Coldbrook Farm Restoration Home

Historic houses both humble and grand

have all played their part in the story of our nation

but today, many are at risk and some in danger

of being lost forever.

I'm going to be following the fortunes of six properties

all facing their own struggle for survival.

-Oh, look, you can see the round!

-Yep.

-Wow!

It's like walking into a Tudor fantasy.

This is not quite what I was expecting.

And they all have new owners,

committed to turning them in to their dream home.

It's a bit like a little old lady waiting for a face-lift,

and we're coming in to make her better.

I never, ever thought I would do a project like this in my life before.

I've spent years restoring derelict old properties,

and, having poured everything into trying to create

my perfect family home, I know what a challenge it is

to rescue a precious old building.

There's a lot riding on it and it's scary times.

We love it and we want to finish it, but sometimes it just feels like too much.

It's Restoration Home.

One of the great pleasures in life is a day out in the countryside,

but what adds to our enjoyment is the buildings -

ramshackle farmhouses and barns,

places that have served the land for centuries.

All appear unremarkable, but each has their own story.

We've found one such house, but one that's in trouble.

It's called Coldbrook Farm, and it's in Monmouthshire, south Wales.

On the outside, it looks like the kind of run-down farmhouse

you could pass a thousand times and never give a second glance.

But inside are clues that there could be more to Coldbrook

than meets the eye.

In the kitchen, there's some Tudor timberwork

that was enough, back in 1952, to get the place a Grade II listing.

Since then the house went largely unnoticed,

as it slipped slowly into a state of disrepair.

But even though Coldbrook Farm may be unkempt,

it's never been unloved.

For the last 12 years,

Kim Harris and Bill Parry have used it as their weekend home -

a tumbledown country retreat for them and the family.

Would you like to see it again, a cow being born?

-Would you?

-So disgusting.

-So disgusting.

During the week Kim, Bill and the three children, Louey, Finn and Betty, live in London.

Kim is a sales director for a publishing company,

while Bill is an insurance loss-adjuster in the city.

-Come on, then. Who's a sheepdog?

-Me!

But Bill grew up right here - in fact, on the farm next door.

And now he wants to make this their full-time home.

I think it's always been a...a goal of mine

to settle down with my family back here in Wales.

I've lived in London long enough now

and I feel, especially with the kids getting older, schooling,

and I just want the kids to be able to run round in the fields.

And I feel as though I'm coming home. This is the family farm.

My father's still here, my uncle's farm is up there,

another uncle's farm is there, I feel I'm coming back to where I belong.

Where are they going?

We don't want them going in the house, do we?

Right now it seems that some of his dad's sheep

have got into the wrong field.

Bill's dad bought this farm 30 years ago to merge it with his own.

The house just came with the land.

Then, 12 years ago, Bill bought it off his dad for £200,000

because even then he'd started thinking about coming home.

You guys were the best sheepdogs ever.

But for Kim and Bill, there's more to Coldbrook Farm

than just a new home in the country.

It's also a mystery they want to solve.

For years, they've been picking curiously

at the plain, 20th-century walls to see what lay beneath.

This room looked very different, completely different,

it was all shiny, white concrete walls

and there was a 1960s little gas fire there.

So none of this stone or anything was exposed.

All these beams were covered up.

Then, five years ago, Bill decided to rip the whole kitchen

off the wall to find out what was behind it.

And that's when they began to realise

just how special their house might be.

Now, if you look over here this is what we first uncovered here, um,

what I think is a beautiful bread oven.

This was all full of rubble, basically,

and so we took all the rubble out and then we found out

all these beams go across here, and therefore we've realised

this is the original front door.

This was all covered up here - I think basically plastered over -

so we uncovered that and found this marvellous big old stone lintel here,

and, obviously, this fantastic fireplace.

Those first discoveries got Bill and Kim thinking.

They knew Coldbrook needed major repairs and modernisation,

but they also knew that they wanted to make

the most of the building's wonderful historic features.

So the project, and the cost, just grew.

The projected budget for the whole restoration project here

is about 350,000, which is obviously a lot of money for us,

but fortunately, when we met each other in London,

we were of advanced age and we both had property in London which means

we can sell one of those properties, or both,

to fund the project here,

so that's worked out quite nicely in our favour.

With no experience of restoration, building or even DIY,

Bill and Kim knew they needed help, and soon settled on local architects

Martin Hall and his partner - and wife - Kelly Bednarczyk.

Their challenge was to come up with a design

that would combine historic character and rural charm

with sophisticated style and modern comforts.

What they came up with was no less than Kim and Bill's dream home.

The idea that clinched it was to reopen the original front door

so that the massive barn that was later built on that side

could be converted into a huge kitchen

with a mezzanine family room.

Then the old kitchen can be the dining room,

and the pantry becomes a study.

In the living room, modern design will be at the fore

with an exposed wooden spiral staircase

connecting to the first floor,

where there's space for three bedrooms and a big family bathroom.

