The Elms 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 for ever.

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

all facing their own struggle for survival.

-Look, you can see the round.

-Yes.

-Wow!

It is like walking into a kind of Tudor fantasy.

This is not quite what I was expecting.

And they all have new owners, committed to turning them

into their dream home.

It is a bit like a little old lady waiting for a facelift,

and we're coming in to make her better.

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

I have 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.

Whoa, whoa!

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

We love it, we want to finish it,

but sometimes it just feels like too much.

It's Restoration Home.

Georgian architecture - simple, stylish, just a little bit showy.

Perfect for a country manor or a fine townhouse.

And ask any estate agent,

the words "Georgian" on the particulars always guarantee a speedy sale.

Well, almost always.

In the Derbyshire village of North Wingfield, surrounded

by modern developments, is an early Georgian house, called The Elms.

When it was built, it must have been one of the grandest houses

for miles around, but for generations, The Elms has been

slipping slowly into a state of ruin.

So now, no-one can even

get upstairs, because the floorboards have all gone.

For the last eight years, it's been standing empty,

as a string of developers have tried to exploit it.

But because it's Grade II listed,

they weren't allowed to do cheap and cheerful conversions.

So, The Elms would never be saved for hard profit.

This house needed people with a stronger motive.

That's when three generations of the Holmwood family came along -

Suzanne, her son, Gavin, his partner, Ann Ashcroft,

and their six-year-old daughter, Caitlin.

And they weren't looking to make a fast buck.

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 come out,

and I think we'd only looked around 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.

At the moment, Gavin, Ann and Caitlin live less than 200 metres away,

in an old farmhouse on the other side of the road,

so they've been thinking about The Elms for years.

Then, in 2010, they finally bought it.

We purchased The Elms for 115,000.

It did go for auction and nobody bought it.

I think that's one of the reasons why I bought it, felt kind of sorry for it.

But this house is in such a terrible state it's going to cost more

to restore than it did to buy.

They've worked out a budget of 180,000,

which would be too much money for Ann and Gavin alone.

So, Gavin's mum, Suzanne, joined the project.

She's keen to swap her bungalow for a part of the house.

I thought it was a really big project to take on, but a wonderful property.

People might think, "Oh, my God, what a nightmare!" But, actually,

she always gives us enough space.

I think it will work both ways, I'll be there for Caitlin, and if need, they'll be there for me.

Suzanne has put up the money to cover the purchase price, so

now it's up to Ann and Gavin to get a loan to finance the restoration.

The plan is to divide the house into two, which should be easy

because the building is L-shaped.

Suzanne will have the formal-looking front,

while Gavin and Ann get the back half.

And when the restoration is finished,

space is something they're all going to have plenty of.

Like many Georgian buildings, the floor plan of the front half

is simplicity itself, with two big rooms on each floor.

Suzanne is going for kitchen,

dining room,

lounge upstairs,

an art room, and two bedrooms.

The layout is not so simple in Gavin and Ann's half.

Downstairs, they'll have a kitchen-diner,

but then turn the old kitchen into their lounge.

On the first floor, there's a study

and two bedrooms. Caitlin's will be en suite.

The master bedroom will be in the attic space,

with not just an en suite, but a dressing room, too.

But this won't be the first house Gavin's restored.

When he and Ann bought the old farmhouse they're living in now,

it, too, was a ruin.

It took him seven years to restore that one, but he loved

the process so much he decided to change his career.

Many years ago, I was an engineer.

Precision engineer, making aircraft components.

But from that, I realised I was vastly unhappy in the job I was doing.

I didn't like factory work, I didn't like engineering.

But I loved doing buildings.

So, I went to university and retrained as a technical architect.

Landed a job at a local company doing commercial architecture.

From that, I formed my own company.

So now, Gavin works from home,

but soon he'll be concentrating mainly on The Elms.

And until the project reaches the decorating phase,

the rest of the family are just going to lend moral support.

I think it will look nice and I think my dad will do a good job.

I've got every faith in him. I think he'll do a brilliant job.

But while he's busy on the house, Ann, who's a social worker,

will be the principle 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 has been.

Probably go round, obviously, at evenings,

and say, "Oh, you not done much yet?!"

It's the middle of May, and the planning stage is complete.

With building work about to start,

they should now have a target deadline.

What is your timescale here?

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

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

-Yes.

-I don't think you can do this in a year, so I'm going to bet you,

I'm going to bet you £5 you can't do this in your timescale, from May to May.

-May to May, £5.

