in for good? You won't be moving out again?

-No.

-You're in.

-Yeah.

-Can I have a look?

-Help yourself.

-Oh, thank you!

-Come on.

'From the start, Alun's dream was to wake up every day

'to those stunning views of the estuary

'he's known since he was a boy.'

So, had Alun realised his dream?

This is lovely!

-It is, isn't it?

-It's a bit rough and ready...

-Your bedroom!

-..but we're getting there.

-You've got a four-poster bed!

-Mm, with curtains!

-This room's gorgeous, isn't it?

-That's what makes it.

So, this is where you finally...

Your dream came true, and you sat up in bed and looked out

-at the river.

-Yeah. That's what we were waiting for for a long time.

'They'd built a raised seating area

'to make the most of that spectacular window bay.'

It's looking really beautiful. The floor's fantastic.

Well, it took me two days with the sander to sand it off.

Claire spent two nights with a big industrial polisher here.

-I think it's completely beautiful.

-When I started, there was no roof,

no floors. This was just a big hole full of ivy

with some walls round it. It could have fallen down.

So maybe if I hadn't bothered, it might have ended up in a pile of stones on the floor.

But Big House was far from finished.

The lounge was sparsely furnished to say the least,

and was still waiting for its final cement floor.

'But they seemed to have all they needed here too.'

Oh, now, you've got your fire in. Does that work?

-It does work, yeah.

-Does it work?

-Really, really well.

-It's so quiet.

-It's blowing a gale out there now.

It's silent in here. We've only got...

No proper ceilings up. No proper floors. Just bare walls.

It's been an empty shell for a hundred years.

-It's so warm and quiet.

-It is amazing, isn't it?

The budget for this place, did you start with a...

-No.

-You've never had a...

-You started with nothing.

-And I've still got most of it left.

THEY LAUGH

It's nearly 200 years since Sir John Owen's working building by the river

was first given expansive views of the Pembroke Estuary.

I wonder if John Owen, you know, who built this place,

whose house it was... I wonder what he would make of you living here?

Well, he tried it his way and failed.

He tried the high life and the grand life,

and lived beyond his means, so he had plenty of money to start with,

and he ended up with nothing. I've started with nothing, so I can't go backwards, can I?

Perhaps it's because of Alun's endless enthusiasm for this restoration

that the story of Big House struck a chord with the viewers.

Alun was overwhelmed by the response when the programme was first shown

one year ago.

Since the programme, we've been amazed.

You couldn't get in the lane outside for a month or so afterwards.

Cars, people, boats, back and forward...

It's been amazing. It's just unbelievable.

We just never realised we'd have that kind of response,

and it's all been positive.

Since then, Claire has been busy trying to reply to everyone

who has got in contact.

We've had lots of letters from this country and from abroad,

and lots of emails, almost on a daily basis.

One lady sent us a card, just her name on it,

saying that if she was a millionaire she would have sent us some money,

and sent us a lottery ticket, which was really nice.

We had two, um, coat hooks sent to us, with...

.."king" and "queen" on, so there you go.

Checked the lottery ticket and it wasn't the winning ticket,

but never mind. It was the thought that counts.

I'll have to go and buy another one this weekend.

But how far have they managed to get with their restoration one year on?

We'll be back later to visit.

David and Jeanette finally got into Calverton Manor

six months later than planned.

-Hello!

-Hi!

-Hello!

-It's looking really...

-Doesn't it look gorgeous?

-Really, really wonderful. Well done!

-Isn't it pretty?

-You've done it! You've done it.

-I know.

It's been a long, long haul, but it just...

We're so pleased with it, and with the sun on it...

It's smiling. The honey colours come out. It's beautiful.

It should be the happiest it's been since - what, 1659,

when it was last given a real makeover.

I think your initials should be above the door, not Simon Bennett's.

We've sneakily put our initials round the back on a chimney.

-We'll show you.

-Hidden them round the back.

We thought we might have earned our spurs enough.

-Can I go and have a look?

-You can.

-Can I see what's occurred?

It's looking good.

'We were the first to see the house finished.

'David and Jeanette had only got the keys back from the builders

'that day, and hadn't even moved in yet.'

When they started, this room had been split in two

since the Georgian era.

But more worrying was the load-bearing beam

that had been eaten away by woodworm.

Now the original hall had been reopened.

-SHE LAUGHS

-This is unrecognisable!

-It is amazing, isn't it?

-It's completely different!

And this is a beautiful fireplace.

-It is, yes, and now it's in proportion to the room.

-Yes.

When I was here last time,

the drawing room showed the size of the task ahead.

-I remember this room.

-Well, look.

-This...

-We have a floor.

I'm going to come clean and tell you that when I left here last time,

I said to the crew, "They're never going to do it."

But the part of the house that was most at risk

was in the old kitchen, where, midway through the build,

it was discovered that the fireplace was seriously compromised,

and 50 tons of Calverton Manor could come tumbling down

at any moment.

And this... This... This is a transformation, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-This is not the same room.

It's one of those... what you call a close shave, right,

and you lie awake in bed the next day or the next week,

and think, "Supposing," you know, "it had happened that night,"

the bloke had taken the plaster off, going home early,

and just that night, the whole lot...

It would have pulled down with it the entire north end of the building,

all the floors and everything would have come down.

Having narrowly avoided disaster,

and with their huge list of discoveries,

the final restoration bill for Calverton Manor

was £1.2 million.

I'd give this message - if you're embarking on a restoration project

of this sort, you can't do it on the cheap.

You can't do it quick. You can't cut corners.

-And you don't make any money.

-Oh, and you can't...

THEY LAUGH

It was a long and expensive journey,

but the restoration of Calverton Manor was finally complete.

It had taken longer than they'd hoped,

but now, one year on, David and Jeanette have moved in,

and the house is once again a home.

It is a joy to be here. It really is a joy.

The room we find we spend most time in is this one,

which is the original living hall

of the original 15th-century building,

so this is, like...turns out to be a really excellent space.

It's big enough to have a dining table in and settees,

and a nice fire, and room to watch TV,

and it's right in the middle of the house.

Upstairs there are now three bathrooms...

..and six bedrooms.

Some of the bedrooms are absolutely fantastic, and ours is lovely.

We have a lovely view down the farmyard and over the knot garden and so on, and the church.

It's warm and comfortable,

and I think we're learning to live in it,

and use all the rooms, and it's great.

The boot room, which is sort of our back door,

we kept the old stone sink, and that's fantastic.

'If Betsy comes in with dirty feet, I can just put her in the sink

'and run the tap, clean her off.'

There is one room that David is most pleased with.

The servants' hall, which was really the big room

that I remember, in the beginning of all the filming,

we said this was the one room

that really made this house so interesting for us.

That now has got underfloor heating

and has been beautifully restored,

and is a great place for gatherings.

When the story of their restoration was first shown,

it generated huge interest,

and they still receive many letters and emails of support.

One of the consequences of the programme

was to get some extraordinary messages from all over the world.

Some were just appreciative of ordinary folk like us

trying to save an old house,

and a lovely lady from North London even sent us a cheque for £50,

and said, "I know it's a straw in the wind,

but I'd like to just say, I think what you're doing is good."

That was lovely.

The programme also brought to light some new history to the house -

stories from the Second World War. After it was shown,

the family of one of the previous owners paid a visit.

They remembered people, Canadians, being billeted in the attic,

which was, um, interesting for us,

and we passed on that information to the local historian.

It's thought the Canadian soldiers

were guarding a military installation nearby.

David Muston runs the local historical society.

He confirmed the link between Calverton and the war effort.

One of the things that came up is that quite close to here,

in one of the nearest fields, in fact,

was a radio transmitting station,

which was attached to Whaddon Hall and then Bletchley Park,

where a lot of the radio transmissions

to our secret agents in the Low Countries actually took place.

Bletchley Park is just seven and a half miles from the manor.

During World War II, it was the top-secret centre

for code-breaking and intelligence gathering.

There was a whole network of radio stations locally

that fed information into Bletchley,

and there is still evidence of one next to Calverton Manor.

It's likely that this was the one the Canadian soldiers were guarding.

Dick Webb remembers that time well,

though he was just a boy during the war.

Where this piece of concrete is, this area here,

this is where the radio station was.

It went from here...

..right across there.

This is the, um, generator station

for the electric for the... for the station here.

There was a big engine in this room, yeah, all electrics.

There would have been tall radio masts in the field too,

and David's found evidence of these in the field near the manor.

When we last walked along here,

we did find these...

some evidence of what we assumed to be guy ropes or guy wires,

-which actually held the masts up.

-There's one there.

And another one there.

People who actually worked at Bletchley Park

were absolutely remarkable.

When they were recruited, they were put under the Official Secrets Act,

but many of them considered that the oath they gave

was virtually a lifelong one,

and there were a few older residents of the village

who had been involved, and still will not talk.

They are still... They feel that they would be letting the side down

if they mentioned anything about what they did

at that time in Bletchley, amazing it may seem still.

For David and Jeanette, unlocking secrets like these

has been one of the highlights of the restoration.

To find history from just before we were born, you know,

Second World War history right on our doorstep,

it really makes this point

that this is as much about all of the ages of humankind

and all of our nation's history as it is about a particular frozen moment.

It was really interesting, as the house was being unpicked

and the history of it was being revealed,

and now it's a home which we're enjoying.

David and Jeanette are now settled into their finished restoration.

One year on, Kieran's gone down to Big House

to see Alun and Claire.

They didn't have the same budget for their restoration,

and in fact have had to do most of their work themselves.

The house was a ruin when they started,

so how have they got on?

Well, what a transformation!

I never thought I'd see this building with both its fronts on,

but now its complete. It's just all breeze blocks and no windows,

and still a bit rough around the edges,

but it's more or less all there.

-Morning!

-Hi, there.

-Nice to see you again.

-Hi, Alun. How are things?

-All right.

-Good to see you.

-Nice to see you again.

-Are you well?

-Yeah. You?

-Really well. How's it all going?

-A bit of a change since you left.

-It's amazing.

-Not finished, but we've done a bit.

-I mean, it isn't finished, is it?

-ALUN LAUGHS

It's certainly not finished,

but Alun has done a lot of work on the rest of the building.

With his friend John,

they have managed to secure the front of Big House

by building up the second bay.

It was a lot of work, like, but we got there in the end, like.

Just kept at it. I think it looked worse than what it was, really.

It's a dream for some people, like, and he's got it.

He's got the place here and he'll just take his time, and slowly he'll do it.

The restoration of any historic home

is always going to take a lot of time and money,

but Big House is now on its way to being saved.

Wow! We're in a dry, roofed place! This is quite a change.

-A structure. No windows. It's a structure, though.

-Yeah.

We were here together when this was nearly...

-Falling on your head!

-..falling down,

and all of this steel - tell me what's stopping it falling down now.

You've put a load of work in here. It's not immediately obvious.

All the steelwork... You've got 12 pieces of steel in here,

12 I-beams going back into the wall,

and I've actually welded pieces on the back of the steel

and built them into the wall, so they're tied in.

So they're keeping the building from falling apart.

-Yeah. It won't fall apart now - just fall over.

-Yeah.

And how many bedrooms will there be in this...

Six in this wing, three on each floor,

and three on the top one as well.

With the second bay now dry and stable,

they're hoping that Big House can soon start to pay

for its own restoration.

Our plans are to do bed-and-breakfast

once we've got a little bit more money.

Even if we start off with a couple of bedrooms,

it'll then give us the income

to carry on restoring the rest of the house.

Work has been quiet, so the money isn't about,

so hopefully a few people in there, a couple of B&Bs,

that then will help fund the rest of the restoration then.

That's the master plan, anyway.

This restoration has always been short of funds,

but never of enthusiasm.

Alun and Claire still have a long way to go,

but they're enjoying what they've achieved so far,

and are living in the two rooms in the other wing.

-Isn't it cosy in here?

-It is, isn't it?

It's really nice. It's really warm. It doesn't feel like a building site any more, really,

and you're still camping here a bit.

It's not everybody's idea of luxury, but it's home.

We've got everything we need here. It's warm.

Tell me a bit about the response you had from the building being on Restoration Home.

You've had a lot of people get in contact.

Oh, it's been amazing. We're still shell-shocked.

We've been given sticky-toffee puddings.

-Oh, yeah. We got sent those.

-Oh, that's sweet.

A few offers of four-poster beds...

And it's the kind of sense of people supporting what you're trying to do.

-Is that how it felt?

-Absolutely, and everybody's been so positive.

They've said that they can relate to us because...

We're ordinary people attempting the impossible with next to nothing!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And pulling it off!

Well, we're getting there slowly.

One of the things I love about this place,

what really is the atmosphere of it for me, are these incredible walls.

They're rubble stone, kind of repaired,

not particularly regular but really characterful.

What are you going to do about these walls?

Well, I was hoping to insulate the inside of the external walls,

but everybody's telling us to leave them.

We've had emails and letters. Everyone says, "Oh, please don't touch them!"

It's still got that atmosphere of living in the ruin,

living in the building as you knew it

before you made it into a home.

We'll do what we can when we can, and we're enjoying doing it, yeah.

We'll get to the end one day.

-But meanwhile you have...

-We've got that lovely view, haven't we?

It's a restoration. It's not a race.

Yeah. Right. That's a very good way of putting it.

More than a year ago I stood about here,

looking at the ruin of Big House,

and being very grateful that I wasn't working on the restoration.

But now you can see that the determination of Alun and Claire

to pull it off has brought the house back

to something like its original glory.

Both bay fronts are there for the first time in a century,

looking out on this incredible landscape

and this beautiful estuary.

They've been spurred on by well- wishers from all over the world,

but it's them that have got them this far.

It's not finished yet, but if there's one man who can get it done,

it's Alun.

So, we've never been happier, and we've never been more broke, have we?

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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