The Elms and Coulton Mill Restoration Home - One Year On

'On the last series of Restoration Home, we followed the stories

'of six historic buildings that desperately needed saving.'

Yeah, we love it, we want to finish it,

but sometimes it just feels like too much.

Lift and push.

'Six new owners spent hundreds of thousands of pounds

'transforming them into their dream homes.'

It looks incredible.

You've got your dream kitchen, and it is dreamy.

'But there was still work to do.'

We'll still get it done, and we'll spite them all.

'So, one year on, we're going back to see what's changed.'

Wow. Well, it's done.

What a house.

It's lovely to see it finished now and actually furnished and lived in.

'We'll meet the craftspeople whose work helped save

'these historic homes.

'And the people whose stories provide a living link to the past.'

That's amazing.

Nestling in the beautiful North Yorkshire countryside is

a collection of rural buildings,

some of which date back to the 1700s.

This is Coulton Mill.

For centuries, the old water mill had turned grain into flour,

but it stopped working just after the Second World War.

Now its ancient wooden machinery was gradually rotting away.

The miller's house next door had serious rising damp.

Two barns across the road were derelict and in danger of collapse.

The property had a Grade II listing.

It came with ten acres of land and needed a lot of work.

But Yorkshireman Nick Burrows and his American wife

Heather were determined to rescue it.

I loved this place from the minute Nick showed me the brochure of it.

He was like, "Don't you want to go and see it?"

And I said, "No, I don't need to." I said, "I want to live there."

Heather came to England as a student and stayed on to do her PHD.

Nick spent much of his time overseas.

He was then in Afghanistan

working for the government's reconstruction team.

They had a three-year-old daughter, Sibylla.

I spent a lot of time all over the world trying to help other

people build their own lives.

But to build something which is our own rural idyll, I think,

is something most people dream about.

Come on. Come on. Come on.

Nick and Heather paid £305,000 to buy the derelict property,

the barns and the land.

Make sure the gates are closed.

Heather grew up in rural North America, and she was keen to

use the land and the outbuildings to create her own small farm.

I think that's more important than the house, actually.

Nick was like, "What do you want first?

"Do you want kitchen floors or do you want pigs?"

Pigs.

But the immediate priority was to make the house fit to live in

as their home, and they had a rough budget.

We need to spend £50,000, but that's on the underside.

To do everything we want to do,

we'll need to spend quite a bit more.

Architectural expert Kieran Long

began his investigation of Coulton Mill

looking at the buildings themselves.

We have the road running through the site here.

Almost kind of embracing the house in its kind of elbow,

and then behind us, we have these two rather charmingly

dilapidated barns, creating a very interesting little

complex of little spaces in between these various buildings.

It's kind of very typical of a kind of...of a pre-industrial,

if you like, farm complex, and it's really, really beautiful.

And the house itself has a certain kind of grace, you know.

It's not just a farmhouse,

there's definitely some sort of thought gone into it, large windows.

Originally, there would have been a mill pond above the house,

and Kieran quickly realised it must have always had a running battle

with its natural surroundings.

Here, they've had to build a huge retaining wall to hold back

the hillside and carve a little space for the house to sit.

It's incredibly damp here.

There must be all of the water from surrounding hillsides kind of

funnelling itself into this basin, undermining the building

more or less, or, at the very least, kind of compromising its fabric.

So, it's quite amazing that the building's still here.

Even though there was no proper heating and the walls were green

with damp, the family moved in as soon as they bought the mill.

Restoration work started at New Year, 2011.

For Heather and three-year-old Sibylla,

it meant months of living in a cold, damp house with builders

working around them.

The only heating that's been in the house

is from the coal fires, the wood fires that she's got.

And you can see, if you come a bit further down there, look.

Look at all this, it's just...

This is damp, that is actually damp, is that.

That was a bit drier up there, look.

This is actually damp, is this.

You can see how it's tacky - just... And that's it.

That's all the way through the house.

I think she's an amazing woman to actually live through this,

you know - everything, from the floors to the roof, the walls,

the insulation, the electrics, heating, everything.

It's dirty and it's cold and there's mud everywhere.

Sibylla loves it.

It's so important to me

to know that she has a place where she can call home

and just to be able to explore and have that freedom, but she does

say it's cold and she's wondering when the house is going to be fixed.

'When I paid my first visit to Coulton Mill,

'the builders had been working for several months.

'To try and tackle the damp, they installed underfloor heating,

'the first time the house had had any source of warmth,

'apart from coal fires.

'But when the builders dug out the floor to install the heating pipes,

'they discovered a bigger problem.'

-Hello.

-Hi, what are you doing?

We're doing some drainage

to take the water out of the house.

Oh, it's actually... There's water in the house at the moment?

Well, it's just below the floor.

-OK.

-Cos when we excavated the floor,

we found virtually a pond just below the floor.

So the mill pond has made its way under the house, has it?

Yeah, yeah - usually mill ponds

-aren't supposed to be in the dwelling(!)

-No.

'The builders had to put in an extra drainage system

'to reduce the risk of flooding.'

-That's on.

-Stop.

It just wasn't escaping, and that should now keep

the water table at least another foot lower than it was.

'Sorting out the drainage cost £3,000.

'But, indoors, the underfloor heating had made a big difference.'

When they turned the heating on,

we just thought it was the most amazing thing.

Because, within a day, it took it about 24 hours to warm up, you could

start feeling the warmth come up from the floor and it was fantastic.

'And, outdoors, Heather's small farm was beginning to take shape.'

Sibylla and I really love animals. Nick is getting there.

-My wife has a way of collecting things when I'm away.

-Yeah!

Piggy, piggy, piggy. Piggy.

'Coulton Mill's water wheel hadn't turned for over half a century.

'So Nick and Heather called in Yorkshire mill historian

'John Harrison, to see if anything could be done.'

Ah, now, look at that.

Oh, wow.

Now, that wheel is really old.

Completely made of wood, it's got to be 18th-century, I think,

which is really old for any kind of water mill.

'Frozen in time since the mill closed,

'the antiquated machinery was riddled with woodworm

'and beyond repair.'

-Ah. Oh, look, you can see the round.

-Yeah. There we go.

'Hidden beneath sheets of corrugated iron was the hole

'where two mill stones once ground against each other

'to turn grain into flour.'

-See the...

-Oh, wow.

'But the stones were missing,

'and the mill's workings silted up and waterlogged.

'John thought the crumbling water wheel was unique.'

I've looked at mills across this country and other places as well,

and I haven't seen another one of this layout.

It's a very old design.

The current mill house dated back to the 18th century.

But historian Dr Kate Williams

wanted to know how long a mill had stood on the site.

In the county records office, she found a very rare

and crucial 13th-century manuscript.

It's a legal document which records a Walter of Coulton acquiring

a mill owned by the local abbey.

This piece of paper is over 700 years old,

about 1234, and it's about Coulton Mill being sold,

being swapped for some land to a local man.

It shows me what abbey it is.

It's the Convent of Byland, which is an abbey that we know was

very near to here, and it was one of the big

and most important abbeys of the area.

It's so rare in Britain we can trace back our houses,

many of our buildings, to that far back - I mean, this is the kind of

thing we associate with Westminster Abbey, not somewhere we might live.

Byland Abbey is less than ten miles away from Coulton Mill.

It was here that the medieval monks lived.

We've made a really exciting discovery that connects

a mill at Coulton with this place, one of the three extraordinary,

huge, rich, wealthy monasteries of this area of Yorkshire.

Probably the other two are more famous,

Rievaulx and Fountains, and these three abbeys dominated

the landscape economically and were exactly the kind of concentrations

of power and wealth that in fact the Reformation of Henry VIII wanted

to destroy, and indeed did, which is why we see this thing in ruins.

The news that for 700 years there was a mill at Coulton,

and that it used to be owned by the monks at Byland Abbey,

gave Nick and Heather a new impetus

to try and find funds to restore the mill wheel.

There's a bottom line with all these things and cost is that bottom line.

I don't know exactly how much it's going to cost but I think

it's really worth making the effort with the wheel, because it's so

fundamental to what the building is and its past,

and it should be part of its future.

They didn't have the money to do it themselves,

so they applied for a grant from Natural England to help

restore the wheel and the outbuildings.

Heather hoped the idea of opening Coulton Mill to the public

would help the application.

I'm sort of pushing the education side of it, where I do want to have

school visits, and I do want to do quite a few of them because of the

historical importance of the mill and its use within the community.

We know that we have to do something like that in order to achieve

the thing that we want to achieve.

Inside the house, work was continuing apace.

They'd commissioned a natural stone fireplace made by local craftsmen.

It cost over £3,000.

We've made it in our workshop just up the road.

And it's made out of Tadcaster limestone.

It's York's most local limestone,

and at the moment it's being used on the restoration of York Minster.

And it's all been hand-carved with mallets and chisels

and, you know, traditional stonemasonry tools,

and the customer wants it looking perfect.

Let's have a look. A-ha.

Oh, it's absolutely stunning.

You can now really see where the house is going.

What are you going to toast on the fire?

Toast.

Yes. That makes sense. And what about marshmallows?

Marshmallows.

Yeah. Isn't that beautiful?

'With winter approaching, I came back to Coulton Mill

'to see how Heather was coping with Nick away.'

-Hello!

-Hello.

-How are you?

-I'm fine.

-How lovely to see you again.

-You too.

'They were still waiting to hear back from Natural England

'about their grant application.

'It meant that the restoration of the barns would have to wait,

'because finances were tight.'

Every month, we have money go in, about the second week,

it all goes back out. And so it's difficult at the moment.

'Some would see picturesque barns like these as prime candidates

'for conversion into holiday homes.

'Not Heather.

'She was counting on them to house more of the farm animals

'she liked to collect whilst Nick was away.'

Tell me what you've got.

Is Nick going to find out about this?

Not, not, not yet.

-We have Pansy the goat...

-Yes.

-..who came with Sammy.

-Yes.

-The...

-The Shetland?

-The very fat Shetland pony.

And then I have the 13 ewes that are in the fields, and then five pigs.

I've got Gloria, Penelope - big piggy -

then Cabbage and Wilbur,

and Cabbage is going to be sausages very soon.

And Wilbur is our boar, who is a typical man.

He never escapes because he knows that we just bring the food to him.

'But Wilbur was about to blot his copy book.'

This is Sammy. Sammy!

Oh!

'I discovered that feeding time at Coulton Mill could be

'a chaotic affair.'

Everybody's coming!

SHE LAUGHS

Hello, big, fat pony.

-Oh, no. Pigs are out!

-Oh, cripes.

'Instead of being in the field, the pigs had got onto the road.'

Penelope.

'And prize boar Wilbur, who never escaped,

'had to be wrangled towards his food.'

Good, his bottom's in.

Oh, no, there's the other one.

That's Gloria. Oh, dear.

That's really embarrassing!

In his architectural research,

Kieran had found a book of early 19th-century countryside sketches

by the Yorkshire artist George Nicholson.

It's very exciting for us to see, you know, that he

was at Coulton Mill on August 15th, 1823.

In this drawing here, we have a beautiful rendition of the mill

pond, which of course we can't see today, so that's incredibly valuable

to us, with the bank here kind of fronded with grass and everything.

And then of course there's a lot of attention paid to the wheel itself.

That very distinctive structure is represented here.

We wish that some of the mechanisms were in the state

they were in here 200 years ago, we could still see that wheel turning.

But, nonetheless, there's so much atmosphere here

that still remains at Coulton Mill.

And then of course the miller here, standing at the doorway.

I'm imagining that this is the gentleman who was responsible

for the mill in the 1820s. Other than the wheel in perfect

working order and so on, this could be Heather standing outside

the front door of the building today. Not much has changed.

This is the last family to mill at Coulton, the Harrisons,

who took over in 1881.

They kept Coulton's water wheel turning

until well into the 20th century.

Gillian Smith, nee Harrison, was born at Coulton Mill in the 1940s.

This is a picture in the actual mill house of my grandfather, my mum

and my uncle, sitting in amongst the sacks of grain.

Or flour, perhaps.

Gillian remembers the house in the last years of its prime.

It was very, very tidy outside.

There was a white picket fence round the garden at the front,

by the front door.

And then, you know, over the years,

it seemed to lose its pristine appearance,

and it's such a shame to see a place like that deteriorate.

'Generations of millers had left their mark at Coulton Mill.

'But, after years of decay, I was going back to see

'if it was ready for a new chapter,

'as a family home to Heather, Nick, Sibylla and their animals.'

It feels like a proper little farmyard now.

-It's alive again.

-It is alive again, isn't it?

It had taken them two years.

When they started, it was a building consumed by damp

and carpeted in mould.

Living amongst this restoration had been a constant battle.

So how did the inside of Coulton Mill look now?

'They had transformed the old miller's parlour

'into a stately family dining room.'

Oh, this is beautiful, Heather.

It's a finished living space.

How do you feel to be in here?

It's wonderful.

I mean, I still remember trying to come through the front door

with wellies on, wading through the mud to get to the kitchen.

And to actually have heating!

-Yeah.

-So that we walk around in socks most of the time.

'They had budgeted £50,000 to restore the mill house.

'So far, they had spent £60,000.

'Upstairs, Sibylla had her own bedroom.

'It's a peaceful space where she can play with her toys

'and briefly not be covered in mud.

'Downstairs, in the room that was once in danger of floating away,

'there was now a warm and dry sitting room.'

Ah.

Your beautiful sitting room.

I get a very real sense that this is starting to feel

like a real family home.

It's just been a massive switchover from all of the mess

to where we can actually just sit down.

I can actually read stories to her in this room without

having, you know, dust flying everywhere.

Do you feel like you are almost part of the land and the house here?

Everyone has put their own mark on the place.

All the... I mean, what, for almost 1,000 years,

all the millers that have been here and their families

and the animals, they've all added their own mark to the place.

Do you see your future very much here?

I'm not going anywhere!

I am not going anywhere.

I'm not living in a building site again. Nope.

I'm staying right here.

So you'll be here for as long as you can imagine?

Well, when the barns are finished

then we're getting some cows, hens!

'And work on the barns was scheduled to start, because their grant

'application from Natural England had finally been approved.'

In the restoration of all period properties, it's the skill

of the local craftsmen that helps bring the houses back to life.

At Coulton Mill, the fireplaces were carved by stonemason

Robin Winterton.

Kieran had come to meet him to find out more

about the stonemason's craft.

-Hi, Robin.

-Hello there, how are you?

You're hard at work here.

I've seen your beautiful work at Coulton Mill,

but what's going on in the workshop today?

-What exactly are you working on?

-Well, we're basically...

This is a top mantelpiece for a

fireplace which is due to be fitted tomorrow.

Robin trained at York Minster 40 years ago,

and has worked on many prestigious cathedral restorations since.

Today, though, most of his work is on domestic stonework.

What strikes me is that the average DIY-er at home would have

-more tools than you've got on this bench.

-That's right, yeah.

Basically, the tools, they're very,

very similar to the tools that we used thousands of years ago.

The difference being...

This looks like something a caveman would use!

Well, yeah, when I first started,

normally there would've been... You'd have a wooden mallet.

This is a nylon one.

The chisels, instead of being steel-sharpened, they're actually

tungsten-tipped, and they come in various different sizes.

A wider chisel, like a bolster, like that, is basically for a fine

finish like that, where you could cover a lot of area,

because of the width of it.

Whereas something narrower - basically, that is for finer detail.

Then we go down to a half-inch and a quarter-inch.

You've also got a beautiful old brass set square here.

That's right, yeah. I mean, that is an old one, actually.

It's far older than I am, so...

Really? I mean, your mallet and the set square,

they've seen a bit of service.

I mean, does it mean a lot to you to use old tools?

I couldn't do my job without these tools and they symbolise

stonemasonry going back thousands and thousands of years.

I say, it's malleable, the stone, isn't it?

It really comes off in quite fine...

Well, why don't you have a go and see what you think?

Well, I'll give it a try. I warn you that I'm...

So it's a right-handed mallet, that. Is that all right?

-That's good. I'm right-handed.

-OK, fair enough.

-Hold the chisel a little lower down.

-Like... Oh, down here.

Yeah, that's it, yeah. And see what you think.

So, more across then...? Oh, there you go.

It comes away remarkably easily.

Well, yes, it's a nice stone to mason.

This is a limestone and it's from Lincolnshire.

Very therapeutic. Kind of, you know,

you see it gradually whittling away there.

I mean, there is this risk,

-presumably, that you could just really...?

-There is a risk.

You can be literally working a mantelpiece like that

and the other end will drop off, because it's got faults in it

and this, that and the other.

I'm getting worried now I'm going to completely mess up this

beautiful piece of stone.

The risk of things going wrong is greater doing delicate carvings,

but these are the pieces Robin enjoys most.

Because we're doing some quite intricate work,

we've got to use a narrow chisel and be very, very careful

so that we don't take a piece out that we don't want to take out.

It's interesting, because you've drawn something 2D,

but, obviously, in your mind, it's always going to be in 3D, isn't it?

Yeah, I've got to see it as a finished piece rather than

just a drawing on a piece of stone.

I mean, as you're doing this,

this just already is such a beautiful curved surface.

I mean, this is the kind of thing people will touch

-and feel and run their hands along.

-Yeah.

I mean, it never ceases to amaze me, even though I've been a stonemason

all these years, that, you know, people do find stone very tactile.

The first thing people do when they come and see these fireplaces,

they want to touch 'em.

Robin and his team get through more than 20 tonnes of rock to

carve the 70 fireplace surrounds they produce every year.

The trade is very, very old.

And I don't think a lot of people realise that there's still

people doing this sort of work.

It's a very, very traditional craft and, to be fair,

it's barely changed over hundreds of years.

Since the programme was first broadcast last year,

Coulton Mill has become a local attraction.

After the programme, there was so much interest in the place.

I'd come outside and there would be ten cars parked out here.

"Can we just have a look around? Can we see the wheel?"

They loved all the animals.

The pigs, they have a massive fan club.

One year ago, the barns were in danger of collapse

and being lost for ever.

Now, with the grant from Natural England, they have been saved.

The upper level of the big barn has been turned into an

educational space for groups and visitors.

Nigel Copsey is project-managing the restoration for Natural England.

Repointing has been done, but not universally,

just where it was necessary. The walls of these buildings

are built with earth mortar, which, again, is a very traditional mortar

in this area, and then pointed with lime,

and we've just pointed where that pointing was necessary.

We're not here to make these buildings look new.

We're here to make them look almost as they did before,

but to be performing properly again, and in good order again.

They've restored the roofs using original materials and techniques.

Under the pan tiles, there's lime mortar and lath.

Nigel believes it's still the best way.

These roofs have very often lasted 200 years.

Roofing felt is unlikely to last more than 50,

and so that's the greatest satisfaction I've had,

that we've managed to get these roofs back on these buildings

and on other projects we've been doing with Natural England.

There's one thing, though, that hasn't changed here.

Heather's love of animals.

Tessie! Come on, Tess. Hello.

This is Tess.

She's a Northern Dairy Shorthorn cow,

one of the rarest breeds of cattle in the country.

She's just a heifer, though, so she's just a baby, nine months.

Having a Northern Dairy Shorthorn

come back to Yorkshire, which is where they were originally from,

and they're originally from this area, is a really exciting

thing, and especially considering that they are so rare.

Today is a big day for Coulton Mill.

Welcome to Coulton Mill.

40 members of the British Agricultural History Society

have come to see the restoration for themselves.

Nigel is giving them a talk about the work.

I'm so excited. They all fit, firstly, in the classroom.

There's a lot of them and they seem absolutely riveted to Nigel's talk.

Something like this, which is nearly in its original state,

is absolutely brilliant.

It's very, very interesting,

and, you know, it's worthwhile to see things being restored.

And I think it's important that places like this are preserved.

But what everyone wants is to see the old mill wheel

turning once again.

And with the grant from Natural England,

it may not be much longer before it does.

The mill wheel will be made new, like for like,

and it will turn, and the mill will then be there

as an educational resource and for people to see,

and we want to conserve the historic fabric of that mill.

In two years, Coulton Mill has gone from a ruin to a restoration home.

Nick and Heather took on a very ambitious project here,

but now it's almost done.

With the restoration of the wheel due to start shortly,

Coulton Mill has become a home with a living history.

Our next restoration home was in the Derbyshire village

of North Wingfield.

The Elms is an early Georgian house that must have been

one of the grandest houses for miles around when it was built.

But for the last eight years, it stood empty and was almost a ruin.

Then, three generations of the Holmwood family came along.

Suzanne, her son Gavin, his partner Ann,

and their six-year-old daughter Caitlin.

The first time I saw The Elms, I can remember thinking,

that's a big, grand house, but it does need a lot of work doing.

We went in, couldn't see very much, it was late at night.

And we came out and I think we'd only looked round it 15 minutes,

and we said we want it.

I think it needs a lot of work done.

But it's good.

I can see a property that is going to look amazing.

It's going to look fantastic when it's done.

They bought it for £115,000.

But the house was in such a terrible state,

it was going to cost more to restore than it did to buy.

They budgeted £180,000 to do the work.

To help with the costs, Gavin's mum, Suzanne, also invested.

She was keen to swap her bungalow for part of the house.

I thought it was a really big project to take on

but a wonderful property.

The plan was to divide the L-shaped house into two.

Suzanne would have the formal-looking front,

while Gavin and Ann would get the back half.

Gavin is a technical architect and works from home.

He's also a keen DIY-er, and planned to do much of the work himself.

Whilst he was busy on the house, Ann, who is a social worker,

was the principal breadwinner.

In this family, there's a clear division of labour.

'I'm going to absolutely let Gav just get on with it.'

And then just ask him how his day's been.

Probably go round obviously at evenings and say,

"Oh, you've not done much yet."

'I made my first visit in the spring when work was about to start.'

What's your timescale here?

I'd like to think the whole project's 12 months.

OK, so, a year, really, from start to finish.

-Yes.

-I don't think you can do this in a year,

so I'm going to bet you £5 that you can't do this in your timescale.

-From year, from May to May.

-May to May, £5.

Yeah, can't be done, or I owe you a fiver.

But you haven't seen inside, so you might want to make it £50 yet.

THEY LAUGH

'The interior was bad,

'and the original Georgian staircase was missing.

'But there was something to be positive about.'

Oh, yes, proper panelled roof! It's big, it's huge, I can see the roof!

Yes, I really can see the roof.

No, that's not a good thing.

THEY LAUGH

It's a massive pile, this, and now you are going from the small

house basically to living in showbiz mansions, aren't you, really?

Well, just call us lord and lady of the manor!

That's what our friends are doing.

How do you feel about that? Your ladyship?

Well, delighted!

'In fact, it was Gavin's mum Suzanne

'who was having the posher front of the house.'

You're going to be living in the rather grand front

quarters of the house, aren't you?

I am, yes. I'm having the panelled room as my dining room.

You're going to be lady of the manor, aren't you?

Well...

-A little bit.

-A little bit, yeah.

One of the first priorities was to make the building structurally safe.

Gavin had to replace a rotten beam on the top floor.

He built a scaffold platform outside

and another one inside, to make a temporary floor to work on.

The new beam was seven metres long, made of solid oak,

and weighed almost half a tonne.

It needed a crane to get it up onto the outside platform.

That's the easy part, really. Lifted it up with a crane.

Now the hard part's going to be

actually getting the new beam in there.

The beam was too heavy to try to manhandle through the window,

but Gavin had a plan inspired by the building of the ancient pyramids.

It's a good old tried and tested technique from the Egyptians,

anyway, rolling stuff on rollers.

With a small hole cut in the outside wall,

the plan was just to roll the beam in through the gap.

Hello!

One, two... Are you ready?

One, two, three, lift and push.

The rollers worked a treat. The Egyptians would have been proud.

They're very good at beam installation.

No, I'm very happy, it went well.

As the building work moved ahead,

our research into the history of The Elms got under way.

Historian Dr Kate Williams would be delving into the archives

to track down the people whose lives were bound up with the house.

Architectural expert Kieran Long

wanted to find out about the history of the house itself.

He started his investigation at the Derbyshire Record Office

in Matlock, where he found a tithe map of the village from 1842.

One of the things that's really interesting about this

is that it shows, of course, that The Elms is part of a village.

It's not a building sat on its own in a landscape, it's sat amongst

lots of buildings without any particular architectural order,

ie they look like they're working buildings.

Buildings of different sizes and different kinds,

all with relationships to different kinds of plots of land.

So this is a farming landscape, a farming community,

and a working community,

of which The Elms is, if you like, the heart.

This is a tithe map, and what's interesting about that is,

of course, that it records land ownership. And here it is.

We have the name Clay, John Wilkinson.

So this is extremely exciting.

This is the name of the man who was occupying The Elms in 1842.

With a name to go on, historian Kate Williams could start digging.

I've been looking through the records to try

and find out more about him.

And what I've found is this beautiful register of the Parish

of North Wingfield that gives us

all the records of the Parish from 1751, where it starts, to 1812.

And what we have here are the baptisms, the marriages

and the deaths.

So, here he is, John Wilkinson Clay, I've found him in 1779.

He was baptised on June 30th, so he might have been born

up to a year before then.

But what's fascinating is that he is not legitimate.

John Wilkinson Clay is "of spurious birth",

which is a term for illegitimate in the register,

and he is listed as John Wilkinson, the son of Sarah Clay.

We don't know the name of his father at all.

It's my suspicion that the father was called Clay as well,

and Sarah Clay has taken on his name,

because that's what often your kind of common-law wife would do.

So I think that this is a local girl who has taken up with a Mr Clay

and she's taken on his name.

So it's marvellous that I've found him, that's a great start,

but actually the mystery has now deepened, because I have to try

and find out who the father was

and why it was that he had an illegitimate child.

Back on site, the building work was powering ahead.

The steel's here, steel's going in.

Partition walls are going up.

We've got temporary floors delivered yesterday

so we can start decking out all the floors to actually get up there.

And when Gavin did get up there, he made a discovery.

Basically, it's all the old staircase from the first...

from the ground to the first floor.

The missing Georgian stairs had been hidden in an alcove in the attic

and then boarded up for safekeeping.

I think in my head, I think on paper,

I think on the provisional sum, I'd allowed about ten, 15 grand.

It was a welcome saving.

Downstairs, the plasterers had arrived and, as the house is

Grade II listed, they were using lime plaster on the walls.

I think you get a feeling that you're doing the right thing

and also that you're doing something that was practised

hundreds of years ago.

Lime plaster is a mixture of sand, water and lime.

It's usually put on in three layers,

and each one can take up to a month to set.

The first two layers also contain another vital ingredient,

animal hair.

The hair that used to be used in the old days was cow hair.

What we actually use now is horse hair,

and basically the hair acts as a matrix and holds the lime together.

Working with lime plaster requires patience and dedication,

and craftsmen like Andrew are a vanishing breed.

I'm a lime geek, and I'm just crazy about the material,

but if my wife catches hold of this message again,

she'll just say, "Oh, it's lime again, and it's continuous."

She's had enough of lime, I think, basically.

She hates it!

The custom-made sash windows were the next challenge.

Gavin and his mate Chris were fitting them.

We've never put sash windows in.

But we read about it on the internet.

It's a bit of a sequence to it, you have to...

It's a bit like a jigsaw, isn't it?

Putting them back together, each one you have to put it back

in the exact sequence to get... That one has to be on the bottom,

you put the middle beam back in, and you have to move the sash window up,

etc, etc.

So it is quite a lot more time-consuming than just a normal window.

Once the first one's cracked, we've got the pattern how to do it.

-That's right, we've done it.

-That's it, perfect.

Look at that. That's sweet, isn't it?

Fantastic.

So, that was one down, 37 still to go.

'My next visit was in November, six months into our 12-month bet.'

Oh, lovely windows.

-Hello, Gavin.

-Caroline.

-Fabulous windows.

-Thank you, yeah.

Fabulous! I bet they cost next to nothing(!)

They were pennies. No, yeah, expensive but well worth it.

How much?

I think windows and doors came to, I think it was at £37,000 something.

Bless your heart. That's a lot of money, isn't it?

It is, it's the most expensive single item.

And has Ann been happy with the build so far?

I think so, yeah. We're in negotiations about kitchens, so...

What do you mean? You don't want the same thing, or...?

Well, I want a cheaper one, she wants an expensive one.

Ha! OK. But generally speaking,

you think you're within budget at the moment?

Yeah, I'm pretty happy. I think the kitchens are pushing it over,

so, obviously, we haven't placed an order for them yet.

-Would you like me to have a word with Ann?

-Please, yeah.

Now, rumour has it you've got extremely expensive taste?

Well, not deliberate expensive taste.

I know that's what Gav says,

and we've had many a discussion about, yes, the kitchen.

-Of all the things.

-Yes.

Yes. The kitchen, yes. Are we having granite?

Yes, of course, we're having granite, but money's tight because

obviously it's gone on plastering, it's gone on electrics, it's gone

on plumbing, all the things that are needed, but you don't necessarily

see, and then I think, well, why is there none left for my kitchen?

-So, what kitchen did you like?

-Well, it took ages to choose doors.

Have you ever looked at kitchen doors?

It is the most boring thing in the world and, like, kitchens,

I'm like, well, none of them are speaking to me,

none of them are saying "wow".

So he pulls out this kitchen door and I went, "That's the one",

and he's like, "Yeah, I only brought you this out to point out

"that this is the Ferrari of kitchens."

SHE LAUGHS

Ann's dream kitchen may have been expensive, but in the new year

Gavin and Ann were faced with a much bigger financial problem.

In fact, it was a crisis that threatened to stop

the whole restoration.

In essence, we took out a loan, development loan

if you want to call it, and now we're at the stage where we

need to repay that loan with a traditional mortgage.

Whereby now the house is habitable, it can take on a traditional

mortgage, whereas before you can't get traditional finance,

as in a normal mortgage, on a derelict building.

The problem was the development loan had a time limit,

and getting a normal mortgage was proving harder than expected.

Yeah, I'm just waiting, we're waiting for a phone call from

the bank, just hopefully to confirm that we can have the mortgage.

It's either a yes or a no at this point.

Basically a lot's depending on today.

If it's a no, it's basically...

We'll have to tell the plasterers to stop working.

In the end, when the call came through, it was bad news.

The mortgage request was turned down.

When you've got all your life

and everything depends on that particular phone call at that moment

in time, it's absolutely devastating when you hear that kind of feedback.

But they managed to get some financing.

And, after a lot of toing and froing, that's when it came back

and we got the compromise, basically.

We got 50% of what we needed.

Basically, what it's going to mean is

it's just going to take longer to do it because it's going to be me

building most of it instead of paying someone to do it.

It was a blow,

but at least the restoration of The Elms could continue.

But at a much slower pace.

Kate had been investigating John Wilkinson Clay.

He was born illegitimate, but in the records, she not only found

the name of his father, John Clay, but also that his parents got

married four years after his birth.

John Wilkinson Clay inherited The Elms in 1793

and lived there for 73 years.

When he died, he left the house to his daughter.

In his will, though, he was careful to make sure his housekeeper,

Dorothy Roberts, was looked after.

And, it turns out, he did more than just that.

Actually, she's in the grave with him.

So, along with his father and his mother and his sons

and his wife, is Dorothy.

She's there.

To be buried with your servant is something...

I mean, you hardly ever see it. It's really uncommon.

John Wilkinson Clay's wife died 17 years before him,

so Dorothy must have stayed with him to the end.

So, kind of, she was his final companion.

So he wanted to have them both in the grave,

both his beloved wife and dear Dorothy,

and, really, he's not only caring about her, he's lifting her status.

He's saying, you know, she's not just a servant,

she is a friend and she's a companion

and she's going in the grave with me and my father and my children.

Born out of wedlock, it seems that John Wilkinson Clay was

destined to defy convention from the cradle to the grave.

Since the 18th century, The Elms had been a grand house with a rich

and sometimes scandalous history.

But the 21st century had seen it decay to a point where it was

doubtful if it could be saved at all.

But Gavin and Ann took on this ambitious restoration.

They'd been working hard on it for 12 months,

overcoming financial problems along the way.

Gavin had bet £5 that they would be living in the house by now.

Nice to see you.

Hand it over, then.

Oh, he has! No, don't, I'm only joking!

-I've only got a ten.

-Oh, bless your heart.

So, I'm assuming by the swift action on the wallet, it's not finished?

It's not finished, no, no.

Quite a big delay on some finance.

I was absolutely fed up with it,

with the stress and pressure of all the money,

but it's got sorted and we're getting back on track.

A year ago the rear part of the house where Gavin

and Ann planned to live was in a terrible state.

The fireplace was in danger of collapse,

there were no floors and the walls were just rubble.

-This has come on hugely.

-Yes.

It has, yeah.

I know you're not finished but it's so different.

Yeah, it's got a great feel now.

Gavin had focused his efforts on getting this part of the house

completed, but it hadn't come cheap.

He'd spent £235,000 -

£55,000 more than the original budget.

Some of that money went

on the kitchen that Ann had always dreamt of.

-Ann! You got it!

-Yay!

You got your dream kitchen, and it is dreamy.

-It is a dream kitchen.

-Isn't it?

-Yeah.

On the first floor,

bathrooms are going in and bedrooms are getting done.

The half-ton beam that Gavin struggled to fit is now

part of the ceiling to the guest bedroom

and holds up the floor in their master suite.

This house, for us, or for me, will become like, it will be my heart

and soul. We'll love it, it will be filled with memories.

It was at the front of the house, where Gavin's mum will live,

that there was still the most work to do.

It wasn't ready to move into but they were getting there.

When the programme was first broadcast last year,

Gavin and Ann were amazed at the response. There were many letters,

e-mails and calls, but one person in particular stood out.

Linda Cox had a very personal connection with The Elms.

I was just looking through the channels and, lo and behold,

there was The Elms. I just couldn't believe it.

I sat and cried.

I think I cried all the way through the programme,

because it brought such memories back,

but I was so pleased to see that it was coming back to life again.

The Elms had been in Linda's family since the 1900s,

and she remembers her grandparents living there.

My dad was born there.

He was born on the top floor and so I spent a lot of my childhood there.

One thing in particular I always remember is

the sliding down the banister,

and I used to get into real trouble for sliding down the banister

and get smacked bottoms at the bottom, but I'd still do it again.

Linda's parents had met at The Elms in the 1930s.

Her mother was a maid at the house and then fell in love

with one of the sons, George Holmes, and they married.

That was my mum and dad, yeah.

We used to go to The Elms, my dad and I.

We used to always have to go at Christmas and bank holidays

and every Wednesday. But my mum wasn't allowed to go.

Which was a bit of a connection. Like the lady who lived there,

who was the housekeeper at the house before

with the original owner.

It was a bit untoward, so it was like history repeating itself.

A year has now passed since we last visited The Elms,

and Kieran has come to see how Gavin and Ann are getting on.

-Hi there.

-Kieran, nice to see you again.

-Good to see you.

-Yeah, good to see you again.

-Hi.

-How are you?

-I'm fine thank you, not too bad.

Good, and how's everything going?

Good-ish, yeah. We've obviously still got the hoarding up.

Yeah, the first thing I notice is that it still looks like a building

site - that's a bit worrying.

It's disappointing to have the hoarding up still.

Mainly because my mum hasn't quite moved, we didn't want

to take the hoarding down until she moved in.

Well, I can't wait to see what you've been doing

and how your house is looking. Can you show me round?

We can, yes. Let's go in and show you around.

Gavin has been concentrating on the Georgian front of the house

where his mum, Suzanne, will live.

So, entrance hall. I'll take you into the kitchen first

and just show you the best bit first. HE LAUGHS

Great. What a nice space.

So this will be Mum's kitchen.

Well, I hope she likes entertaining

cos there's plenty of space in here. Great.

It's a great size kitchen.

And the quality you're doing things with, you know, I mean,

you've been working with lath and plaster, you've got a joiner.

I mean, these are not easy, are they?

No. I suppose not many people, if they do a new build,

go to this sort of standard, especially on the budget

we've got, because it is a fairly low budget for what we've done.

And even though we're standing in your mum's half-finished

kitchen, you're still relaxed about the fact.

Yeah, she... Joking aside, she's eager to get in

and you can understand it, it's a fantastic house.

All her friends keep asking her when she's going to be in

and I think she's got a bit fed up of saying, "I don't know!"

I will push on and get it finished pretty soon.

Luckily, his mum, Suzanne, is being very patient.

It just doesn't bother me.

When I'm in, I shall be in and that's it.

When they first bought the house,

the original Georgian staircase was missing.

Gavin found it hidden in the loft.

Now another piece of the house's history has been restored.

The panelled room will be Suzanne's dining room.

Gavin is being helped here by joiner Andy Fern, who's been

repairing and replacing all the damaged and missing panelling.

Well, when we came in, it was just back to the stone in places...

..so we've had to make the odd panel up.

This is just a mock-up of the shutters, how they're going to work.

And then they'll fold back into the reveals.

I've just made some little window seats

with storage facility underneath.

Gavin, Ann and Caitlin moved into the rear part of The Elms

eight months ago.

And, downstairs, all the rooms are finished.

It's taken two years of hard work, financial worrying

and lots of determination, but now their house is almost complete.

Caitlin now has her dream bedroom.

It has its own en-suite bathroom, designed by Caitlin.

And a walk-in wardrobe for her clothes and toys.

Caitlin loves her room,

but can't wait for all the building work to be over.

I like everything about the house apart from just...

..I'd like it if it was all finished.

This was a very ambitious restoration,

but now the master bedroom is nearly done.

-Wow.

-Yeah. It's getting there.

-This is fantastic, isn't it?

Yeah, it's nice, it's a nice space, yeah.

But it's not finished. We've not got the dressing room,

not got the en-suite quite done, so when all that's done

and I've got a place for everything, I'll be extremely happy.

Yeah, I can see in your... There's a bath the wrong way up in there.

Have you noticed that(?) Yeah,

I know! I'm not sure how Gav thinks I'll manage to use that but, yeah.

It's a trade-off, I guess, between the time you've got

and the money you've got.

Yeah, and he's not just doing one house, he's doing two houses,

so you have to compromise there as well, don't you?

As much as I'd like, "You work on my half,"

he has to work on Grandma's half, and it's a bit unfair of me

to say, "Well, I want this done," when she's not in.

I'd feel guilty about that, so I think it's only fair, really.

Gavin and Ann may not have finished The Elms yet,

but what they've achieved so far is impressive.

And Gavin will just keep going until it's done.

It's a bit like a hobby, I suppose,

so that's how I've got to look at it as well.

I know it's a family home, it's a place we love,

but also it's a bit of a hobby as well.

I enjoy putting the detail back in.

Tell me about Gavin and how he's managed the job,

cos there's been a lot pressure on him.

Yeah, he's handled it really well. I mean, you know,

he can pretty much do anything.

I mean, I do joke that he's really talented but earns us no money.

So, actually, I'm not worried about him.

There's times that he's had his down days but I've not, you know,

overly worried about him at all.

Oh, that sounds really heartless, doesn't it?

But, no, I tend to say, "You know, come on, get on,

"we need to get it finished."

So you're a good team in that way. You motivate one another?

Yeah. Yeah, we do motivate one another.

To some people it looks a million miles away, but compared to

how it was, it's a million miles closer to being finished.

It is a dream house, though, isn't it?

-It is, yeah.

-Yeah, yeah, for me anyhow.

When it's completely finished - and the garden.

I've got bigger dreams but I can't afford them.

Next time, we revisit one of our most challenging restorations,

Old Manor in Norfolk.

-Hi, Polly.

-Hi, Kieran.

I've never been so happy in my life.

And find new evidence in the mystery of its stained glass windows.

Well, our William Gregson that lived there...was the vicar.

So I just assumed that one of those had taken this stained glass window.

And, in South Wales, we meet the master joiner who helped turn

Coldbrook Farm from a decaying Tudor gem to a 21st-century family home.

It's in your pride, at the end of the day, when somebody else

appreciates it. Like the stairs at Coldbrook. Made my day, that did.