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

What you haven't seen is inside, so you may want to make it £50 yet!

The interior is bad, but there's something to be positive about.

Oh, yes! Proper panelled room.

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!

LAUGHTER

Being able to see the underside of the roof from the ground floor

is un-nerving, but it does show the size of the place.

It's a massive pile, this. Now, you,

who are going from the small house, basically to living in showbiz mansions, aren't you, really?

Just call us lord and lady of the manor!

That's what our friends are doing.

-How do you feel about that?

-Um...

-Your ladyship!

Well, delighted!

In fact, it's Gavin's mum, Suzanne,

who's having the more posh front of the house.

You're going to be living in the rather grand front quarters of the house.

I am, 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.

-Little bit, yes!

When the house is finished, it's going to play a big part

in the life of six-year-old Caitlin.

'After all, she'll be growing up here.'

What do you think of your new house, Caitlin?

Well, it's really dusty and I don't know how many years it old is,

but it's quite nice.

I really want to see how it looks when it's done, but I can't imagine it yet.

So the whole family will be watching

the progress of the restoration closely.

'Though that's not hard,

'given that Caitlin, Gavin and Ann live so close.'

If you look out our bedroom window, you can see it.

Gav, every night before he goes to bed, looks out the window and checks on it.

-Gav does?

-Yes, every night.

Do you think you have to be a particular sort of person to do this kind of thing?

No, I think you have to be willing to take risks.

But I see us as Mr and Mrs Average, just with a little bit more,

"Yeah, we'll give it a go, we'll try it."

I think it's wanting something better, seeing something,

and thinking, "I want a house like that."

Ever since being young, even though I come from a council estate,

I used to walk past houses and think, "I want to live in a house like that.

"I want to live in a house like that. So, for us, it's always,

"I want to live in a house like that." And I think that's that, I want to live in a house like that.

That's a dream, isn't it, for everybody?

As this brave undertaking commences,

so too does our historical investigation.

Our historian, Dr Kate Williams,

will be delving into the archives to track down

the people whose lives were bound up with the house.

While architectural expert Kieran Long investigates what the building itself can tell us.

Derbyshire is famous for great Georgian buildings built of Derbyshire sandstone

commanding great landscapes.

This one doesn't look like it does have that kind of landscape around it.

And it's fantastic, look. Really grand, really beautiful.

But in really poor condition.

Boarded-up windows, it looks like it hasn't been loved for some decades, really.

From the outside, though, it has a real appeal.

Really tough looking building,

it looks like it can withstand the Derbyshire weather.

It looks like it has taken quite a lot of it, the stone dressings

and the string courses are blackened with age, gives it that extra kind of muscular feeling.

So, you know, I look at it and it's a very appealing building.

"Muscular" isn't a term often applied to 18th century buildings.

But The Elms is clearly Georgian.

This is a time of symmetry in buildings, of a certain compositional quality.

And you see that in this facade, beautifully.

All of the money is piled into this facade on the building.

It's composed.

We have this beautiful door surround, again, perfectly symmetrical.

The other thing you see are these string courses

and the differing heights of windows.

What that is doing is creating a kind of false perspective,

you have this sense of a base, and a middle, and a top, to try

and give a sense of order to the architecture, which we still see now.

When the house was surveyed in the late 1960s, there was

a grand staircase in the entrance hall.

This is not the Georgian splendour we might have expected from outside, is it?

It's in pretty poor condition.

These stairs are a cheap modern rig-up,

because the Georgian staircase has disappeared,

though no-one knows where.

It's heartbreaking to see it in this state,

because all of the decoration has gone,

or it is in such bad condition that it looks unsavable.

But you just get a sense of how beautiful this place would have been.

Going through to the back half,

the character of the house is becoming clearer.

The thing to understand about this house is that it's in an L-shape.

At the front you have that symmetrical facade, very beautiful,

very kind of pure, geometrically.

And, now, we're in a different kind of atmosphere.

We're facing in a different direction, we no longer have

sash windows, we have a different kind of stone surround to

the windows. And we have, well, right in front of us,

clearly a doorway through to what was a kitchen.

So, in here, you see...

..this huge and beautiful hearth.

Fireplace big enough for me to stand in.

Clearly intended for cooking, intended for a lot of cooking,

cooking big meals.

And, you know, this is very much the business end of the house, it feels like.

The other thing is it has a very distinct

and different architectural character. Because it's not

so much now about that symmetrical composition,

it's just about rambling spaces through to where they need to be.

So, this is a functional space, really.

But which side is the true face of The Elms?

Was it a manor house, with a practical back half,

or was it actually a farmhouse, with delusions of grandeur?

Kieran needs to find out.

Now the groundwork's done,

Gavin is getting ready to tackle the single biggest structural problem.

Up at the top, one of the main beams that supports the floor is

quite rotten and must be replaced.

To prepare, they've built a scaffold platform outside,

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

Which means that, for the first time,

Ann can get up to the top of the house.

Just explaining to boss what's going on.

-So what's this bit going to be?

-From the wall there,

this is going to become the dressing room area

and then beyond here the en-suite.

Excellent! Very good.

-So it's quite nice and light, isn't it?

-Yeah. Nice view, actually.

But now the new beam has arrived.

It's seven metres long, made of solid oak,

and weighs almost half a tonne.

Gavin's booked a crane to get it up onto the outside platform.

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

The hard part's going to be actually getting the new beam in there.

The beam is just too heavy to try to manhandle through the window

but Gavin's got a plan,

inspired by the building of the ancient pyramids.

They're going to roll it in.

It's a tried and tested technique from the Egyptians

rolling stuff on rollers!

Obviously there's a wall in the way,

so builder Nick Taylor is going to cut a hole in it.

It's quite a strategic job -

we don't want to take out more stone than we need to.

They're keeping as much of the original stone as possible

so the wall can be carefully restored later.

Hullo!

Not all of the old beam is rotten

so Gavin's cutting it up to re-use a good section

for the supporting cross-beam that needs to be set in the wall.

It all sounds simple.

Go on, mate.

Grab hold of it.

Right... Let it go down. Watch your fingers.

That's really high, this end. What's it sat on?

It's not...

This is the right size.

It's just that everything else around it's too tight!

The problem is now, we've got to roll it in.

Yeah.

And the whole point of doing that was so we didn't have to lift it.

Now they're going to need a lot of manpower.

-You feeling strong?

-Not really!

Because the rollers, the hole and platform inside,

don't quite line up.

-Right, ow! Me toe!

-BLEEP!

GRUNTING AND GROANING

That was almost a nasty accident.

It's OK, start again.

That were right lucky that.

One two, three, lift and push.

The rollers are working a treat. The Egyptians would be proud.

Lads? Just take it steady. It's should roll and slide. Go on.

Slide.

OK. In.

Catch it.

Now, keep coming.

Right.

Whoa, whoa!

That's it. Well done. Thank you lads.

Very good beam installation. I'm very happy.

It went well.

While Gavin and the team work to restore The Elms

to how it used to be,

we're trying to find out what kind of a house it was.

Kieran has come to the county town of Matlock

to use the Derbyshire Record Office.

The position of a house can show a lot,

but now that the village of North Wingfield

has been filled with modern developments

it's hard to tell if The Elms once sat in the middle of a farm,

or in a grand park at the end of a stately drive.

But that should be revealed by maps.

The oldest large-scale one Kieran can find dates from 1842,

and it has every building marked including The Elms.

One of the things that's really interesting about this

is that it shows that The Elms was part of a village.

It's not a building sat on its own in the landscape -

it sat amongst lots of buildings

without any particular architectural order.

They look like they were working buildings of different kinds

all with relationships with different kind of plots of land.

This is a farming landscape, farming community, a working community

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

In fact, this map could reveal a lot more than that.

This is a tithe map

and what's interesting about that is 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's occupying The Elms in 1842.

But there's more.

There's a load of numbers here and, turning the page, even more.

A wide variety of properties, a range of different plantations

and planted farming and yards and so on, all owned by John Wilkinson Clay

and according to this, occupied by himself - he was farming it.

This is a kind of gentleman farmer.

And as we look down this list of occupiers, we see other names.

So not only was he farming himself

he was renting out land to other farmers.

His landholdings cover two and a half pages of this catalogue

So let's say he could be one of the principal landowners

of North Wingfield, a substantial farmer.

What I'm excited to do next

is to take this knowledge that we've gained now,

of understanding The Elms as one of a group of buildings to do with farming

And go and see if we can find some of them.

We need to go to North Wingfield and see if we can identify

any of these traces of what North Wingfield and The Elms used to be.

While Kieran continues to investigate how

the building fits in to the landscape,

it'll be up to our historian Kate Williams

to follow up on that name he found

The Elms' one-time owner, John Wilkinson Clay.

But now, back with the present owners,

there's another key job to tackle.

Today, we're putting in steel beams.

While Gavin is keen to use traditional materials, like oak,

there are places where modern standards of structural safety

mean they really need to use modern steel beams.

So one RSJ is going in above the door in the old kitchen,

and another will be used to reinforce the fireplace.

In fact, all over the site things are coming on apace.

The steel's here, the steel's going in, partition walls are going up,

we got temporary floors delivered yesterday

so that we can start decking out all the floors

to actually get up there, so in two weeks time, basically, the front half

will be ready for the first fix, this half might just be a week behind.

Which is not bad, given that Gavin and Ann have run into a cash crisis.

They can't get an ordinary mortgage on The Elms,

because it's classed as derelict.

So to finance the restoration

they've organised a short term development loan for £150,000.

When The Elms is in a fit state

they can then pay that back with a regular mortgage.

But right now the paperwork for the development loan

has caused delays.

Well, the first instalment of funds were meant to arrive in the bank

eight to ten weeks ago from our point of view, that hasn't happened.

Really worrying time, obviously.

So I pretty much had sleepless nights.

That's pretty much all you think about.

When you start getting to the last dregs of money in the account,

every £50 counts.

I didn't really want to stop the build

because, as you can see, fantastic progress has been made.

So, effectively, I've borrowed more money.

We've basically borrowed money to replace the money we didn't have,

and the money that's coming, that's just going to replace money we borrowed.

It's just, that's effectively kept the programme going

and enabled us to move on quite well inside.

Now that the steel beams are in, the house is safe from collapse,

let's just hope the finances hold up too.

Our historian, Dr Kate Williams, is trying to find out

about the people who once owned The Elms.

Kieran chanced upon a name, and now she's going see where it leads.

Well, we know already that John Wilkinson Clay owned The Elms.

I've been looking through the records to try to 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.

I know that John Wilkinson Clay was a land owner in the 1840s,

so, I'm roughly guessing at that point

he was somewhere between 40 and 60 years old.

So, then, what I've got to go and do is go to the parish register

and look at all the possible baptisms 40 or 60 years before,

and rather luckily, I found him pretty early on in that period.

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

he was baptised on June the 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's called Clay as well,

and Sarah Clay has taken on his name

because that's what often a common law wife would do.

So, I think this is a local girl who's taken up with a Mr Clay,

and she's taken on his name.

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

But actually, the mystery has now deepened,

cos I've got to try and find out who the father was,

and why it was that he had an illegitimate child.

Back at The Elms there's been some great news.

The development loan has now come through,

and up in the attic a discovery's been made.

When they finally got floors down

and proper access to the attic space,

Gavin found an alcove that had been boarded up to make a secret closet.

No-one knows who,

but someone deliberately hid these things for safe keeping.

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

Putting in a Georgian-style staircase was going to be

one of the most costly parts of the restoration.

I think, in my head, on paper,

provisionally, I'd allowed about 10 to 15 grand.

So this is a very welcome saving,

especially now that the plasterers have started.

It's an expensive process, particularly

because they're using traditional lime mortar.

The head plasterer is Andrew Lawson.

We've been here four weeks,

and we've managed to cover two rooms,

and only one ceiling in those two rooms.

The amount that we've used in these two rooms is four tonnes of mortar.

If they were covering the walls with modern plasterboard,

they'd probably be finished by now.

But as a Grade II listed property

there are rules about how the restoration work is done.

Not only is Gavin supposed to keep the fabric of the original building safe,

but all new work has to be done in sympathy

with the historic structure.

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,

which is made by heating crushed limestone in a kiln.

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 is teased into the mortar,

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 plasterers have a long way to go.

They've been here for four weeks,

and they've got another seven months to do.

So, in this job, it probably helps to be a lime geek.

Looking at the maps, Kieran discovered that The Elms

was always at the heart of the village of North Wingfield.

The old village may have been obliterated,

but we've managed to find one place

where that lost world still survives,

in the memory of someone who grew up there.

Joe Holmes is 88 years old, and comes from a local farming family.

His grandfather bought The Elms,

and when Joe was a youngster in the 1930's his Uncle Percy lived in it.

The front part of it, um, was...

-..that was like the posh part.

-Right.

And the back, towards there, that was a farm.

So, all of the men in dirty boots and so on

would be coming in from the other end?

Oh, yes, they didn't come to the front part, no, no.

That was only...

..high days and holidays you went through the front door,

you always went in from the side door off the farm yard.

What did you enter into?

It was a huge kitchen,

there was always a roaring fire,

and there was a large table,

and all the people who worked on the farm

came in there and had their meals in there.

And they were always a jolly good meal.

Eventually, my uncle Percy sold The Elms.

Since then, it's had several owners.

The world that Joe remembers from before the war

would have changed little since the Clay family owned the house.

I suppose, before, we looked at The Elms as a place

that had this very composed, symmetrical, nice facade,

and we thought this could be some kind of manor house.

Some kind of house for pleasure, a lovely place in the landscape.

What we've realised now from the maps and from meeting Joe,

is that it was first of all a farming community,

a farmhouse, placed at the centre of a productive landscape.

Which makes the Georgian front all the more surprising.

Where did that come from? What were the Clays looking at?

Who were they mixing with who were giving them these ideas

that a rural community, a farmhouse,

should have such a composed, you know, elegant facade.

With its boarded up windows, the Clays' elegant facade

has been blind for almost a decade.

Every single one of its 38 windows has to be replaced.

And now the first batch of custom-made wooden sash windows has arrived

and it's up to Gavin and Chris Orme to put them in.

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,

you have to put each one back in the exact sequence to get...

First, you have to put the bottom one in, put the middle bead back in

then you have to move the sash window up then put, etc, etc.

So, it is quite a lot more time consuming than just normal windows.

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

Sash windows began to appear in the second half of the 17th century.

The term, by the way, comes from the French "chassis", meaning frame.

One of the first great buildings to be fitted with sash windows

is only about ten miles away, Chatsworth House.

To the style-conscious Georgians

they fitted perfectly with the new elegant architecture,

a key feature being that when you open a sash window,

it doesn't spoil the look.

For two and a half centuries, the sash reigned supreme,

but their use declined through the 20th century,

mainly due to the cost of the skilled labour

needed to make and fit them.

Though, Gavin and Chris seem to have worked it out.

Fantastic.

I daren't!

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

-That's it, perfect.

Look at that.

That's sweet, isn't it?

Fantastic.

So that's one down, 37 to go.

The search for the people who lived at The Elms two centuries ago

has brought Kate to the Record Office in Lichfield.

She discovered that John Wilkinson Clay was born illegitimate.

She's now found the name of his father, John Clay.

And it seems that four years after the birth,

his parents did get married.

So, what did that mean for John Wilkinson Clay?

Kate has found his father's will.

This is not quite what I was expecting.

There are two children talked about here, John Wilkinson Clay

and William Clay.

William Clay is born in wedlock, John Wilkinson Clay is not,

and it's John Wilkinson Clay who's the main heir, which is not normal.

Usually, what would happen in this occasion is that the natural son

would be excluded from the property rights,

but what we read here is,

"I'm leaving it to my natural son, John Clay,

"begotten by me on the body of Sarah, my now wife,

"previous to our inter-marriage."

So, he is essentially saying, my son John Wilkinson Clay,

spurious birth, he's not spurious anymore.

The very act of this will makes his entire life different,

much more so than simply the marriage of his parents

because you can't legitimise a child retrospectively,

the marriage of his parents would not make him legitimate.

What I find really ironic here is that he says here,

"the entire estate must go to my said natural son,

"and the heirs of his body, lawfully issuing."

So, what's rather funny here is he, John Clay,

has had an illegitimate child, but you're not allowed to do that,

John Wilkinson Clay, your children, get married first.

The middle of November,

and it's halfway between my first visit

and their target deadline of May 2012.

Time I checked on progress.

Ooh, lovely windows.

-Hello, Gavin.

-Caroline.

-Fabulous windows.

-Thank you.

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 37,000 or something.

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

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

Has Ann been happy with the build so far?

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

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

I want the cheaper one, she wants an expensive one.

OK!

But generally speaking, you think you're within budget at the moment?

Yeah, I'm pretty happy, I think the kitchen is 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.

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.

-The kitchen.

Are we having granite? Yes, of course we're having granite,

but money's tight because obviously it's gone on plastering,

electrics, it's gone on plumbing,

all the things that is needed, but you don't necessarily see.

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's the most boring thing in the world.

And kitchens are like, well, none of them are speaking to me,

none of them you're saying, "wow."

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

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

"that this is the Ferrari of kitchens."

If Ann and Gavin ever agree on the kitchen it could soon be going in,

because downstairs in the back half,

where the lime plasterers have finished,

a transformation has taken place.

Oh!

Oh, this is looking absolutely fantastic, this is fantastic!

I have to say, the plastering is extraordinary.

It is, it's really special. The lime plastering, it does look amazing.

In fact you could say, like Ann's kitchen,

the lime plaster is the Ferrari of wall coverings,

with a price tag to match.

Yeah, it's six or seven times more, plus the labour, yeah,

so it's ten times more.

-So, thousands of pounds to plaster the house?

-Yeah, basically, yeah.

There's still quite a long way to go,

and with your, um, pot of money dwindling away a bit,

at the moment.

-Is that a bit unnerving for you?

-Absolutely, yeah,

especially when you've got expensive kitchens that need to be fitted.

Unfortunately, the kitchens aren't the only major expense

that remains outstanding.

The Georgian facade has now been restored

but the fine rooms at the front need a lot of work,

and the elegant staircase is still in bits.

So this restoration has a long way to go.

Back in the archives,

Kate is digging deeper into the Clay family history.

Despite his spurious birth,

John Wilkinson Clay inherited The Elms in 1793 when he was just 14 years old.

But what happened when he died in 1866?

Kate has discovered a copy of his will.

Well, I first found John Wilkinson Clay illegitimate in the parish register.

No father.

Here, we have a wealthy man

leaving a significant amount of property.

Of course, the bulk of his estate goes to his only daughter, Sarah, who's a widow.

But what's most fascinating to me of all in this document is the first section.

The first section is not about his daughter.

It's actually about his very faithful servant.

He says, "I give unto my old and faithful servant,

"Dorothy Roberts, the bed in which she usually sleeps,

"and also all the household furniture in the room which she sleeps."

It's more than most servants got.

She also has this annuity of £52 every year, which is a rather good annuity as well.

I mean, you can live quite well on that.

What's fascinating in this will

is that John Wilkinson Clay's really looking after the women.

He thinks about Dorothy. He leaves his estate to his daughter, Sarah.

If she dies without issue, it goes to his second cousin.

She's called Eliza Penelope Clay. And the estate goes to her.

There is a male heir, a closer male heir who could get it.

His nephew could get it, but instead he gives it to his second cousin.

At the time, there's a convention that a man wouldn't leave money to his female relations.

You usually leave it to a male relation and say, "Look after the women."

But John Wilkinson Clay is very different to this.

And I'd like to think it's because he saw, as a young illegitimate boy,

what kind of struggle women have.

He was dependent on his mother for the first four years of his life,

and then his father died when he was 14.

So he saw how women struggle and have to make their own money.

I like to think that he didn't want to see any of his family suffering in the same way again.

When the windows were restored,

local people began to take notice of The Elms.

Now, slowly,

it's regaining its place at the centre of the community.

Alan Allsop is an amateur photographer

and he's come forward with some vital information.

I did this on a computer course.

I did The Elms as a project.

Alan was here ten years ago when there were rumours going around

that The Elms was going to be demolished.

So I took a further interest into photographing of the inside

before it got demolished,

to try and preserve the history of the building.

And at that time, the Georgian staircase was still up.

That's what I've been wanting, because I've got to put that back together.

We've found all these spindles and these side caps now.

I think we've even got that section there, so that's fantastic.

We can put it back like that.

I have scoured high and low trying to find a photo like that.

So I'm really grateful you've got that one.

That's fantastic.

With these extra photos, Gavin is now confident

that he'll be able to solve the puzzle of the stairs.

Meanwhile, Kieran is on the trail of another mystery.

How did all that Georgian style come to be in a farmhouse

up in the hills on the edge of the Pennines?

He's come to Derby to take a look at the city's remaining Georgian buildings.

Derby was an incredibly important place in the 18th century,

intellectually, scientifically and, therefore, in terms of taste

and design and so on for the region.

This is the kind of corner that tells you so much about Georgian architecture and how it works.

You can see that all the money is spent in the first six inches of the building.

And then behind, it's just brick, the breezeblock of its day,

the cheapest building material you could find.

The phrase was always, "Queen Anne at the front, Nell Gwyn at the back."

That's the phrase people used to describe Georgian houses.

They were all up front, and behind, a mess of whatever needed to be there.

The Elms, to me, is exactly that example.

Manor house at the front, farmhouse at the back, in the same way that these buildings in Derby are,

kind of stone temple at the front and brick outhouse at the back.

Stone temple is, of course, the look they were going for,

because Georgian architecture was inspired by the buildings of ancient Greece and Rome.

In the 18th century, it's a time of great scientists,

of the Industrial Revolution just around the corner.

And they found in the styles of Greece and Rome

something that reflected to them that sense of progress,

that sense of, you know, a country in transformation.

It was looking back and saying, "We are the new Rome. We are the new Athens."

When we look at the Georgian architecture in a place like Derby,

we see Georgian architecture doing all its tricks, if you like.

I suspect The Elms has much more modest pretensions,

in a very charming way.

I think the Clays were probably looking at the style of the time,

and the taste of the time, and saying to themselves,

"How can we bring a bit of that to a rural setting?"

And that, to me,

there's something very elegant about that, the symmetry of the building

and the restrained nature of the decoration give it a real charm.

The middle of February,

and the Georgian interiors are slowly coming back.

The plasterers have been here for six months,

with another eight weeks to go.

But now, Gavin and Ann have run into another financial crisis

that's threatening to bring the whole restoration to a standstill.

We took out a loan, a development loan, if you want to call it,

and now we are at a 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 is, that development loan has a time limit,

and now getting a normal mortgage is proving harder than expected.

We're waiting for a phone call from the bank,

hopefully to confirm we can have a mortgage.

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

Basically a lot's depending on today.

If it's a no, basically we'll have to tell the plasterers to stop working.

So, yeah, I keep checking my phone a lot for missed calls and e-mails.

Deep down, I want to be confident, but I just don't know.

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

Kate has been investigating the member of the Clay family

who owned The Elms longer than anyone else.

John Wilkinson Clay was born illegitimate

but inherited the property in 1793, and then held it for 73 years.

In his will, he was careful to make sure his housekeeper, Dorothy Roberts, was looked after.

But 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.

It may have been shocking in a very class-conscious society,

but when Dorothy died, John Wilkinson Clay was still the head of the family,

so he could do what he liked.

You've got a whole really touching story here.

Because the wife died when she was in her 60s, in 1849,

and he carried on living.

And he carried on living with Dorothy. He died in 1866, at 87.

She died a few years earlier at 80.

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, "She's not just a servant. She is a friend and 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.

Back at the house, it's late and Gavin's here alone,

because he had to let the builders and the plasterers go.

His mortgage request was turned down at the last minute.

When you've got all your life and everything depends on that moment,

that particular phone call, that moment in time,

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

Obviously, Ann was really upset about it as well.

Caitlin does understand cos she's clever, really switched on for her age,

but she did end up telling my mum that she thought we were going to lose The Elms,

which isn't quite technically the case.

With his mum, his partner and his daughter depending on him,

Gavin wasn't going to let the mortgage refusal be the end.

It was just a turning point.

From that point, I sent a load more information off

and justified why we are doing what we're doing and how we can do it.

And after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing,

that's when it came back and we got the compromise, basically.

We got 50% of what we needed.

Basically, it's going to take longer to do it

cos it's going to be me building most of it,

instead of paying someone to do it.

So, yeah, it's late, dark, and I'll be back tomorrow.

We've been following progress here at The Elms for over a year now.

It's ended up with poor Gavin having to do most of the work on his own.

I've come to find out how he's coping.

But before I do, Kieran and Kate

are going to tell them some of the things they've discovered about their extraordinary house.

Yeah, so this is a map from 1844 just describing

land ownership around North Wingfield.

So we know that the person occupying this house,

and owning many more parcels of land, was a man called John Clay.

I found a Clay in the register of baptisms.

But, very bizarrely for a family of this stature,

he's of spurious birth, which means illegitimate.

So we had one scandal about the illegitimate son,

and then we get another bit of scandal.

John Wilkinson Clay, when he writes his will,

is rather preoccupied by one of his lady servants.

She's his main focus, this lady, Dorothy Roberts.

That's a great story when I've got friends round with a bottle of wine. Marvellous!

Since the 18th century,

The Elms has stood majestically in the centre of the community.

The 21st century has seen it decay

to a point where it was doubtful it could be saved at all.

Missing floors, boarded up windows,

and the once grand fabric rotting to dust.

They've been hard at work since the beginning of 2011,

but it was always an ambitious project.

Gavin was convinced it could be done.

So much so, in fact,

that we have £5 riding on whether they could move in after a year.

So, how has he got on?

-Lovely to see you.

-And you.

-Lovely to see you.

Hand it over, then.

-Oh, he has! I'm only joking!

-I've only got 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. Quite a big delay on some finance.

-Yeah.

I was absolutely fed up with the stress and pressure over money.

But it's got sorted,

and we're getting back on track.

-Was it frightening?

-Yeah, it was extremely frightening. Extremely.

I was thinking, "We're going to lose everything.

"We're going to lose this, the other house."

I thought, "Have we been greedy?" So it was really frightening.

I'm pushing, because I want to get moving in.

Dead excited about getting in there, drink of wine, parties.

You're so good! You're so good.

Because it's hard to come back from that kind of beating,

but you're really up and at 'em again, which is great.

So they've not quite finished.

But a year ago,

the rear part of the house, where Gavin and Ann plan to live,

was in a terrible state.

The fireplace was in danger of collapse.

There were no floors and the walls were just rubble.

A less homely room would be almost impossible to imagine.

-This has come on hugely!

-Yes.

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

Yeah, it's got a great feel now.

Gavin's been focusing his efforts on getting this part of the house completed,

but it hasn't come cheap.

He's gone £55,000 over his original budget, spending 235,000,

which has meant borrowing more money.

How are finances now? Have you got enough money to finish the house?

-There's enough money to finish both halves, just.

-To do both?

-Just.

We've got most of the stuff ordered, so all the stuff's on site.

-Do you think you think you can make it to the end?

-Yes.

-I think we can just scrape through and get both halves done.

-Just.

This was always going to be somewhere to retire to after supper, wasn't it?

You can come in, light the fire, having had supper.

Which brings me neatly to the Ferrari of all kitchens.

-Can I have a look at it?

-You can.

Thank you very much.

-Ann! You've got it!

-Yay.

-You've got your dream kitchen. It is dreamy.

-It is a dream kitchen.

-Isn't it?

-Yeah.

When I first met you, you said this house

was the sort of house that little girls dream of.

I can't believe, sometimes...

After sleepless nights thinking you're going to lose everything, cos that's always my fear,

trying to have something really beyond what you should.

I know it sounds a bit weird.

But it's like, "Really, should we have this?"

Do you think you don't deserve it?

I don't know that I think I don't deserve it.

It's just, I can't quite believe it.

And when you get it you're like, "Oh, my God, this is amazing."

And Ann's house is well on its way to becoming exactly that.

On the first floor,

bathrooms are going in and bedrooms are getting done.

The half-ton beam that Gavin struggled to fit

is part of the ceiling to a guest bedroom,

and holds up the floor in their master suite.

It's in the front section of the house,

where Gavin's mum will live, that there's still the most work to do.

Before Gavin started, the windows had been torn out,

and there hadn't been access to the top floor for years.

A year on, and Suzanne may not have moved in,

but she can finally have a good look round.

This is such a beautiful, beautiful room. Isn't it?

-Yes, I love the fireplace.

-It's divine, isn't it?

-Really nice.

Gavin is steadily restoring original features that have survived.

And for the first time in years,

there's plaster on some of the walls,

done here in a more formal style, compared to the other parts of the building.

You haven't let it get you down that it's been slower than you thought?

-No, no. I thought it would be a long job, actually.

-Did you?

-Yeah.

Do you have any idea when you're moving in?

I've not got a clue, no. Probably Christmas, at this rate.

This project has always been a family affair,

but everyone has their ups and downs, including seven-year-old Caitlin.

-What does it say here?

-"To Mummy and Daddy, congratulations on The Elms.

"I'm sorry for saying about it, 'it's horrible.' It is not horrible.

"The Elms looks lovely. Love, Caitlin."

She came one day and I'd done loads of work and I said,

"What do you think of it?"

She went, "It's horrible. Hate it." I was a bit upset, like, "OK. I'm trying."

And she basically made that sorry note.

-She didn't want to hurt your feelings.

-I think then she realised,

she could see the potential in what she was going to get, so...

-Is it still your dream home?

-Yeah.

-It is, yeah.

Yeah, I mean this house, for us, for me, it will become my heart and soul.

We'll love it. It will be filled with memories.

Gavin and Ann have watched this place deteriorating for nearly ten years,

and they decided that they were the ones to save it,

even though loads had gone before and failed.

Now, they're not rich, like the Clay family who built this house.

But they are brave and they are determined.

This house has pushed them to their very limits, both emotionally and physically.

And even when the finances all went wrong

and they were in grave danger of losing everything, they stuck with it.

And soon, very soon,

Gavin, his mum, Ann and Caitlin, will be moving in

and calling this extraordinary house...

..home.

On the next Restoration Home,

a fragile old house filled with treasures.

The revealing thing up here is just what a terrible state this structure is in.

But what will it cost to rescue it?

I've spent about 100,000. So far.

And, to be honest, it doesn't look like a house any more.

It's a chimney with sticks round it.

And can it be saved at all?

We think the render is holding the walls together.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd