Nutbourne Restoration Home

All over Britain, hundreds of precious historic buildings

are in danger of being lost forever.

The tragedy is that these buildings are far more than just simply bricks and mortar.

They are the keepers of our past.

I love the idea that people have stood here discussing

the Battle of Waterloo, the Battle of Bosworth and the Battle of Britain.

I'm following the fortunes of six properties.

Each of these six fragile buildings has found a would-be saviour -

new owners desperate to breathe life into these crumbling ruins

by creating their own 21st-century dream home.

Well, she found it!

It's an adorable building. There's a lot of work to be done,

but it's a building that needs to be cared for and will be cared for.

As our owners get to work,

architectural expert Kieran Long and historian Dr Kate Williams

will help me unearth the fascinating secrets hidden deep

in each building's past.

It was a view we'd have forgotten. This whole story would just be buried in the archives.

I love old buildings and I always have.

I've spent many years restoring various different properties

in an attempt to create the perfect family home.

I know from personal experience the hard path that our families have chosen to follow.

You're sanding it, you're scraping it,

you're putting the poultice on. Agh!

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

Ever.

Six precious buildings.

Six owners with a mission.

Six intriguing journeys into Britain's past.

It's Restoration Home.

A piece of wasteland on the banks of the Thames, in the shadow of this rather scary industrial building,

is not the most exciting place to start our programme.

I don't know how the Victorians felt about motivating their workforce,

but if I was walking across here to work,

I'd find it all pretty depressing.

Until I got inside, that is.

Amazing, isn't it? This is Crossness Pumping Station.

Already lovingly restored, this huge cathedral of a Victorian industrial building saved lives.

The massive pumps were the lynchpin of a brand new sewerage system

that finally tackled decades of death and disease in 19th-century London.

Few outsiders ever got to see this proud, magnificent interior.

And it's the same for other unsung buildings that have performed a vital job for the nation.

We have found a building built with the same sense of pride

but it's in desperate need of help and a new lease of life.

This is our extremely unlikely Restoration Home.

The pumping station at Nutbourne Common in West Sussex.

In its time, this building also saved lives,

pumping safe, clean water to the local population for the first time.

But it closed in the '70s, and today it's a wreck.

Who on Earth would want to make it their home?

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

Hello, my name is Brigitte. We bought Nutbourne...

BOTH: Pumping Station.

Well, she found it!

It's an adorable building. I know there's a lot of work to be done.

But it's a building that needs to be cared for and will be cared for.

It's a hopeless case of love at first sight,

just as it was for Nick and Brigitte themselves.

It's very like she and I. We were introduced by blind date...

No, no...

Three days later, she moved in. So it is with this building.

-We saw it on the Sunday and bought it on the Thursday. It's a bit like you.

-Thank you, darling.

They're now the proud parents

of five-year old twins Francesca and Willem.

-Come on, can you draw the Pump House?

-No.

Yes, you can.

Big oblong with windows.

For years, they've been frustrated by the meagre size

of modern family houses in Britain, including the one they live in now.

It's just your conventional late 20th-century Brookside product.

House builders in this country are shrinking standards

for competitive commercial reasons.

People are accepting smaller homes, smaller gardens and so on.

The Pumping Station offers a lot more space, at a price they're hoping won't break the bank.

Nick and Brigitte paid £269,000 to buy the building,

with just over £400,000 earmarked for its conversion.

OK, come on. Let's go.

It worked in terms of the timing in our lives, when we needed the space.

It worked in economic terms because we knew we could afford it outright

and we knew we could probably raise the money to do the work we need to.

-Why would you like to live here?

-Because it's so dirty!

Nobody's ever used it as a home.

That's why I feel it's easier to make it into a home.

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

They love this building so much,

they think it could be their home for life.

I can't conceive of selling it, unless we had to.

Why would we have to?

Well, unless we... There you go.

-No, we don't have to.

-Unless we got divorced.

They plan to be living in the pumping station in less than 12 months.

Full-time mum Brigitte has mixed feelings about the restoration journey that lies ahead.

I'm very much half-empty glass and he's half full.

Hopefully, that will get us through.

Nick will draw on his own professional expertise to transform the building.

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

Over here we've got our visualiser in-house.

His day job is producing a city in China for 300,000 people.

And then, from time to time, he'll work on the Pump House.

Computer-generated images show how the building might look as a home.

There's no sentimental attachment to its former life as a pumping station.

Our idea is that, not unlike a hermit crab, we're going to occupy the building and turn it to our purpose.

Which is to live in, as opposed to its original purpose.

Just as you wouldn't live in a converted church

with an altar. I wouldn't. You'd get rid of that. Because you're looking at it as a home.

The pumping station isn't a listed building.

And Nick and Brigitte have full planning permission for the conversion.

Their £400,000 budget includes the removal of all the pumping machinery

and the installation of a new concrete floor over the old basement,

creating a big open-plan living area.

To maximise space,

the industrial staircase and walkway will be stripped out.

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

And Nick plans to create a carbon-efficient home with solar panels on the roof.

We quite like the idea of going nil-bill.

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

Ultimately, potentially, no water bills.

You just get the council tax. Which is, I suppose, unavoidable.

Maybe it will be the smoothest restoration in history. I doubt it.

Right now, it looks like they have a mountain to climb.

It's hard to imagine it as our home in a year.

Particularly when it's so cold and wet and it's a bit depressing.

Who wants to be here today? Not you, hey?

While I keep tabs on Nick and Brigitte's ambitious restoration,

our investigators are going to help me uncover the remarkable story behind their building.

Our private eye of the past, Dr Kate Williams, will find out who built the pumping station and why.

And architectural expert Kieran Long

will search for clues in the DNA of the building itself.

It may look a wreck now but, in its heyday,

the pumping station saved the lives

of our grandparents' generation and changed society forever.

The story of Nick and Brigitte's building is the story

of the water that we drink.

And, not that long ago,

drinking British water could literally kill you.

Historian Kate is trying to find out why the pumping station was built in the first place.

She's found a big clue just 15 miles from Nutbourne Common in Worthing, on the Sussex coast.

Just a few generations ago,

this fashionable resort was struck by disaster.

Worthing was hit by typhoid.

A reported one in ten of the population were infected,

with nearly 200 dead.

What I discovered is that in 1893 Worthing was devastated.

This happy Victorian seaside town was ruined because a polluted water source

poisoned the inhabitants of the town.

It was a human and economic tragedy.

In one part of the burial ground alone,

there are 50 new graves, side by side.

In some, the earth has been filled in so clumsily

that the fading wreaths which cover them

are literally sinking below the ground.

The summer visitors have scampered away, the hotels and lodging houses are empty and many escape the fever

merely to find financial ruin staring them in the face.

The local people were terrified.

Their wonderful Worthing, their beautiful seaside town,

so healthy, this lovely air, the sea air. It was wrecked. It was ruined.

This was only 1893, such recent history.

And 200 people died of this polluted water source

10% of Worthing's population were infected by this bad water.

If that happened now, 10% of a whole population of a town or city,

that would be world news on every bulletin.

But three decades after the Worthing tragedy, in 20th-century Britain,

the quality of our drinking water was still more third world than first.

Kate finds evidence from the 1920s that the water at nearby Nutbourne Common was causing real concern.

The medical officer from the Ministry of Health

has come and tested six samples of water from the wells.

And in five cases the water is unfit for drinking.

We take our clean water for granted now.

We just turn on the tap and out it comes.

This is what they were drinking, clean water was impossible.

The last thing they want is more disasters on the scale

of the typhoid epidemic.

This is the 20th century, it's the modern age.

As recently as the 1920s, millions in Britain

still got their water from wells, streams and the parish pump.

For many, the idea of clean, safe water piped into every home

in the land was just a dream.

Our architectural sleuth Kieran has come to Nutbourne Common

to try and find out

when Nick and Brigitte's pumping station was built.

We're walking up this rather quaint road.

I can't imagine this is really the place for a building of industry and big noisy machines.

You can imagine when this was built, people thinking,

"Why is somebody building an overgrown public toilet in my beautiful woodland setting?"

But there's far more to Nutbourne Pumping Station than meets the eye.

If the outside was bunker-like, I didn't expect this inside.

Standing here, I feel like I'm on the bridge of a huge ocean liner or something.

One that maybe has been at the bottom of the sea

for quite a few years.

When it was working,

all this heavy duty machinery and piping had just one purpose -

to suck up thousands of gallons of water an hour

from a natural source 90 meters below the ground.

The water was piped to the back of the building, where it was filtered and stored for public use.

The whole place is a temple to the provision of fresh, clean water.

One of the things that really excites me about this building

is how the space is layered front to back and how the light works.

It's an incredible architectural quality.

You enter through this line of columns like a colonnade

and the windows are beyond.

You come into a space which is evenly lit.

As we come through to this space,

we realise where the building has been lit from.

Before we couldn't see these windows.

As soon as we enter we see there are more skylights,

clerestory windows in the top half

and they would have been side-lit from this side and this side.

At the moment, they're boarded up.

Kieran has already seen enough to estimate the pumping

station's date of construction.

I love this kind of sunburst logo for an electricity company.

It really looks like the front of a 1930s soap packet.

It has all of that quality of 1930s graphic design.

It's so influenced by the end of Art Deco and the rising consumer economy.

This kind of design is squarely from the '30s.

The 1930s was a ground-breaking heyday

for British architecture and design.

The decade before the Second World War gave us

the BBC's Broadcasting House,

Battersea Power Station,

the iconic red telephone box

and stations like Cockfosters on London's Piccadilly Line -

opened in 1933.

We're in exactly the world of Nutbourne pumping station,

the early '30s municipal modern.

Architectural details at Cockfosters have uncanny echoes

of the pumping station.

The shape of the handrails,

the design of the skylights...

..all intended to bring as much natural light as possible

into the building.

It's filled with light, like a cathedral of indirect light.

The architect has brought it to a transport building,

a completely new way of expressing this kind of building.

A few stations down the line at Arnos Grove

there's further evidence a new breed of British Architects were

making their mark in the decade before the Second World War.

These guys were the pioneers of modern architecture in Britain

but it was an English form of modernism.

Because of the Second World War

this style never really went very far.

This is a short lived English type of modern architecture.

On the Piccadilly Line reinforced concrete was used unashamedly

as the modern construction material.

Just as it was at the pumping station.

It's a 20th century material, that makes new kind of spaces possible.

But when you get close to this, you see the traces of how the building was made.

Cast against timber

and you can see the grain of the timber in the concrete.

It's very smooth,

this is the quality of concrete many architects today I know

would kill for and would love to see.

I also love these chamfered edges, a little human touch.

As you walk past this column,

you don't catch at your shoulder on the corner, it's taken away.

The men who had to walk past here tens of times every day,

take the corner off and allow more humanity,

a little less industrial edges.

The combination of sturdy concrete and so much natural light

gives the building plenty of potential as a place to live.

But it Nick and Brigitte's plans there's no room for

the ocean liner-style railings.

The stairs and walkway at the back of the building

or any of the pumping paraphernalia.

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

or hoist in the ceiling out of some deferential reference to the original

use of the building is stupid.

Kieran is horrified.

Nick and Brigitte are getting rid of this for more space.

But this is quite a big building.

What they're losing is the ability to stand up on this amazing gallery

and look down two levels below, all of that will be gone.

These buildings are a really important to Britain's architectural heritage.

They demonstrate in the '30s we had an idea of civic pride in infrastructure.

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

were proud of - this amazing technology.

They almost built monuments to that.

In a dusty corner of the building, Kieran comes across bits and pieces

left behind by the last man to work here.

Four decades ago.

So, here we've some documentary evidence, a time sheet

from the North West Sussex Water Board of Mr WT Brown.

Slightly mildewed.

Mr Brown's widow, Marjorie, is one of the few people who

remembers the pumping station as a working building.

Oh, my goodness me!

Oh!

I can't believe it could be so different.

Look at it!

Her late husband was the resident engineer

until the pumps fell silent in the 1970s.

Gosh!

So quiet.

So quiet.

And yet it was always noisy.

Alive, if you like with noise of the pumps and everything.

The whole pumping process could be monitored by one person.

And Marjorie Brown's husband was usually the only human presence

in the building.

Being on his own didn't bother him at all.

It didn't bother him not having other men's company.

He worked seven days a week.

He used to be there Sundays as well.

We didn't ever go off out or anything.

It was a way of life.

The building was Mr Brown's domain for a quarter of a century.

And Marjorie will never forget the private her husband took in his job.

You could have eaten your meal off the floor.

It was all clean, beautiful,

all the handrails were all cream

and it was just spotlessly clean.

And now it's just a wreck.

Sad, isn't it?

Anything can deteriorate like this.

By the 1970s, the technology of delivering water to our homes had moved on.

Nutbourne pumping station was deemed obsolete.

But Marjorie believes the past is the past.

And Nick and Brigitte's restoration plans are now just what the building needs.

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

It's much better than it should be,

something totally different,

than see it in this sad and sorry state.

It's lucky we got a good look inside the building when we did

because the demolition boys are in.

Nick and Brigitte's restoration is well and truly under way.

15 tons of seriously heavy pumping machinery is being dismantled

and lifted out of the building.

The pumping station's past has carried off

to be reincarnated at the scrapyard.

It's farewell to the 1930s railings.

And the controversial concrete stairs and walkway

are demolished to open up the new main living space.

The truth of it was it was in the way,

the walkway was an inappropriate height.

It would have been a dusty corner.

These columns that result from detaching that walkway are fantastic.

After getting rid of tons of old concrete,

Nick brings in plenty of his own.

The lower level there was once the beating heart of the pumping

station is covered with a new concrete floor.

Effectively that creates not just this room

but the room downstairs as well for the kids den.

This is the sort of watershed between the destructive activity of

the preparation of the site and the beginning of the creative side.

It's going to be lovely.

It's like a giant bungalow.

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

Time for me to pop down to Sussex and see how it's all going.

The builders have been six months at the pumping station

and during that time they've taken away tons and tons of machinery.

But does that mean they've taken away the life from the building?

It's not a pumping station any more, but is it a house yet?

Remember how the inside looked when Nick and Brigitte bought the place.

This is what it looks like now.

Just one floor with two big living areas.

One at the front and one at the back.

Well, this is a bit different!

This is looking absolutely awesome.

With so much space to play with, the inevitable debate about

what's going to go where has all ready started.

And Brigitte has won the first battle.

In here... There's the kitchen.

That yellow area is the kitchen island.

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

-Fantastic.

Family life, you can get the children out.

It was the other way round. And I kept saying I wanted the kitchen by the back door.

Strange, that. But Nick decided, no we'd have it there.

The interior designer, the first thing she said was,

"Why are you having a kitchen at the front end of the back?"

So, now we're having it.

This space is still quite flexible.

We're possibly having the dining room table over there.

But it might look a bit empty. We've seen a four-metre table.

-Four metres?

-Well, the two-metre would look lost.

The famous stairs and walkway where Mr Brown would have stepped up

to inspect his filtration tanks are gone.

And the first stage of converting them into bedrooms has begun.

With doors cut through from the main living space.

That's Nick and I. So we've an on suite bathroom, the front bathroom is the kids,

and the two kids' bedrooms.

They're not a bad size.

-They are a good size, really.

-I mean they are.

And you've a lot more light than I thought you'd have.

Yeah.

Today is another big day in the pumping station's transformation.

The energy saving underfloor heating pipes are in place and the builders

are about to apply a concrete screed to the entire floor area.

We had better get out because I've seen the screed lorry

and if we don't move we'll be in the way.

You'll be cemented in!

The new floor completes the burial of the old pumping area

which gives Nick and Brigitte their basement space below.

In just a few short months,

almost all evidence of the pumping station's former life has vanished.

But Nick and Brigitte have retained a lot of what makes this building great.

The beautiful concrete pillars,

almost Grecian in their simplicity.

And it turns out there's something else about the pumping station

that lives on.

A connection long forgotten.

Until we dug deeper into the past.

We've established a timeline for their building that goes back

to the 1893 Worthing typhoid epidemic.

And we've learnt water at Nutbourne Common was unfit for drinking

a quarter of a century later.

Now, investigators Kate and Kieran are searching for crucial

information from the 1920s and '30s to find out how Nick

and Brigitte's building came to be born.

'In the 1920s, Britain was recovering from the trauma of the First World War.

'The nation had lost nearly a million men.

'Millions more had come home injured or jobless.

'Politicians had promised a land fit for heroes to live in,

'and finding new sources of fresh water was part of the post-war dream.

'In a field at Nutbourne Common, they struck the equivalent of gold.'

'The 13th day of December, 1927.'

The Committee are reporting on whether or not they can purchase the site at Nutbourne

for the sinking of a borehole

which was selected at the last meeting of the council by the Ministry of Health.

'Once water had been found, the authorities moved quickly.'

We've found the owners of the land before the pumping station,

a Mr Swinstead,

and the committee are going to purchase the land from Mr Swinstead

for £100 for the two plots, and this is where the borehole's going to be.

'Within a year, work on the borehole beneath Nick and Brigitte's building had begun.'

We've found this book, which has a diagram,

a beautiful section drawing, hand-drawn in this book,

of the Nutbourne borehole.

The interesting thing for me as an architecture enthusiast

is that they don't think the building's important enough to mention in the drawing,

it's all about the real value which is underground.

'The technology that made the borehole had also been used

'to improve conditions in the trenches during the First World War.'

These machines are all about winching up a very heavy weight

into the air and then dropping it into the ground at high speed.

'These new sources of fresh water found between the wars were incredibly precious to the nation.'

This is a document from 1941, during the Second World War,

which describes the locations of all of the different underground water supply sources

in this region.

And over here, number 94 is, in fact, our pumping station, Nutbourne pumping station.

And on the front cover we have this fantastic note,

"The document should be destroyed if there is any danger of it falling into the hands of enemy agents."

If they were able to poison or somehow interfere with these boreholes,

then the whole region would be severely compromised.

And of course this is a region close to areas of docks and so on, so of strategic importance.

'A shining symbol of Britain's 20th century progress,

'Nutbourne pumping station got a big VIP opening in 1932.'

We've found the pictures of the day.

'Lord Leconfield, the Lord Lieutenant of the county,'

is coming to see the pumping station open,

'so this is a marvellous moment.'

And this is my favourite, Lord Leconfield is turning on the tap.

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

It would revolutionise society. Revolutionise health,

'infant mortality would drop.

'It moves us from the third world to the first world.'

The pumping station, the saviour of Nutbourne.

'But the story of the creation of Nick and Brigitte's building doesn't end there.

'It turns out the pumping station served another crucial national purpose

'in the dark, dismal years of the 1930s depression.'

Well, this document I've found here is amazing,

because it really gives us an insight into the forgotten people behind the pumping station.

It's eligible for a grant.

This was a special unemployment grant which meant that all the labour costs were paid

in the inter-war years.

The idea was to ease unemployment, to ease depression.

And it was one of the last schemes to be eligible,

because the scheme was abolished in 1931.

'It's the biggest clue yet to identifying the craftsmen

'and labourers who worked on the building.'

They'd come back from fighting for their country in the Great War

and they come back simply to be cast onto the unemployment market.

They were impoverished, there was no work for them.

'I've got a big surprise for Nick and Brigitte as they show me their new basement,

'the place where the pumps used to be.

'To round off the story of the building they love,

'we've found the most moving evidence of all.'

I wonder if you'd like to see the people that physically built this?

-Would you be interested in seeing them?

-I'd love to. God, I'd love to.

Oh, my God.

Oh! How the hell did you get that?!

-Aren't they lovely?

-Who are these people?

-These are the men...

-Who built...

-God!

-I know! It is great, isn't it?

These are the guys from the Ringmer Building Works,

not that far from here.

-No, it's not.

-And just let's have a little look at their faces.

The hats! Look at them! Look at their hats. Moustaches...

-Moustaches, hats.

-Fantastic.

And, of course, a lot of these guys would have fought in the 14-18 war.

They might have been injured, psychologically, but desperately in need of work.

And there are boys here as well, youngsters, the kid at the end,

look at his little face, he's probably no more than 15.

I just had this thing in my head about the mates that aren't there.

Yeah.

Who knows what the traumas are underneath their faces

but they look like a nice bunch of guys, actually.

'Both of them feel an instant connection with these long-forgotten heroes.'

I hope they would support what we're doing.

I sense that they would,

because they would understand a building becoming redundant,

and I think they would hate to see it in the state of decay that it was in.

It makes me feel sad, in some ways, that they can't see it now.

I'd love them to be able to see it now.

I think it's very special that we have something that they created.

I think that we owe it a degree more respect than I had anticipated, actually.

-I think that explains why it's so beautifully made.

-Absolutely.

I did get a sense of that with this place,

that there was a real pride in how this place is put together.

-Can we have that picture?

-Yes, you can.

I mean, it's beautiful, isn't it?

'I wonder if the faces of these friendly 1930s ghosts,

'will end up influencing some of Nick and Brigitte's plans for the building.

'Time will tell.'

'The restoration of the pumping station has reached the half-way point.'

Oh, I say.

-Are you all right?

-Yeah, I think so, thank you.

'The beating heart of this building used to be in the basement.'

Wow.

'Nick's cunning 21st century plan is to move it to the roof.'

This is an area of opportunity for us, now that it's all been fixed and laid,

in that we can retrofit the photovoltaic array up here.

What are you talking about?

THEY LAUGH

-Do you know solar cells?

-Yeah.

-OK.

'Nerdy techno-jargon aside, he's going to produce enough electricity

'to meet all the family's needs and a surplus they can sell.'

We generate enough energy up here through solar cells

with about a third of the roof area to sort out the needs of the house.

And then on the other two thirds and the remaining area,

we can generate electricity and feed it back to the grid.

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

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

It makes you so happy, doesn't it?

I always say smug more than happy.

But you really get into all that stuff.

I have to say, I slightly glazed over.

The same with my husband, when he starts talking about a plant room, I want to slap him,

because after about 30 seconds I want to go, I can't hear you any more.

Is it a man thing?

Don't make the mistake of thinking I'm practical in any way, cos I'm not.

I learned very early in life not to ever be good at DIY or anything like that,

-because all women make you do is DIY if you boast about it.

-Yes, fair enough.

'The woman of the house is thinking even further ahead.

'It turns out the building came with a very unusual feature

'hidden under the back garden.'

When we bought the pump house, we didn't know this was here,

and basically there's three chambers, and it covers the whole back garden.

It's really insane.

It is, isn't it, really?

The long-term plan would be, possibly,

-if we ever have enough money, to convert it into a pool.

-Brigitte...

-Hmm?

-This is mad.

Yeah, it's mad, but it's an amazing space.

Wide enough for laps,

and the main cost of having a pool is the excavation of the hole.

All we've got to do is take this roof off.

No, I get it, it's absolutely wonderful.

I mean, it is completely wonderful.

-But completely insane at the same time.

-I know, yeah.

If we don't do something with it, then we're limited to what we can do above,

because there's only two foot of ground so we'd have to plant shallow plants.

'They bought this eccentric property because it offers more space

'than an ordinary family house ever could.

'The big challenge now is to turn a huge building site into a home

'in less than six months.'

I grew up where we had a small house,

we had ice on the inside of the windows, didn't have central heating,

like a lot of people, and I find it hard to think I'm going to live in this massive house.

It will be, hopefully, a lovely family home.

-It'd better be.

-What do the kids think of it now?

When we first bought the lot, we made the mistake of taking them upstairs with the mezzanine

and saying, these are your bedrooms.

And cos it was just a hole for them, filled with mud, "Can we go home now, Mummy?"

I did that with my children.

I did the stupid thing, I took them to the house...

-Before you'd done the work?

-They hated it.

They both said, "I don't want to live here, it smells,

the floor's made of earth, it's damp, I hate it."

My daughter said to me, "I don't ever want to live here."

And I forgot that eight-year-old children do not have the vision.

Amazingly, the pumping station is steadily turning into a home,

and one that, when it's finished, won't cost Nick a penny to run.

But I can't help wondering what the guys who crafted this building would make of it all,

particularly as it's about to undergo its next radical transformation.

'A few weeks later, the inside of the building is gradually coming together.'

NICK LAUGHS

'For the first time,

'the whole family can start to picture the place as home.

'There's even a new addition to help fill all this extra space...

'..a gigantic puppy called Mulligan.'

He's doubling in size every two weeks. He's only 14 weeks old. He's going to be a monster.

Where will you do your stage thing, your dancing and singing?

Where's that going to go?

-There.

-Do you think? Do you want to?

-No, in my playroom.

-Your playroom? Which is your playroom?

-Downstairs.

Oh, that's your playroom? OK.

'The partition wall which will separate the two main living areas is now in place.

'Modern skylights have been installed.

'But it seems the ghosts of the 1930s builders

'are helping the place hang on to some of its original features.

'Nick and Brigitte had planned to replace the old teak windows and doors with aluminium versions.

'Not now.'

We were going to lose them.

They were heavily varnished, and Tony, our blessed site manager

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

It's just the detail, and where it's come down here,

and the new internal doors are going to match these doors.

The notion of throwing everything away is no longer there.

We're keeping things that function.

No ornamentation, no silly hoists,

no staircases that have no purpose.

But the building has taught us a lesson or two

about how to be honest in a conversion.

The plaster, which originally we specified as a sort of conventional plasterboard,

we've used a spray plaster technique, because it's a hard plaster,

and therefore fits with the origins of the building.

'But there are still decisions to be made,

'like whether to paint the concrete pillars.'

You've got a choice. You can go with naked concrete,

which obviously is going to pick up the repairs,

so whilst they're brilliant in some places, they're not so much in others.

And there's a question of whether that becomes too industrial a home.

-Yeah.

-Home being the operative word.

Outside, work has begun

on the energy-saving insulation of the building.

It will dramatically change the pumping station's appearance.

We chose to insulate it on the outside.

We wanted to keep the shape of the inside.

And that meant we needed to render it.

The whole of the outside will eventually be rendered like this.

It's an expensive choice, but Nick hopes the profit

the building makes from generating electricity on the roof

will offset the costs of the insulation.

-You like it?

-Yeah, I like it.

It's quite bright on a dull day.

-It won't be quite so bright...

-It's not white, is it?

It's off-white.

Off-white.

It makes it look a lot bigger.

It's definitely going to change the entire...

It's quite in your face.

A beautiful piece of workmanship,

the rendering, the quality of workmanship.

How much did it cost, this render?

-37.

-37,000?

What we could have done with that. That's a lot.

Couldn't we have got it cheaper?

-Well, you get it back.

-How do we get it back?

Well, just in terms of the income the house will generate.

We'll earn in the order of £6,000 a year.

Seven months after the major restoration work began,

Nick and Brigitte are at the point of no return.

Are you ready? Are you ready?

Their old house has been sold,

and life in their massive new home is just weeks away.

The thought of moving in to 6,5000 square feet - I don't know.

We have thousands of books.

That will only take up 10% of our new bookshelves.

If you buy a conventional piece of furniture,

it just looks lost in these spaces.

You end up having to buy enough sofas for 12 people,

just because it's proportionally correct.

As the converted pumping station moves closer to completion,

they debate how much

the fixtures and fittings should reflect the building's past.

This is the kid's bath. The only bath,

because there's two other bathrooms but they only have showers in.

And Nick doesn't like that bath. Now, tell me, what's wrong with that bath? I think it's stunning.

This building is a temple to water! You know,

I think we could have done better.

What would you have done instead?

Concrete. I would have done a cast concrete bath.

And the budget for a concrete bath would have been

taken from your wine rack!

Nick and Brigitte's 21st-century workforce

have started putting some of the finishing touches to the building.

But even at this stage, their counterparts of 80 years ago are

having an uncanny influence on the pumping station's conversion.

This is the original handles on the front door.

-OK.

-Site manager Tony has found a way of making sure another echo of

the past has another place in Nick and Brigitte's plans.

They dip it to clean it, then they polish it up.

That's beautiful. Isn't that stunning!

That was cheaper than buying a new one, wasn't it?

It was cheaper than buying a new one...

-It's not solid?

-It is solid brass.

The colour is the old brass colour.

A reddy colour, isn't it? Shall we go and see it against the door?

For Brigitte,

it's a small but significant gesture to their building's origins.

Those wonderful people who made this building,

I think they put a lot of care into it.

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

It would have been a shame to replace it

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

It's now nearly a year since Nick and Brigitte began

their major transformation of the pumping station.

I'm going to pay them my final visit.

But first, investigators Kate and Kieran are sharing

all they've discovered about the building's past.

In our search to try and understand the building,

the next step we took was to kind of go and look at

a building that's exactly contemporary.

This is the Piccadilly line up in North London.

Cockfosters station, which was completed in 1933,

just a year after the pumping station.

We had really a lot of fun making some comparisons.

Are they pavement lights? Were they pavement lights?

Yes, these were pavement lights from above, so...

Cockfosters descended into this cave-like space,

and you're lit through these cast blocks.

We did have it in the ceiling originally, yes.

There was a joy, wasn't there,

in the detailing that came out of Arts and Crafts, Art Deco, and so on.

And here's the pumping station's big, proud day.

The day in which it was opened.

So exciting. And these cottages are the ones just in front of you.

-Really?

-Really?

-Right. That's interesting.

-Oh, my gosh!

We'd have forgotten, this whole story would have been

buried in the archives.

I mean, prior to you guys doing all the history, it's a nice building.

But now I understand the civic pride and what it meant to them doing it.

Nick and Brigitte had an ambitious dream of creating a spacious,

21st-century nil-bill family home from a rotting machine.

So, after the best part of a year, transforming this water palace,

have they got their dream restoration home?

This was the outside of the building a year ago.

Take a look at it now.

-It's amazing!

-It is, isn't it?

-We're done. Nearly, anyway.

-It's...

I thought I was going to really miss the brickwork,

but it looks fantastic, doesn't it?

-It looks much better.

-You've done it.

Well done.

But can they top their extraordinary transformation of the outside

with what they've done inside?

When you opened the front door a year ago,

this was the view that greeted you.

The most unlikely family home you could possibly imagine.

And when you open the front door now...

Yes! It is amazing!

You've got your wood burner. You said you would, and you did.

-Yeah, and it's brilliant.

-Liking it?

It's so warm.

-The dog doesn't like it. But no, it's fantastic.

-Too hot?

It gives off such good heat. He doesn't like the underfloor either.

Your living space here - your living room, your sitting room - your...?

-I guess so.

-Evening mostly, curiously.

-OK.

One thing's for sure - in this vast living space,

you're never far away from a book.

They've created that divide, haven't they?

-This was open space, wasn't it?

-It was, exactly.

-Very open.

-Yeah.

It helped with the acoustics, as well.

So that's a sort of evening sitting fire?

And then another bookcase here.

That's got the kids' art.

-Kids' books and things.

-And so this is your...

-What do you call this?

-That's where the kids do their...

They don't do their homework there!

So they're meant to do their homework?!

In years to come, that's where they will!

The kids are downstairs, where the pumps used to be.

Now, there's loads of play room

for a couple of six year-olds and a big, friendly dog.

In the second large space at the back of the house are

the finished kitchen and dining area.

Finding a dining table the right size was

a matter of trial and error in the end.

-So, we started off with one.

-Yes? This one?

-Yes.

-And then that looked really stupid?

-It looked naff!

It looked so naff, because you just looked lost.

It was like a doll's house piece of furniture in a big house.

Then we went to two. And that was still dodgy.

-And then went to three.

-So it's quite flexible.

It's very flexible. I'm just going to...

-Yes, they are actually movable.

-They are.

Who would have thought those muddy old water filtration tanks

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

Come see the plant room.

And who'd have thought I'd volunteer

for another seminar with techno wizard Nick

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

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

with his array of solar cells on the roof.

And, remarkably, by using the pumping station's

original 90 meter-deep boreholes to heat water for free.

Down there, it's a lot warmer than it is up here.

OK, good. Yeah, yeah.

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

you pick up all that warmth.

This machine extracts the warmth. The first ten degrees

of heating your water comes via that process.

Does Brigitte ever come down here, Nick?

She does, she does to do one thing.

To read this meter.

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

because all this does is shows how much power we've generated.

And generating energy for profit as well as the family's use is

what nil-bill is all about.

Down in his plant room, Nick monitors

how much profit the solar cells are making, all year round.

Say I want to spend £100 on a pair of shoes,

how long would it take for you to earn me that pair of shoes?

Summertime or wintertime?

I'm going to let you have summertime.

Summertime, I'll get you a pair of Jimmy Choos,

-cheap, £100...

-Yeah, yeah, OK, yeah!

-In...just on two days.

-What?!

Summertime. Two good July days.

Wintertime, it'll take you a month.

That's still amazing! That's amazing!

They've ended up less than £10,000 over

on their 400,000 renovation budget.

And their 21st-century home has recently been valued

at over a million.

I'd say that's a bit of a success story.

But there's one person who didn't entirely approve of

Nick and Brigitte's plans for the pumping station.

Our architectural expert, Kieran.

He thought they should have kept the old concrete stairs and walkway

where the kitchen and dining area now are.

Kieran, come and tell us,

do you think it's a shame the staircase has gone?

One of the things I enjoyed so much when I came here was

this kind of amazing,

three-dimensional journey from this kind of

room in the earth with all the machines and then this balcony

in the sky with these kind of skylights.

We looked at of retaining the stair and going into upper-level bedrooms,

but it just didn't work in terms of the headroom upstairs

or the headroom that you'd get downstairs.

Well, I can utterly see what you've gained

in these two incredible rooms, these massive, beautiful spaces.

I can see the reason. But for me, just a bit of that drama has gone.

I think this will have to stay an amicable architectural disagreement.

But only one thing really matters

after such a radical transformation as this.

And that's how Nick and Brigitte feel now about the building

they fell in love with from day one.

When you come home from work, from the office,

what's your sense of achievement when you arrive back?

-Amazing.

-Is it?

-Absolutely.

-Grin from ear to ear!

Does he? Does he?

It's true, you know? It's a very good question, actually,

because you get this grinning feeling, still -

and I know it's still fresh - of looking forward to it,

of a place that you call home.

Nick and Brigitte had a simple problem.

They wanted a home with more space for their family to live and grow.

And they chose probably the hardest way of solving that problem.

They took on an abandoned, rotting water pumping station.

And in resurrecting that building, they unearthed an untold story.

Nick and Brigitte poured the same pride

into resurrecting the pumping station

as the original builders did in creating it.

And that is why it is now a brilliant family home.

Next time, a very different Restoration Home.

This was the house. So, this was going to be our home.

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

-Yeah. Yes, definitely.

And another intriguing journey into Britain's past.

My goodness, and here's a letter - "Affectionately yours, Byron."

You see so many of these interiors deteriorating

until they are unsalvageable.

This is the original stuff. And it has to be saved.

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