Above is the attic and the plan is to open that up

as the master bedroom, and a guest bedroom too, both en suite.

I never ever thought I'd do a project like this in my life before

and it is very, very exciting,

and you do get nervous with it, wondering what you've taken on

and should you be doing it,

but if you have nerves it means you're excited.

So with the finances organised, the plans approved,

and the house cleared out, work can really get going.

The builders have got until the middle of October

to finish the whole project,

and one of the first things is to sort out the old kitchen wall.

The huge stone lintel over the fireplace has a dangerous crack,

and to make it safe, they're going to brace the stone

with a steel beam bonded to the back.

The historic timberwork is being powder-blasted

to strip off centuries of paint and grime,

while up on the roof, all the tiles have been removed

so that the 16th-century roof structure can be repaired.

With Bill and Kim away in London every week,

the project is being managed by the architects, led by Martin Hall.

We're at the point where the skeleton of the building is at its most revealed

and it's a rare opportunity to see any building in this state -

particularly such an old building.

A few weeks on and I've come to catch up on progress.

Approaching Coldbrook,

it's easy to forget there's more to this place than the average farm.

Oh, wow, this room!

'That is, until you go inside.'

I've never seen beams like this.

We've been told that, in the 16th century,

when we believe these beams were installed,

it would have taken one man one year to carve the whole beam.

-What is this room? Was it used for something...

-Yeah, yeah.

You know, to put beams in that took one year to build,

and all of these doors.

The average farmer wouldn't have done that, I wouldn't have thought,

in the 16th century,

so why does it have such an ornate room like this one?

Bill and Kim are planning to add some very extravagant woodwork

of their own in the new staircase

that will be going from the living room all the way up to the attic.

The original staircase was here and went up like that,

and the new one is this carved oak spiral

sort of spiralling round with a glass panel here.

Spirals up to the first floor - a glass panel round -

and it will spiral up again to the second floor.

Is it really expensive?

-It is expensive, yes.

-Do you know what it's going to cost?

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-I know very well.

-Are you going to tell me?

Yeah, I'm embarrassed to tell you

it's going to cost £25,000 to put in some steps...

to go upstairs.

Even as it is, you can see this house has potential,

but will they really be able to make modern style

fit in with this rustic scene?

The odds may be against them -

after all, the house is set in a muddy yard

surrounded by working farm buildings,

used every day by Bill's dad Brian.

How do you feel about him doing it up?

Oh, it's great stuff, isn't it?

I was a bit thoughtful in the start

because I just thought they were going to spoil Coldbrook

by knocking it about cos I liked it as it was.

But now I can see, y'know, the gift of it,

and I think they got a good architect doing what should be done.

While finding a way to mix old and new

is an aesthetic challenge for Kim, Bill and the architects,

for the builders, the problems are more practical.

While the masons and carpenters are busy making repairs to the roof,

downstairs, the plumbers and electricians are doing what's called the first fix -

laying all the pipes and wires

that will later be hidden behind walls and in the ceilings.

But in this house, most of the internal walls are to be left

as exposed stone and the ceilings are just going to be the bare beams.

So where is electrician Jack Lloyd supposed to hide his cables?

Well, it's just giving me an headache.

You just have to run one cable which should take ten minutes,

but you know, you look at the drawing, you speak to the foreman,

he says it can't go that way.

Oh, it's a nightmare. It's just... tricky, you know.

It's better to work in a housing estate,

a normal three-bedroom house would be good right now.

While the builders struggle to hide evidence of the 21st century

inside the fabric of the house,

we're going to try to dig up all we can about the building's past.

So our historian Dr Kate Williams will be searching the archives

to track down the people whose lives have been bound up with the house,

while architectural expert Kieran Long

will be looking for clues in the building itself.

He's starting his investigation

by checking Coldbrook's plain farmhouse exterior.

Wow.

Wow. So here's really something much finer than we thought

we were going to find in this stone farmhouse.

It's really astonishing,

this beautiful timberwork around this window.

I've never seen anything like it, and it definitely tells us

this is more than just your typical Monmouthshire farmhouse.

But the real surprise is inside.

Wow, look at this.

It's like walking in to a kind of Tudor fantasy somehow,

like these huge,dark timbers and this amazing oak screen here,

and we even have pointed doorways - that kind of Gothic point -

it's just like stepping into another era here. It's fantastic.

What I love about this is how excessive it looks to our eyes today.

We're so used to seeing the pathetic little architraves

that we have around doors in our own homes,

and, you know, that's the kind of fading memory

of something like this. I mean, look at the size of it, the heft of it.

I mean, it's two huge bits of tree stuck together and then carved.

But what I love about these timbers is that

they are holding up this doorway.

They're fixed with dowels, there's a structural purpose to them,

but then they're beautifully decorated.

This is like functionalism, if you like.

It's like what 20th-century architects try to do.

It is holding the building up and it is also decorating the building.

I love the unity of decoration and structure.

But the mystery remains -

what is all this lavish carved timberwork doing here?

One thing we can be sure about is that this was more than just a working farm building.

For me, those interiors are potentially of national importance,

and what we need to do is go away

and discover what other houses in the area have similar interiors

and if we can understand

what the role of this house was in this landscape.

Meanwhile, 150 miles away at home in London,

Kim and Bill have a problem.

The building is scheduled to finish the middle of October,

but two of the children need to go to new schools.

Louey is due to start secondary school,

and Betty is about to begin in reception class.

Basically, we've got to be there September 1st.

Unfortunately, the house won't be finished on September 1st,

so we're anticipating a couple of months

in the rather cramped conditions of a caravan behind the cowsheds. Ha!

When they move to Wales,

Bill and Kim aren't quitting their London jobs,

they'll both be up in town a couple of days a week,

and they'll both need to do a lot of work from home,

which could be awkward with all of them squashed in the caravan.

Meanwhile in Cardiff,

Kieran has come to the National Museum of Wales

to search their collection on the history of architecture.

But despite Coldbrook's extraordinary carved timberwork,

there are almost no references to Kim and Bill's house.

Though Keiran has found something

in a rather unusual study done in the 1950s.

Cyril Fox and Lord Raglan were an interesting pairing.

Cyril Fox was a historian

and a director of the National Museum of Wales,

and Lord Raglan was an amateur historian.

They were friends and they, together,

went on this journey around Monmouthshire,

surveying hundreds of houses,

literally hundreds of these farmhouses and, of course,

Coldbrook Farm is one of the grandest of these wonderful houses.

In their conclusion to this volume,

Fox and Raglan hazard a guess at a date, but it's really a guess,

they don't exactly know.

And the way that they come to their conclusion is partly to do with the elaboration of the mouldings,

and, in the end, the construction of those rubble walls,

which they compare to another similar house they know of in Devon,

which is dated 1553, and say, kind of in a rather imprecise way,

"Such a date may reasonably be assigned to Coldbrook."

They're dating it in the mid-1550s, but without great confidence.

Filled with precise drawings, it's clear that Fox and Raglan's mission

was more about recording these old houses for posterity

rather than delving into their history.

They weren't interested in the same things as we are.

This is a book about architectural detail and types of house and a catalogue of those types.

we're really interested in the dates and the people behind this house,

who was it who commissioned it?

Can we establish why it was that someone in the middle of the 16th century

decided that that elaborate interior was necessary?

You know, what were they trying to achieve and what's behind that thinking?

To find out about the people who are missing from Fox and Raglan,

our historian Dr Kate Williams has come to Aberystwyth,

to use the archives of the National Library of Wales.

She wants to go back to the origins of Coldbrook Farm

and discover what made it so special.

But Kate's not having much luck finding anything earlier than Victorian times.

What I've found so far is a reference in the census of 1841

to a John Powell living there. He's 75, he's a farmer,

he has quite a large family.

This is the closest lead I've got at the moment.

John Powell was born over two centuries after Coldbrook was built,

but with no other leads to follow,

Kate's going to see where this one goes.

So here I've got the will of John Powell.

He died ten years after the census, in 1851.

One thing the census didn't tell us is whether or not he owned the farm.

It's clear from this that he did own it and also he's quite a wealthy man.

John Powell had five children, but it was the eldest, Moses Powell,

who would expect to inherit the whole farm.

But there's a condition here which is quite rare in wills at the time.

There's a condition that he gets Coldbrook Farm,

but only if he doesn't marry or cohabit with a certain female

by the name of Harriet Blayton.

And if he marries or cohabits with this woman, absolutely nothing.

He's completely cut out and it goes to the next child.

So obviously this raises a huge and rather exciting mystery -

who was Harriet Blayton and why on Earth was she so awful

that the family hated her so much that, if the son went near her,

that was the end of that?

Kate's going to delve deeper,

and though this may not be getting us closer

to the origins of the place,

it shows how important Coldbrook has been to the people who lived there.

It's the end of July and Kim and Bill have come for the monthly meeting on-site with the architects.

Martin's wife and partner, Kelly, is here today.

They've got some important decisions to make,

starting with the stain colour for the new floorboards,

which are to be laid throughout almost the entire house.

They've got it down to a choice of three.

Kim's worried about the house being a little dark inside,

so she favours the lightest one.

My position is strong, it is strong!

But I do want to feel supported!

And I like that, but I need to sell it to Bill.

Bill, isn't this by far and away the nicest?

Compared to what? Oh, all of these?

Which one's the nicest, Kim? Tell me which one's the nicest?

Oh that one, yeah, you're right! HE LAUGHS

No, I prefer this one, but...

You think that, don't you, Kelly?

I think that was my personal favourite, the antique one.

I think, if... are we painting this white?

White and that, you could be in almost a modern house.

I want to live in an old house, not a modern house.

It's too sanitised with lovely white, you know, clean, bright floorboards and white walls.

It'll be a bit too much for my delicate eyes!

What d'you reckon?

Yeah. Well, that one looks better, then, doesn't it?

No-one can be persuaded to go for the...?

Do you know, a while ago...

Last year, I was all over that,

but I just... It's the whole "dark" thing.

But the joinery here is dark.

I know. Exactly.

There are pros and cons to having professional architects on your project.

The best thing is that they have strong ideas,

but that's also the problem.

The floorboards that we chose today weren't the floorboards that I wanted to choose at all.

But, erm, everyone's right and they are quite nice.

It's just that they're a bit dark.

I wanted everything to be as light as possible,

Because the house is quite dark. But they are right,

they should really be dark to fit in with all the wood.

And they'll be beautiful.

But I did just spend a lot of time looking for something different.

Kim and Bill clearly love Coldbrook but back in Aberystwyth,

Kate has found someone whose love for the place would be put to the test.

His father's will meant that Moses Powell had to choose between Coldbrook and the woman he loved.

After seeing John Powell's will,

the most intriguing thing is Harriet Blaydon.

Who is this woman who is so reviled by the family that,

if Moses marries her, he is completely disinherited?

The records are patchy, but Harriet is listed as a household servant

to one of the neighbouring families,

which, of course, would make her of lower social class.

So did Moses choose her or Coldbrook?

The 1851 census shows who got the farm.

Fascinatingly, it says that Edward Powell is head of the household,

so it's not Moses Powell at all,

and all we can presume is that Moses is cut out of the inheritance

because he carries on his affair, his cohabitation, whatever it is,

with Harriet Blaydon. He is still in love with this woman.

It would be nice to think that, even without the farm,

the lovers went on to live happily together.

But real life rarely leads to easy endings.

My final trace of Moses Powell is in the 1871 census,

where he's listed as being married to someone else.

Not Harriet at all, Caroline.

But also what's interesting is they are living at a walks cottage in Llandenny - a small cottage.

They're not living at Coldbrook Farm.

Moses Powell is quite... pretty poor, really, by this point.

He's lost everything. So, clearly, he gave up a lot for Harriet.

It's a touching story,

but Moses and Harriet don't get us any closer

to the origins of Coldbrook Farm.

So Kate and Kieran both need a new lead to follow.

When Coldbrook was built, most farmhouses would have had a well.

But Bill and Kim didn't know that theirs is still here,

hidden beneath an ordinary-looking manhole cover.

-God!

-Oh, my God!

Wow! Whoa!

I mean, hold on...

-Look at that, that is fantastic!

-It's good echoes.

-Yeah!

The question is, what should they do with it?

Oh, I'd make a real big, I'd make a tourist feature of the thing!

I'd open it up here.

-I'd put the tables and chairs here.

-Yeah.

What would you do? Kelly, what would you do?

Personally, I'd cover over it!

-Well, really!

-I would.

This is just one of the...

How many houses do you know in our street have got one of these?

Deciding what to do with the well will have to wait,

because now they have to discuss a problem with the doors.

They all need to be custom made,

because every doorway in the house is a different size.

We've sent them off to the joinery company to get priced.

And they've come back with prices,

and it's not an exaggeration to say the prices are basically double

the provisional sum that's in the contract.

-How much, in total, how much over is it?

-Yeah.

-In total?

Well, I guess it would be pretty much 100% over.

So what's our options then? Have no doors?

-No, that's not an option.

-No.

I think that was a bit of a shock.

Erm...

But in a way, it's not a shock.

There's always going to be those things going on.

Bill isn't so philosophical.

He's gone off to see if he can find another way

to alleviate the doors overspend.

Right, well this is a door which used to go up to the attic.

And I think we're going to do a bit of work on it,

because apparently, anything which can be used to make a door

is going to come in very handy,

given the rather alarming news today of the price of doors these days.

I didn't realise they were up with gold and oil

as an expensive commodity!

I wish I'd bought some years ago!

Of course, the largest piece of new joinery is the spiral staircase.

And if that comes back with a 100% overspend,

even Bill would have a problem making a joke out of it.

It's being built at a large joinery firm in Hereford.

They're making all the parts here,

and then they'll be assembling them at Coldbrook.

Master joiner Sam Thomas has worked on it for four weeks already,

and it's not the easiest one he's ever made.

Yes, I have made a lot of staircases.

Probably, in my time as a joiner, probably a couple of thousand maybe.

But nothing quite like this.

It's a daring design, thought up by Martin the architect.

The staircase actually is not intended to be imposing,

it's actually intended to be sinuous and curvy and slender.

But it's not sort of assertive

in the sense of being a big, brash statement.

It's actually trying to be more of a ballerina in the corner,

if you like, rather than a big truck.

To Martin, it's a ballerina, but for Sam, it's more of a riddle.

Sometimes it's a lot easier to draw something than to make something.

Architects try and make their own design

and their own thing on something,

but it's not easy to get there.

Some nights, I do go home and think about what I'm going to do next day

and how I'm going to go about it, yes.

Sometimes, I wish he'd pay me for my time at home as well,

put it that way!

But the real test will be when it's finished.

Because Kim and Bill are spending £25,000

to get a two-storey-high statement of 21st-century design

inserted into their 16th-century home.

Let's hope they like it.

It's the end of summer,

and the new school year starts in three days,

so the time has come to move to the country.

Little bit of me is slightly concerned that I might start feeling a bit isolated down there.

But I'm not that worried about that. Keep me out of trouble, really!

Everything has to be cleared out,

because this house is going to be let.

But with Coldbrook unfinished,

all this stuff will be going into the barns,

and the family will living in the caravan.

Gives you a little bit of nervousness,

moving on to your next chapter of life, if you like,

but, um... being sad to leave, I think,

is always a good sentiment. It means you've had a great time.

We are emigrating. Fantastic.

Have you got the passports?

Yeah, another economic migrant returns home.

To get closer to the origins of Coldbrook Farm,

Kieran reckons we need a definite date,

and with all this timber here,

it might be worth trying dendrochronology -

the science of dating wood using the tree's growth rings.

So, he's called in Dr Dan Miles from the Oxford Dendrochronology Lab.

We all learn as kids that maybe a ring of a tree is a year.

Does it really correspond?

No, that is exactly right. Each year the tree puts on one ring

on the outside just under the bark,

and if it's a very dry year,

that'll be a very narrow ring cos the tree didn't grow much,

but if it's a really good year, warm and moist,

the tree will grow much faster put on a much wider ring.

We actually have to measure each ring,

put it on a graph, and put it through statistical analysis on the computer.

And if we have the edge of the bark, which we've got here,

then we'll be able to work out the season of the year

the tree was cut down.

But to do that, Dan needs to take a few samples from around the house.

He's got specially-made drill bits

to cut out a core at right angles to the tree's rings.

There's no way to do this without drilling,

but after it's repaired later on,

no-one will be able to see where the hole was made.

The cores of wood will be analysed back at the lab.

Do you feel hopeful we're going to get a reasonable sample

and a date for the house?

Well, the wood is nice. Everything being equal they should date,

but you can never guarantee it until you actually do the work.

If we can discover when the house was built,

that could help us solve the mystery of Coldbrook Farm -

why some of the finest-carved timberwork in Wales,

is in an ordinary farmhouse, well off the beaten track.

Right, Betty Finn, what you want for breakfast?

Chuck this out the way for now. Thank you, Lewis.

It's the end of September

and the family is getting used to caravan life.

This is my bed here. Who's sleeping in my bed?

Unfortunately, I was away when everyone decided which bed

they were having and I was left with spacious, admittedly,

but not too comfortable floor,

in a sleeping bag

but it's only for 12 weeks.

We've just put all our chest of drawers from London in here.

Got a second-hand washing machine here

and I hang everything here and it dries sometimes.

Both Kim and Bill have kept their London jobs,

and they have to spend at least a couple of days a week in the city.

But the rest of the time they do need to work from home

and in the caravan that can be tricky.

But Bill has found a corner of the old milking parlour,

and when it's quiet at the local pub,

the landlord doesn't mind Kim using a table.

And of course, the children are having a great time.

But then the weather has been uncharacteristically dry,

and as autumn rolls on,

the need to move in to the house

is likely to become more and more urgent.

After nine weeks working on the new staircase at the joinery workshop,

Sam has brought it to Coldbrook to start putting it together.

But it looks like there's been a terrible mistake.

We started to set out, really,

mark things where we needed to mark things, get things in place,

and this was going to be our first bit

but there is a problem with this,

and, uh, there's a slight issue with the floor

which is not what measurements I had,

to what we made, to what is here at the moment.

In other words, it doesn't fit.

The first flight is too tall.

It's about 70 mil, to be fair, so, yeah,

it's quite a big issue to get over now as well.

With hundreds of man-hours already invested in this,

they need to wait until Martin, the architect, can take a look at it,

and hope that he can come up with a solution,

apart from remaking it all from scratch.

But the stairs aren't the only thing that may have to be redone

because Kim has been thinking about the colour of the walls.

The painters have started with a warm, yellowish white,

but she's been experimenting on top with some tester pots.

Oh, I prefer the...

I like the yellow.

SHE BLOWS A RASPBERRY Well!

No...that...grey...yellow...no.

I have no choice.

I don't know why I bother.

I make a lot of effort to put some creative thought into it

and I just get stampeded over.

Happy with that. Bill, are you happy with that?

Um, if you're happy, Kim, then I'm at peace.

OK, ha-ha-ha.

80 miles away at the Oxford Dendrochronology Lab,

Dr Dan Miles has been analysing the timber cores he took,

in order to discover exactly when Coldbrook was built.

He now has an answer.

We can show that the house was probably built,

probably in 1538, because the tree was still growing that winter.

The tree was probably cut down during the winter of 1537-8,

and were used probably right away, although the great big tree

used for those big window jambs were cut down

a couple of years before in 1535-6.

So, now we know exactly

when these timbers and stones were first put together,

and it's earlier than anyone thought - 1538.

But having a precise date is a significant discovery

not just for us but also for the whole study of Tudor architecture.

So Richard Suggett has come to take a look at the results.

He's from the Royal Commission On The Ancient And Historical Monuments Of Wales.

So, with Coldbrook, we were saying mid-ish 16th century,

but it could be later, so to have it earlier than the mid-16th century

and to have the exact felling date

really makes it very important.

It's like the rungs on a ladder -

it gives you a secure handhold for building chronology.

But this earlier date means that Coldbrook

could have a very illustrious connection

because the house is less than two miles from Raglan Castle,

which was built by the Earl of Pembroke

in late medieval times.

It's very interesting Coldbrook, like so many vernacular houses,

is a documentary blank.

There's just nothing there and yet

the house says the person who built it was a person of consequence.

So, I think you can start making

some reasonable speculations

about the identity of the builder.

It's very near Raglan, and we know that the Earl of Pembroke,

who died in 1469, had a lot of illegitimate children

whom he settled on various estates.

And I think it's quite possible -

although not susceptible to proof yet -

that the people who built Coldbrook

were actually descended from the Earl of Pembroke.

So, yes, quite extraordinary.

Based at Raglan Castle,

that Earl of Pembroke was William Herbert,

one of the most powerful lords in Britain,

and a major player in the Wars Of The Roses.

If Coldbrook was built for his illegitimate descendants,

that might explain all the fine-carved timber.

So Kate and Kieran now have a new lead to follow.

November in Wales can be pretty cold, and it's usually very wet.

But this year the winter rains have stayed away,

which is just as well, because the family is still in the caravan.

Hello. Can I come in? Are you decent?

Oh, yes, you are!

So, how long have you been living in the caravan?

-About ten weeks. Is it about ten weeks?

-Ten weeks.

So, generally speaking, you're slightly behind schedule?

-Yes, we should have moved in...

-On 15th October,

so probably be more like 15th December, hopefully.

Not a 100% guarantee on that,

-but the heating's working in the house.

-Is it?

-Yes.

So, all the builders are there working in T-shirts.

So the heating's on in the house,

the kitchen's dry, the stairs are dry,

and you're freezing your ... off

-in the caravan, really damp.

-Absolutely.

-OK.

When they eventually move into the house,

Kim and Bill aren't going to know what hit them.

For example, in the caravan,

the kitchen is about three square metres,

while in the house it's almost 50.

-When I'm going to sleep at night I think about cooking.

-Do you?

How do you see yourself? What are you cooking?

-Well, roast pork. Constantly.

-Checking the crackling!

I dream about us coming home on a Sunday

to roast pork in the evening and all the kids

having their baths, and us all having roast pork and red wine.

Bill, is there anything you're really looking forward to?

Yeah. When we move in, I'm really looking forward to seeing

the satisfaction on Kim's face and the happiness it'll bring her

to finally move in,

cos she's put so much effort into the house,

and much more than I,

-so she deserves everything that the house will give her.

-Oh!

-That's a lovely thought.

-Oh!

-I know it's lovely.

-Awww!

I didn't mean that. I hope everyone understands,

that was just for the camera.

Of course it was for the camera. We know you're tough as old boots.

I am a hard Welsh farmer's son, all right?

It's true - Bill's tough. He must be -

he's spent the last ten weeks

sleeping on the floor in the caravan.

But the question is -

will the restoration atually end

before Bill and Kim's good humour finally cracks?

Back in the archives, the discovery of a definite date

for Coldbrook Farm has given Kate's investigation a new direction.

She's looking into the suggestion that the house may have been built

by the illegitimate descendants of William Herbert,

the First Earl of Pembroke,

who lived less than two miles away at Raglan Castle.

And it seems he wasn't the only Herbert

who had illegitimate offspring.

In front of me, I've got two family trees - rather different -

one of the illegitimate children of the Herberts,

and one of the legitimate.

So, here we've got the Earl of Pembroke, his son,

and then all their many illegitimate children.

But unlike quite a lot of other aristocratic families,

the illegitimate - the natural sons, of course, not the daughters -

are taken into the circle of inheritance,

they all become of places.

They are all, say, Edward Herbert of somewhere.

So they gain a house, they gain an estate,

they gain land.

Even if they're just natural sons, they get a great stature.

And amongst those places is a red herring.

This timeline is the legitimate children only,

and there's a mention of Coldbrook here -

but it's not our Coldbrook.

It's Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook, who died in 1469.

He has a house, Coldbrook, in Abergavenny.

Coldbrook House at Abergavenny

would have been about ten miles from Coldbrook Farm.

Sadly, the last house on the site fell into ruin,

and was demolished in 1954.

This isn't our Coldbrook Farm,

but it seems to be very likely the two are connected.

It was quite common in the period

for families to name houses for the same name,

to link them in a naming sense,

whether it's owned by the same man or another man,

but Coldbrook was very important

to the Herbert family,

and it shows, I think, why Coldbrook Farm has the name that it does.

Coldbrook Farm and Coldbrook House.

One we know was held by the Herberts,

the other is little more than a stone's throw away

from their original powerbase at Raglan Castle.

But Kate's evidence is circumstantial.

So, maybe Kieran can find proof.

Meanwhile, Sam the joiner has met with Martin

about the stairs that didn't fit.

There's always the risk with something

that is made off-site in this way,

and is totally fits together in this way,

that you could have created

the world's most expensive pile of kindling.

And, um, I'm hugely pleased that isn't what's happened.

It turns out it's the floor that's wrong.

The stairs are fine,

so they can get on with putting them up.

It was always in the plan to raise the height

of the floorboards on the landing

to compensate for different levels between the bedrooms.

The problem was that work hadn't been done before Sam turned up

with the staircase.

This floor now will be built up to that floor level

so when you step off, it'll all be nice and flat.

A weight off my mind to get it in there, get it fitted in there.

Just hope the other one goes as well as this one.

This isn't the final finish of the wood.

Sam still has weeks of work to do

applying an oak veneer,

but when that's done,

we'll all find out if mixing modern design with historic house

really was a good idea.

Kieran's come to Raglan Castle looking for evidence

to link Coldbrook Farm with the Earl of Pembroke

and the Herbert family.

So this is Raglan Castle, this extraordinary pile of stones,

which was once one of the greatest castles in Monmouthshire,

and we've come here because

this was the seat of the Herbert family,

this would have been the most important building,

the seat of their power and influence

and also the place where their taste became broadcast, if you like.

So, I'm hoping there may be an architectural link

between this place and Coldbrook Farm.

The castle was destroyed during the English Civil War,

but it's still possible to see how the rooms were laid out.

So, what's really exciting about this,

is that it's a taste of the social life that, really,

this building is all about.

And this is the heart of it.

This hall is just an extraordinary expression

of how this whole society worked.

You can imagine this hung with tapestries,

with a minstrel's gallery, people eating here and, at that end,

a high platform, a dais, so-called,

where the lord or the earl

would have sat to express his seniority,

would have had his top table.

We have exactly the same thing at Coldbrook.

At Coldbrook, the old kitchen would have been the great hall,

and we know there was a dais

because you can still see the wear marks

where it used to rub up against the oak panelling.

To me, this is the room that helps us understand best

the small hall at Coldbrook.

So, we've been searching the castle architectural references that

might lead us to comparison with Coldbrook

and I think I've found one -

I mean this doorway upstairs -

we know there was once a dining room right above here in the castle

and the doorway is strikingly similar.

You know, you can imagine, in Coldbrook Farm, the craftsmen were looking at this decoration

and reproducing it with the materials

they had to hand which was timber.

So it's not definitive proof,

and it certainly doesn't mean that the same craftsmen worked here

and at Coldbrook, but there's definitely an influence,

an idiom of gothic castle architecture from the 14th and 15th century,

that's somehow finding its way through to Coldbrook Farm.

It's almost Christmas,

the family have been living in the caravan for 15 weeks,

and the builders have finally finished.

Bill's coming back from London tonight - and hopefully -

or this afternoon -

and hopefully we'll have all the sofas and beds in.

And I can't wait to cook in the kitchen tonight -

not that I know - don't think I know how to use any of it.

I don't know if any of it works.

-Do you want to sleep in the caravan one more night?

-No!

Most of their stuff from the London house

is in one of Brian's barns,

but Kim is keen not to clutter up their new house straightaway.

So, today, they're moving in just the basics.

Couple of sofas, that chest of drawers,

that chest of drawers and that.

Brilliant!

-OK, Kim?

-Yeah?

-There you go.

Oh, Betty! Oh, Betty!

# Happy birthday to you... #

Can I have a kiss?

# Happy birthday, dear Mummy

# Happy birthday to you. #

Betty seems to have got the wrong idea -

it isn't actually Kim's birthday.

They are, I think they are for,

I think they are moving in flowers, aren't they?

We're set for a romantic first night in the house,

I think, aren't we?

I've got the champagne and salmon and the pate.

Yeah. Let's not let romance get in the way of it.

Oh!

After months of building work and weeks in the caravan,

Kim and Bill finally made it into their farmhouse for Christmas.

It's now spring and I've come to find out

how the family are enjoying life down on the farm

But before that,

our experts Kate and Kieran are going to share everything

they've found out with Kim and Bill.

Well, the dendrochronology can tell us much more precisely,

and what was really exciting is it came up with an exact date,

in fact, earlier than even Fox and Raglan,

even the experts had ever suspected.

Moses can't have the house

if he is to marry to this woman Harriet Blayton,

so he can't have it if he marries this lady.

And when we saw this doorway,

you can't help make comparisons to this doorway.

That means so much to think there is a link

between this place and the castle.

It's absolutely fantastic,

and we've spent hours and hours sitting in all these rooms here,

and talking about where they'd come from and why.

And I suppose talking to you guys

and hearing these tales really brings it to life.

A year ago, the house was in a terrible state,

but now the time has come to find out if Kim and Bill

have succeeded in blending historic features and modern style.

-It looks fantastic!

-Thank you.

-Are you thrilled?

-Yes.

We finally got there.

It was broken down and worn out,

but now Coldbrook Farm has been transformed.

Oh, Kim! The staircase!

-It looks great.

-Yes.

Do you like it, Bill?

Uh, against all my will, I love it, yeah.

Well worth it, actually. Well worth the money spent on it.

Originally budgeted at £25,000, the final bill was almost £30,000.

But then, Sam and the joiners did spend over 700 hours

getting it perfect.

I love it. I love the way it ties in the old wood

and the modern use of the house.

And it doesn't take over, does it?

It sits on the side of the wall.

It's really lovely.

But you could have gone for a normal, off-the-peg staircase

with a normal banister.

Yeah, that was the original idea, as well.

I just didn't think... I thought, "A stairs is a stairs,

"just a collection of steps," but I didn't realise it was art.

So, that's Bill and Kim's piece of history now?

Yeah, I think so. I think there's a subconscious thought of that.

You have to do something that's in keeping with the rest of the house

-or else it's almost sacrilege.

-Yeah.

The stairs go all the way up to the attic,

where Kim and Bill's bright and stylish bedroom

has been created under the ancient roof timbers.

The children's bedrooms are on the first floor,

where there's also a guest bedroom

and a big family bathroom.

White walls throughout tie everything together,

as do the new oak floorboards,

stained dark to blend in with all the old timber.

Kim, these floors... you wanted a lighter floor.

Yes, no I always wanted light floors, but everyone outvoted me.

-Did they.

-Yes!

Everyone!

So, I thought, fair enough. They were probably right. Yes.

I was just very keen on getting as much light in here as possible,

but, no, they were right. Everyone's right, as usual.

Also designed to match in

are the new doors.

Each one is a different size, so they all had to be custom made.

-Bill.

-Yes.

-How much did this door cost?

Well, too much.

Not a thousand pounds?

-Something not far off it, yeah.

-You got a lot of doors.

You must have spent all your money on doors.

Yeah, but I was quite pleased to do that,

I really enjoyed that bit of it.

-But they're special doors. Special doors.

-They are!

But the most impressive timberwork is still where it always was -

in the original great hall, that was later the old kitchen,

and is now Kim and Bill's dining room.

Ah, the historical heart of the home!

It's delightful!

Is it very different from living in a modern London home?

It's fabulous having all these features around

and the wood is very comforting,

but we do have a lot of mod cons in here that I've never had before.

And most of those mod cons are in the room

that used to be the old barn next door...

..which has now been completely transformed

into a very stylish farmhouse kitchen.

That also includes a mezzanine play area to keep the kids close by.

I love the fact that from here I can see the old beams

and the wood and then this shiny bit of modern technology,

and all that, and out to this ancient view.

-I think it's just...

-Yes.

It actually makes me feel quite jealous.

The whole restoration was originally budgeted at £350,000,

but the final bill was about £400,000.

So, was it worth it?

This is way beyond our dreams four years ago.

-Oh, yeah.

-Way beyond it.

Couldn't be happier with the outcome. Not one regret, at all.

-No.

-Nothing.

It's definitely a magical spot, here,

and it's definitely a magical sort of house.

Yeah.

Bill has known Coldbrook Farm for most of his life,

but only ever as a shabby farmhouse set amidst beautiful countryside.

But as the layers of history were peeled back,

Coldbrook Farm began to give up her secrets.

The story began in 1536 when,

not far from here, a tree was felled

and craftsmen began work on the detailed beams

that would form a house for a man of incredible wealth and status.

Nearly 500 years later,

different craftsmen have been making modern pieces

to sit effortlessly alongside the old.

Only this time their brief was different.

Kim and Bill didn't want a house of wealth and status -

somewhere to show off -

they wanted to create a simple family home,

somewhere that they love, and they have done exactly that.

On the next Restoration Home,

a mistreated architectural gem in Scotland,

with new owners committed to reinstating its perfect beauty.

Is it important to get the detail right?

Our intention is to get it as correct as we can -

basically, regardless of cost.

And we discover its links

to Britain's greatest arts and crafts masterpieces.

The DNA of Sanford house is somewhere here.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd