Rock Farm Restoration Home

Once we walked through that gate, we were hooked.

When I look at that house, I just think, "Wow".

Every time I see it I'm just like "Wow".

It's a castle. It's a castle. How can you not buy a castle?

Wow, that's some fireplace.

It's going to be an amazing home.

-We've saved the rest of its life.

-You happy?

We are way, way, way over budget.

I mean, I am actually living in a building site.

We all have to make sacrifices.

There are days when you just think, "Have we made the right decision?

"Are we doing the right thing?"

I want it to look what it looked like when it was first built.

Oh, this is just such a beautiful place.

It's like every romantic part of my brain is just firing.

You don't have any idea of how much money this is going to cost you.

I don't think either of us envisaged quite as big a project as we've actually taken on.

It's still a dream. It's a dream that we're actually doing it.

I can't wait to move in. It seems just to take forever.

It's just a nightmare.

I'm telling myself not to worry. I mean, because what can I do? I've got to finish the house.

This is Rock Farm, located deep in the Shropshire countryside.

200 years ago, it was a perfectly proportioned Georgian House.

Today, it's a crumbling shell,

cracked and contorted out of symmetry.

Empty for six years and in need of help for many more,

nature's harshest elements have penetrated this old house.

Wind, rain and ice have each taken their toll.

The crumbling plasterwork used to be a canvas for elegant decor

and the once solid brick walls behind are now certain to fail.

Rock Farm is in a perilous state.

But after years of uncertainty, there is a glimmer of hope.

Because Alex and Martin have fallen in love with it.

They met six years ago

and even though they're based 150 miles away in Bedfordshire,

Alex has always been on the lookout for a house

that could be a dream family home for their future together.

We've been looking for properties for about the last two years up this way

because my family live up here

and my mum saw a property in the paper that she thought might be suitable.

So she came on the Tuesday, phoned me Tuesday night

and said, "Well, it needs a lot of work doing to it,"

and then I said, "OK, stop.

"Tell me - what would you do? Would you buy this?"

She said, "You've got to see it. It's lovely."

So we came to see it on Sunday and we stood on the very top floor

on the landing

and we both looked at each other and I went all watery-eyed

and I said, "This is it, isn't it?"

Then we just instantly fell in love with it, didn't we?

They'd had a lot of interest in the property.

They had some property developers interested

and they turned their offers down in favour of ours,

even though ours were less, because they wanted a family to own it.

In June 2011, they had their offer of £228,500 accepted.

But it wasn't until completion in November

that the scale of the project really sunk in.

We let ourselves into our house for the first time,

got up to the top floor landing, looked at each other

and went, "What have we done?"

Now the proud owner of a derelict eight-bedroom Georgian house

with no electricity or running water,

Martin has realised he also has a lot of problems.

You can see that it's cracked

and it's been patched twice, actually, in the past.

And if you come a bit further down, I can fit my hand through the gaps.

There's another crack behind here.

We need to get this sorted and looked at.

Alex and I don't have the experience of doing this work,

or anything like it, at all.

Every corner of the house needs major work

but lack of restoration experience hasn't resulted in a lack of vision

for Alex's dream home.

So this is going to be our kitchen.

And we're going to take out this wall,

so we'll open it up into a huge kitchen-diner.

Work tops along there and we're going to have a big range cooker there.

I just love it. I love interior design.

I've decorated all the houses I've lived in but...

-I even did yours for you, didn't I?

-Yeah.

I did some of the rooms without you even knowing.

Did that for me while I was away, yeah.

Well, the plan is that we'll up roots from Bedfordshire

-and move up here and make this a family home, hopefully.

-Yeah.

-That's the plan.

-We've got a lot of rooms to fill, so...!

It has... It has deteriorated

and it has got itself into a really poor state

and hopefully we can bring it back to life again.

After we started clearing out the rubble that was still inside

and started pulling off the wallpaper,

it's almost like the house is breathing again

and it's breathing a new lease of life into it.

Being in the house and feeling it, you can feel the house change, as well.

Martin and Alex know exactly what they want from Rock Farm.

They were working sympathetically within the original 18th century envelope

with the only big change being a large kitchen-diner on the ground floor.

Other rooms will include a lounge and a library.

On the first floor, there will be three bedrooms and a luxurious bathroom

and then a further three bedrooms and a study on the top floor,

so there'll be plenty of room for this to be their home for many, many years to come.

To make this ambitious restoration even more of a challenge,

Alex and Martin are going to have to manage this build

while still living and working 150 miles away.

Alex is a business development manager and Martin works in IT.

Their jobs involve a lot of travel

but they're now effectively homeless,

so hotel rooms and house-sits will have to do until the work is done.

It is going to be a challenge to manage the build from Dunstable and London whilst working

and having builders make decisions and working on our house

two and a half hours north.

That is going to be a challenge.

To have a hope of getting this project done on time and on budget,

Alex and Martin are having to put their trust in someone.

That man is award-winning local builder Glynne Williams.

His first concern, like Martin, was the cracks that have appeared

all over the house

and a closer look on the outside shows a pretty major problem

with the brickwork.

This movement has caused all the brickwork to fracture and move out,

which has moved out about three-quarters of an inch.

Over time, the whole face of the building has bowed out,

weakening the entire structure.

You can see the actual line of the brickwork,

how much it's starting to come out.

This is quite a movement in this structure here

and it's happening all over the property.

These have all got to be stitched back in and put in position.

There are tricky times ahead for both Glynne and Rock Farm.

It's now my turn to try and understand

why they have risked so much for such a frail old house.

-Hello, Martin.

-Caroline.

-Your gorgeous house!

-I know.

-Your doll's house.

It sounds like it was a bit of a whim.

When we saw it, it just ticked every box.

So, yeah, it was a bit of a whim.

There was no second viewing.

It was just see it once and buy it. "That's what we want."

What is your budget for your build?

-172,000.

-Gosh.

That sounds like an extraordinarily specific sum of money.

So you're in charge of money.

And, Martin, what are you looking after? The build element?

-Or...?

-No.

-No, no.

-No?

-LAUGHTER

-What are you looking after, Martin?

-I'm just trying to do a day job and work.

-You're looking after paying for it.

-I'm paying for it, yes, in a way.

-When are you planning to move in?

-Hopefully the end of June.

Wow.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-It's April now.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Gosh, that's really, really soon.

I'd better come in and have a look.

LAUGHTER

OK, let's have a look.

Oh, wow! That's some fireplace.

We uncovered this. This was one of the first jobs that we did.

This was all bricked up and we had a small tiled fireplace in front of it,

and so we took that out and uncovered it.

-So are you going to use this fireplace?

-Yes. We'll have a log-burner and keep the inglenook.

-What room's this going to be?

-This will be our lounge.

So you'll have your sofas and things?

-Yeah, we've ordered the sofas.

-You've ordered your sofas.

In fact, they phoned to tell us they were ready,

so we're a bit ahead of schedule.

Yeah. I don't think you're ready for them, do you?

So come June, when you're moving in,

how is this going to look, this room?

So we've got charcoal carpet going down because it's a bit of a walk-through.

And I've just found that out.

Have I just told you something you didn't know, Martin?

It's on the mood board.

Incredibly, Alex has already planned the decor for every single room

of her derelict house.

How do you feel about mood boards?

I... Look...

I can't get involved. This is a great idea for me

and it helps me say what I like and what I don't like and I can understand it.

-It doesn't really matter.

-I really struggle between this

and actually putting it into our house.

If you had a mood board, what would it have on it?

It would have mountains, it would have push bikes,

it would have racing cars and definitely not soft furnishings.

A vision for the project is great

but having sold their home to buy this property,

they're financing the entire build via a self-build mortgage.

Money is only released as different parts of the build are completed.

Even if it all goes to plan, this project is still a big stretch.

Financially - I know it's a big outlay - does it worry you?

I know Alex is in complete control of the sums

but are there nights when you wake up and think, "I've taken on more than I can cope with?"

I have got a concern about the finances

and I think we both have.

We're not fortunate enough to have pots and pots of money

but we're very fortunate in the way that the mortgage has been organised

and the opportunity that we've got here to do this.

But they're at the mercy of the build schedule

and with Glynne now uncovering crumbling chimneys

and rotten woodwork all over this house,

it's clear what an enormous task these novices have set themselves.

For a first project, this is quite a bold project

and yet you don't seem remotely fazed by any of it.

Do you feel as confident as you look?

I do, actually, and I don't know whether I...

Maybe that's incredibly naive of me

but I just think it will be OK and it will all work out

and I have a really strong feeling that this house was meant to be.

We had several properties we looked at that we thought were the ones

and they didn't work out for various different reasons

and we found this and I just get this real sense

that it's meant for us.

As the new owners attempt to save its crumbling walls,

we will begin our historical investigation into Rock Farm.

Historian Dr Kate Williams will scour the archives

for information about the house and the land that it sits in.

Whilst our architectural expert, Kieran Long, starts

his investigation at the house itself.

Well, it's great, isn't it?

It's a really charming red-brick house

with all of these Georgian windows.

But then all around this symmetrical loveliness is farmyard.

With this stable block to my left

and then this really ugly barn of some kind

jutting out at 45 degrees from the house.

So it's a strange combination.

The barn is a bit of a mystery.

Inside the house however, Kieran finds

a classically composed, perfect Georgian form.

This is the room that you'd expect to find in a Georgian house.

This is a house that needs a drawing room. This is a drawing room.

We've got this modest fireplace. You can imagine a Georgian fire surround.

And what's interesting about this is this is a room for leisure,

for free time.

Imagine the kind of farmer who has leisure time.

This is a wealthy man, a man who has workers out there

during daylight hours

and has enough time to come home and spend time either with his family

or perhaps for entertaining.

Up amongst the roof trusses,

more secrets that point towards Rock Farm's pedigree are revealed.

It's really interesting about the construction of this house.

It's all made of brick.

It's not just the facing, exterior surface, it's the whole building

and the reason that's interesting is that you might expect a rural building

to be full of kind of rubble and rubbish and so on.

But here they've chosen to use bricks.

They look like handmade bricks to me.

We don't see any stamps of manufacturers on there,

we don't see any of that distinctive industrialised process.

Mass production of brick in Britain wasn't until the early 19th century.

So to more accurately date the build,

he goes in search of hard evidence.

One of the things about this building is that it does have a date stone

but it's so faded that we can hardly tell how old this building is from that stone, unfortunately.

It's tantalising but what we do have is these really distinctive windows.

Take a look at this window reveal here.

It's almost flush with the face of the brickwork

and that is really distinctive of earlier Georgian styles,

earlier styles before building regulations came into play,

before fire regulations.

Because the further the timberwork is towards the face of the building

the more likely it is to catch fire.

So it's a late 18th century building, I would guess, a survival of an earlier style.

So Kieran suspects Rock Farm may have been built

in the 1780s or 1790s.

But to try and get a clearer sense of the land it sits in,

Kate begins her search at the Shropshire archives.

She has found a history of the local parish of Dudleston

and it's full of surprises.

This book has give me a real lead.

In the section about the Dudleston farms,

it says here the Rock Farm, formerly called the Great Farm,

belonged to the Edwards family.

Clearly this story will be about more than Rock Farm house itself.

The Edwards family are listed as owners of the Great Farm,

which appears to predate our house on the same site.

Kate now has a name but quickly hits a dead end in Shropshire.

Some more detective work takes her to the National Library of Wales,

where she discovers the Edwards family are well documented.

In the 18th century, Thomas Edwards was the lord of the manor.

He had two daughters but for the 1700s, he had an unusually progressive view of inheritance.

There's a really rich archive about the Edwards family

but what I find interesting here is

that it doesn't have to be a boy that inherits the farm.

Thomas Edwards, unlike many men of his time,

decided his daughter, Frances, was able to look after the estate,

was able to administer it.

So clearly it really suggests

that he had a very interesting and rather progressive view of women.

So we now know that the land Rock Farm sits in

was inherited by Frances Edwards

during a time when, typically, any available male relation would.

But what would happen to Frances Edwards

and how does Alex and Martin's house fit into the story?

Work is pushing ahead on site

but Rock Farm's present day owners are nowhere to be seen.

They're still living in and out of suitcases

and it's beginning to take its toll.

Last week, I had three different hotels

and stayed in three different places

and you stayed in two or three - I can't remember now.

And with friends as well.

And this week will be the same.

-We are essentially nomadic at the moment.

-No fixed abode.

We're of no fixed abode.

It's certainly testing and trying.

-Things like me driving off with the room key.

-That doesn't go down well.

On the build, Glynne and his team are getting on well.

Up on the scaffolding

the enormous structural problems with the brickwork are starting to be resolved.

Reinforced steel stitching rods are stabilising the walls a length at a time,

hopefully securing it for another 200 years.

You can see the cracks in the brickwork.

We put these stainless steel rods in, grout over the top of it,

another stainless steel rod in, grout,

and then leave a gap then for pointing up with lime pointing

to get the outside of the building structurally sound.

Because it's a listed building, all the restoration work Glynne does

has to be approved and monitored by the man in charge of conservation in Shropshire, Colin Richards.

The craftsmen that are working here,

they're bringing in the best of modern technology

to repair and patch up the building.

Sometimes that can mean that we don't have to be so invasive in the repairs.

We are custodians of these buildings

in this sort of big time-line of history.

But inside the house, as they strip this listed building back,

Glynne has discovered a knock-on effect of the bowed walls.

Basically, what's happened is

that as this front of the house here has moved out,

the rain has been getting in at the back of all the main structure.

It's rotted the end joists here and these joists have pulled out,

so there's no strength here any longer.

The combination of rotting beams and bowing walls

has lead to a big problem underneath Alex's new dream bathroom.

The biggest problem is this existing spine beam.

There's a lot of flexibility in it, a lot of movement and bounce in it.

With it being the main bathroom above this,

we've got to find a way of counteracting all this movement as best we can.

But actually, there's nothing carrying the weight of this floor.

But Glynne can't simply shore up the floor.

Any fix will need to be signed off by the conservation officer

and agreed by the architect.

-That's got to stay, has it?

-Yes.

Alex maybe wants to move in as quickly as possible

but we've got to get the main issues done first.

Once we get over these issues, sort them out,

then we've got a chance of looking at time when we can say,

well, you could be in within two months, three months, whatever.

While they try and find a solution with the architect,

dust is gathering on Alex's new bath

and with no mains water and unstable floors,

she's a long way from relaxing in it.

To try and find where Rock Farm fits

into the rich time-line of British architecture,

Kieran has come to the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.

In the regional collection, there is a serious of books

that identifies the unique architectural character

of every single part of the country.

Kieran focuses straight in on the volumes relating to Shropshire.

This book is really nice

because it describes 18th-century architecture as having

particular characteristics in Shropshire,

which I think chime, somehow, with Rock Farm.

It says, "a distaste for obvious embellishment,

"a pride in their brickwork

"and a comfortable sense of conforming to a fashion

"that was unlikely to pass quickly."

We have a sense of a brick Georgian architecture

that has a certain kind of restrained character to it

and Rock Farm certainly feels like that kind of building.

So I'm really excited that we've found a regional inflection

of a national architectural style that Rock Farm fits into really well.

The mid 18th century was a time of economic boom in Shropshire.

Farmers and landowners were getting rich

and creating farmhouses using this particularly plain style

of Georgian architecture.

One such house is Caynton House, just 26 miles from Rock Farm.

It is much larger and dates back to 1742

but the similarities are clear to see.

This is a much grander house than Rock Farm

but it's of a very similar character.

It's a prototype, if you like, of what Rock Farm was being influenced by

and the DNA of Rock Farm is really here.

This has the same kind of symmetrical arrangement.

It has this very plain, restrained Georgian style

but, you know, with added grandeur and added elegance.

If we were in Derbyshire or in one of these other, more grandiose counties,

you might expect it to have a portico coming out all the way to here

with a porte cochere for carriages and so on,

highly decorated with Corinthian capitals or whatever you might find.

Here, all of the modelling is done in the depth of the door case,

which is about a foot.

You can see that the brick has been used almost as a plastic material

but always in this kind of flat, restrained, unmoulded way.

It's so simple, so elegant

and allows for this kind of beauty and craftsmanship

and also the slightly more rustic charm of something like Rock Farm.

Like at Caynton House, one of the defining characteristics of Rock Farm

is the simple symmetrical placement of its windows.

Unfortunately, these are currently a major cause for concern on site.

All but one of the windows needs replacing

but due to a miscommunication, they've been recreated incorrectly.

What we've got here is the big boxes on the side.

These actually carry the sashes and the weights in here,

which work the sash windows themselves.

So the problem we've got is that he's made them to fit behind the back of the brickwork.

With the conservation we can't cut any brickwork out

to get the sashes to fit.

The bill for the windows is just under £19,000,

one of the largest single costs of the entire build.

But they've also, critically, taken weeks

to carefully make by hand.

The window company have requested an urgent meeting with Alex and Martin

but they are 150 miles away in Dunstable.

When we got the email from the window company

to say that there was going to be a delay on the windows

and he suggested that he wasn't going to do any more work

until we'd had a site meeting,

well, he sent that on a Saturday evening

and there was no option to have a site meeting.

We were both heading down south Monday morning at half past four

and we weren't going to be back until Friday evening.

So we lose then another week.

Already several weeks behind schedule,

the windows are now jeopardising the whole build.

But most worrying, their funds have been frozen until it's sorted out.

The more concerning point is the fact

that until they've put the windows in,

we can't finish our structural phase of our mortgage.

So we can't release the first phase of money

until the windows are completed.

To add to their financial troubles,

the scaffolding is also having to stay up longer

at an additional cost.

My time is up on the length of the time of the scaffolding we've hired it for.

So from now, it's all - well, the last two weeks, actually -

it's costing us money now, which we don't need, you know.

But we've just got to try and sort this situation out as quickly as possible.

On a build as complex as this,

miscommunication can happen

but this one could result in a major setback for Alex and Martin.

Kate is continuing her investigation

into the owners of Rock Farm and its land in the 18th century.

She's already learnt that it was inherited by Frances Edwards.

She didn't live there but rented it out.

Because of the agricultural boom in Shropshire during the 1700s,

it must have been very lucrative,

so she's returned to the Shropshire archives

to try and learn more.

What I've found is this brilliant document signed by Frances Edwards

in 1719,

in which she essentially leases the money to create a school

for the poor children of Dudleston, 24 of them.

She wants them to read, to write, to learn to sew if they're girls

and she really is also investing in apprenticeships as well.

So this really quite an exceptional piece of philanthropy.

There were no state schools at the time.

Schools were up to the people

and very few people endowed schools in this way.

It was thought that the poor could make their own way,

so clearly, Frances Edwards is setting up a charity

to look after the local people and that's a significant act.

So from 1719, as the area boomed, so did education for young people.

This investment in the future, paid for by renting the land Alex and Martin own today,

is beautifully commemorated at Dudleston Church.

"Mrs Edwards of Kilhendre left by will a house and garden

"situated at the chapel

"for the purpose of instructing and teaching 12 boys and 12 girls born of poor parents

"and living in the township.

"The boys to read and write, the girls to read, sew and knit."

It tells us a lot about Frances Edwards.

She was not just a local landowner.

She had a massive effect on the local area.

Children in such a rural area being taught to read and write -

it was a really forward-thinking idea of hers

and still now, 300 years later, the church commemorates it.

Alex and Martin are doing their weekly pilgrimage to Shropshire,

a tedious 150-mile drive from their base in Bedfordshire.

We're quite sad, really.

We've broken it up into little phases,

so we know how long each segment of the journey takes, roughly.

I don't think either of us can wait until we can finally unpack

and land all of our belongings in one location,

unpack and start to settle in.

On site, old rotten windows are still in place

but Glynne has managed to fix the floors.

He agreed with the conservation authorities

he could put new beams alongside the old, which must stay

even though they're rotten.

So none of the old fabric will be removed from the house.

After so many so issues, Alex and Martin are desperate

so see how the rest of the build is coming along.

Something's always changed and because they've been doing so much work on the outside, it's great

because you just come to the house and something's different.

More of the roof's been done, the chimneys have been finished off.

They stand taller now

and it just finishes the top of the house off nicely.

I'm just looking up at the roof now and noticing it isn't quite square.

It's not 100%,

so I think that's part of the charm of the house, as well -

we can't all of that otherwise it would be a new house.

The house is going to reveal itself as the scaffolding comes down and that will be really nice.

Upstairs, it's the first chance Martin's had to see the beams that Glynne has repaired.

All of this was costly, unplanned work.

Originally to lift the floor up - that wasn't in budget.

To support the beam, that wasn't in budget.

To reply and support this floor from the topside wasn't in budget.

And now we need to anchor to the beam itself - that wasn't in budget.

And, of course, we're having to pay for the architect's time

and the builders' time to try to come up with plan A, plan B, plan C

or whatever we end up doing.

It'll be fine.

I mean, at the end of the day, we can say it wasn't in budget

but it needs to be done, so we just have to find a way

where we compromise something else

or something else has to wait to be done.

Alex may be buoyant but that 18th-century brickwork has cost her a fortune.

On his first visit, Kieran suspected the bricks were handmade,

so has returned with an expert.

Tony Mugridge has been making bricks by hand in the traditional way

for 36 years,

so is an incredible link to the 18th-century brickmaker.

So, Tony, what can you tell us, looking in detail at the brick,

about the people who were making this house and the techniques they were using?

Everything. The bricks are like a fossil of 1780s life.

You've got grass marks here.

This shows it was made in the summer, this brick.

You've got an autumn mark there, with that leaf.

These marks here are what are called skink or hack marks

and it shows that when the bricks were made, the next bricks on the top

would be put on in line but with a finger's space between.

I see. And these marks are the gaps between the bricks

-that allow air to circulate to dry the bricks.

-Yeah.

-They're pretty chunky fingers.

-They are very chunky fingers

because you have to allow for the shrinkage of the brick as well.

When this brick was made it was 10% bigger

and it's shrunk in drying and it's shrunk in firing.

So there's my fingers and I've got small fingers anyway

but you can see that's about the same size as my fingers

but his hands were 10% bigger than mine.

-So he was a big guy.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And we see some smaller marks here, too.

-I believe that's a child.

A child has spaced those out, which shows that the brickmaker is employing children.

He's employing his own children.

A tax on bricks was introduced in 1784,

which was resulted in their standardisation.

As these were handmade, it tells us

Rock Farm was definitely built before that date.

There's even evidence that there was more than one craftsman involved.

The way I can tell you that is by the size of the brick.

Every brickmaker would have his own mould.

It would be registered with that mould - that was his brick size.

This is a long brick here

but if you look here, this is a short one.

So this is not just a typical, Georgian house.

This is a very important, large estate house, if you like,

a big house where it needed two brickmakers, at least, working on it,

maybe three, and with all their families.

This would be a big communal job just before the brick tax.

It's like the end of an era.

Tony has been able paint an extraordinary picture

of the process involved in creating Rock Farm.

But as he heads off, the old barn butted up against it

catches his eye.

Bit of a strange building on the side here. Is that an extension?

Yeah. This relationship is a complete mystery,

-this weird 45-degree angle.

-Oh, yes, yeah.

-This is wonderful.

-Yeah, yeah.

Oh, fantastic. Tudor. This is Tudor style.

So, Tony, this building's a mystery to us.

Well, it's really very exciting, this building

because this building I can tell you straightaway predates the Georgian building.

It's the size is the giveaway straightaway.

They're narrow. These are 16th or even perhaps 15th century bricks.

Wow. So these could be 500, 600 years old, these bricks.

-Oh, yes.

-That's absolutely amazing.

We're talking about a building that probably predates Hampton Court Palace.

That's a lot older than we expected to find.

What does that tell us about this building?

-Did they make cowsheds out of brick?

-No, no.

This building was state of the art.

This is the most prestigious building you could possibly have.

This isn't like a timber-framed house.

This is saying, "I don't need timber, I can have brick."

-So there's no way that this was a farm building.

-No.

So you're saying that this is a fragment of an older house or...?

I'd be very comfortable to say this is either a complete older house

or it is just part of an older house.

-You've got a very important structure.

-Really extraordinary.

Somebody with a lot of money has put this building here.

With this revelation,

a whole new investigation into the importance of Alex and Martin's property can begin.

Meanwhile, in a double bedroom just outside Dunstable

with an en-suite and tea and coffee facilities,

there's been a breakthrough on the windows.

They're accepting it as their error,

so they'll be remade, they'll be done properly

and within a few weeks, we will have the windows.

SHE LAUGHS

And more importantly, it hasn't stopped you

-from ordering the wallpaper or anything else.

-SHE LAUGHS

Or the kitchen.

After a five-week delay, they're finally fitted

and crucially, the next part of their mortgage is paid.

The extra work and other hold-ups has added at least two months

onto their projected six-month build.

The scaffolding is finally removed,

which is a relief both financially and emotionally.

Today's a fantastic day to see the scaffolding peeling off

and seeing what's underneath and the work that's gone in,

where they've stitched it, the repointing, the new windows.

It does make me feel that we are that bit closer

to the end of this project.

It's a great day but it's been a tricky few months.

It's time I went to pay them another visit.

Lovely to see the house looking so very beautiful.

What was it like when you first saw that lovely face?

It will be really nice when the front door bit's finished.

Yes, it's got a missing tooth, hasn't it?

You just think, "See a dentist."

You were meant to be moving in around now, weren't you?

-Yeah, we were hoping to be in at the end of June.

-Yeah.

We're two months late. We will be two months late.

But the biggest challenge for us has been the logistics

of us and where we're living.

I think it's probably a testament to our relationship

that we've managed to get this far

and, well, we still like each other, I think.

-And is the end in sight for you? Have you got a date to move in?

-Yes.

-So five weeks from now.

-Oh, that's great.

Just to get this far, they've travelled thousands of miles to and fro

and agonised over every decision on this build.

But where they could, they decided to retain some of those original windows

that made them fall in love with Rock Farm.

-This one is original, is it?

-Yeah.

What I love about the window is the fact that where they've had to replace panes of glass,

you can see where that's happened

but there are equally some original, very discoloured, very pitted pieces of glass in the panels

and they actually tell the story.

You can see where different people have lived in the house.

You can see the bits we've done. I quite like that

because it says, "This is the journey this window's gone on."

You've very keen to do that, Alex, aren't you?

-You're keen to do the right thing by the property.

-Absolutely.

This has stood for 200 years and I think we're really lucky

that we can now live in it and enjoy it as a home

but we shouldn't ride roughshod over it.

But everywhere we have been able to, we've wanted to maintain its integrity.

What we quite often fail to take notice of

is the emotional cost of a build like this.

-Did you have any idea about that?

-Probably not

but then if we found this house again and knew what we know now,

there is no doubt in my mind that we would do it again

because despite the stress, despite how tired I feel all the time,

and despite the hard work, I love this house

and it's going to be an amazing home, absolutely amazing.

Bless your heart! I think, well, it is going to be a delightful home.

But I think it's OK also to say it takes its toll. I think that's OK.

Even though there are holes in the floor and unplastered walls downstairs,

on the top floor, Alex is finally getting a chance to put her mood boards into action.

-This is Martin's study.

-This is my favourite room.

Are you going for the greys or are you going to...?

No, we scrapped the grey on the walls

but we found this beautiful wallpaper.

-Let's have a look at that.

-So it's going to...

Let's see it out. It's only going to go on this wall but...

So I said to Alex that she's got complete veto

over the rest of the house for decorating,

-except my study.

-Yes.

-My study, I can do what I like.

So Alex said, "This is the wallpaper you can have."

-That you chose for him.

-But you do like it.

-I do like it.

-"You chose this wallpaper, darling."

-Do you like it?

-I do like it, which is lucky.

It is, yeah. It wouldn't matter if you didn't, would it?

As Alex and Martin are starting to put 21st-century touches into Rock Farm,

Kate is back on her search into the past.

This time she's trying to find out more about the ancient building

that stands next to it.

Taking her lead from Tony the brick expert,

she's now looking into possible owners of the land in the 15th and 16th centuries.

She starts with the ancestors of Frances Edwards.

I've managed to trace the Edwards family right back to the 16th century

and what I've found is that they're descended from a very important man

called Hugh Edwards.

He's a very significant merchant.

It says here that he acquired in 1549 a considerable portion of the tenements in Shrewsbury

from King Edward VI,

so this is a pretty significant man with lines to the King.

And not only that, he also founded the local grammar school.

It's fascinating.

In 1551, it says, principally through his influence at court,

the grant was obtained under which was founded the Royal Free Grammar School of Shrewsbury,

which still exists today.

This is a very important, very influential man.

With family ties to the site,

was he perhaps even the kind of important landowner

to have been able to build the Tudor brick building we've uncovered at Rock Farm?

Since discovering the old building,

Tony Mugridge has thought of little else.

It's been preying on my mind.

While I've been making bricks I've been thinking about that maker.

So I've been investigating. I just got carried away.

It got worse and worse

and I've spent the last two or three days without any sleep

because I can't sleep because all I'm thinking of is, "Who is that person? Who is that person?"

Yesterday afternoon, I got it.

Finally we have some answers about the old barn

that's sat unnoticed next to Martin and Alex's house for generations.

Without doubt, Robert Bird has to be the brickmaker for that.

The bricks are his mould size.

The way the bricks are made is the same as bricks which we know were made by him

in other places.

There's no doubt at all that this man made the bricks for Rock Farm.

He was a contemporary of the King's brickmaker.

He worked with him. He was one of his business partners.

That suddenly makes it a really, really exciting project

and it certainly shows that the Great Farm is one of the most important buildings in the country,

never mind just locally.

Robert Bird was a master brickmaker,

listed as working in the area in the second half of the 15th century.

He would have lived on site with his family

as the structure was taking shape.

Thanks to a lifetime of expertise,

Tony suspects it was built around 1490.

He even has a theory on what it was.

The building at the Great Farm is a kitchen block.

In other words, it pretty well just contains a huge fire grate

and rooms above for storage.

It's the kitchen block for a large country house,

probably a manor house or something like that.

The kitchen block has to be separate from it

because in that period, in the 15th and 16th centuries,

it was very common for houses to go up in flames

because the kitchens were part of the houses.

So the brick barn is the last remnant of a once-grand Tudor timber house,

built by one of Britain's finest brick-makers

and is a discovery of national importance.

The original plaster for the 18th-century house at Rock Farm

would have been made with lime mortar.

Traditional plasterer Biaggio is using the same materials that were originally used.

But he also has another challenge on his hands.

We've got a lot of the old lime render still left on the walls

and we have to work with that - that's got to stay in place

because of the conservation work.

So this was put on hundreds of years ago.

So to marry up to this old stuff we're using lime mortar.

On the outside you have like a hard, crisp top coat to it

but underneath it's soft.

The beauty of it is it's breathable,

so it allows the whole building to breathe,

so that's why we use it.

But at least he'll find it easier to make his mix

because at last, Glynne has running water on site.

It's a great way forward now and now this is working it's fantastic.

At least we know we're well on the way

and they can have a bath and everything else to go with it, then.

So that'll be fantastic, yes.

Alex and Martin can't wait any longer and are on their way.

Much of the work on the house is not finished

but they're moving their stuff in.

Today's incredibly exciting because all the vision of everything

finally comes together in the last week or two.

So the decorating. The carpet's going down today.

That just pulls everything together in the house.

But just when Glynne thought he'd fixed all the major structural problems in the house,

he's taken a further look in the cellar

and found another rotten beam,

with the library above it in danger of collapse.

Whilst we're moving in, trying to find our stuff and unpack

and work out which room is which,

downstairs in the cellar Glynne's fixing a fairly major problem

with the floorboards in the cellar.

Normally, you go through every little thing

and you find everything and put it right

before anybody moves in.

But Alex and Martin want to move in as quickly as possible,

so we've had to work around them.

We're absolutely shattered at the moment

but it's quite exciting at the same time.

Before we discover whether Alex and Martin have completed

their mammoth restoration of Rock Farm,

they're going to find out all that we have

about their extraordinary house.

Of course, you've got a date stone.

Have you ever been able to decipher what that date stone says?

We think it says 1792 but it's been quite worn away by the weather.

Hasn't it? It's really a tease, that thing.

You have this very flush brickwork and window timberwork

and that's before fire regulations forced people

to set the windows back in the reveals.

That always tells us that this is a late 18th-century building.

Frances Edwards, this landowner who didn't have a family of her own,

she decides she wants to set up a local school,

a school for the local people, 12 boys and 12 girls.

She's renting out Rock Farm - your farm -

so she can have the money to make a school.

Dudleston church is a Rock Farm and Edwards family treasure house.

It is a monument to how significant and important they were.

We're going to go now to go and see this.

But the most important discovery about the site

was the old barn next to the house itself.

Here to explain that revelation is master of all things brick,

Tony Mugridge.

The bricks of the building, I can say pretty well without doubt,

they date from about between 1490 and 1500.

-Wow!

-You've got a 15th-century building.

-Oh! Gosh.

-It's a kitchen.

-A kitchen?

-It's a kitchen.

This is the best example of a 15th-century kitchen in the country.

It's really exciting.

If the brick expert is excited, how do the owners feel?

Never did we think that it had this much importance.

-Alex, you're getting a bit emotional.

-I am getting a bit emotional.

Erm... I think I always thought we were really lucky

to have the opportunity to do the house and to be able to buy it

and I felt like we were custodians of something,

but... Wow.

Alex and Martin got the keys to Rock Farm in November 2011

The builders moved in in January 2012.

Alex decided that she was going to do this entire build in six months.

It's now February 2013. Let's see how they've got on.

When Alex and Martin took on this house,

the bowing walls had compromised almost every structural component

within the house -

beams weakened by weather and bricks cracked out of line.

Glynne the builder was finding issues right up until moving-in day

but now it's been saved.

-Hello!

-Hello.

-Hello.

Well done! Look at your beautiful house.

-You did it!

-We did, we did.

You did it and you almost did it to the timescale, too.

Yeah, we were about... We were about two months over.

That's really good going.

When I first saw the house, the brickwork was in quite a bad way.

It looks fantastic now. What's that journey been?

You can see where Glynne's done some stitching on the building.

I quite like the fact that you can actually still see where he's been

and where we'd had the really bad water damage at the front.

It's cleaned up from what it was but it's still visible.

It just tells the journey that the house has been on.

The house is lovely but I'm assuming you're going to ditch it

now that you've got such an important barn.

Well, if we leave it, it will fall down.

There's no two ways about that. It will fall down.

So I guess the next question you're going to ask is, "Would you do something like this again?"

-We're going to have to.

-THEY LAUGH

We're going to have to.

Yes! Almost immediately, without a breath between the two.

The interior of this listed property was dilapidated,

with large cracks in the walls, rotten beams and no mains water.

It was a huge job but Alex and Martin saw beyond the decay

and knew what they wanted.

Downstairs, two of the rooms have been knocked into one

to create the kitchen diner Alex has always dreamed of.

Very, very nice work.

-You must be pleased with this.

-Love it.

Your budget was... When you started, what was it?

-£172,000 was our budget.

-Yeah.

-We have gone over our budget.

-Mm-hm.

We had to do some work that we couldn't have planned for,

so we've come in about £30,000 over what we originally intended to spend.

But 30, actually given the size of the property,

isn't an outrageous overspend, is it?

No, it means that we've done the whole thing for 430,000.

You've got a wonderful house for that,

a really beautiful house for that.

You've done it immaculately.

In the living room, the windows were beyond repair.

The old tiled fireplace was removed

to reveal this large inglenook hearth.

Oh! Alex!

It's exactly as you said it would be.

It certainly is.

It's gorgeous.

This is a triumph, isn't it?

Because the last time I saw it it was being bashed in

and you didn't even know there was a fireplace there.

The mood boards we talked about have come to life

and unlike most people, it hasn't changed.

It's exactly the way you described it.

It couldn't. I'd already ordered the sofas.

LAUGHTER

Could you always see how this room was going to look?

Yes. Without question.

The whole house. You see, I don't find that odd

but clearly it is.

Perfect fireplace, perfect decor.

Very clever woman. I can't say it too much.

The floorboards in the library were falling apart

and had to be supported by reinforced beams in the cellar

but it has been turned into an elegant space,

retaining the original wall cupboards.

So pretty, this staircase.

And upstairs, after fixing the floor...

making good the cracks in the walls...

and replastering, the bedrooms are a haven of luxury.

After extensive work on the floor

and working within strict planning rules,

the plumber ran pipes into this former bedroom

and Alex's piece de resistance has been created.

Oh!

The much-celebrated bathroom.

It looks beautiful. I love the wallpaper.

And there were issues with this very solid bath

because it's heavy, isn't it?

The bath had to be this bath

and it had to be right in the middle of the room,

which is the wrong place for a bath to be.

Yes, I did cause some problems

but it's worth persevering because I couldn't be more pleased with the room.

I love this here. Is that just to hide the pipework for your tap?

-THEY LAUGH

-No, no, no. That's actually Alex's wine rest.

-And have you done that?

-Yes.

You haven't just go the bath because you've got a lovely shower in here.

-Yep.

-Yes.

-It's very chic, isn't it?

-It's quite masculine, the shower,

-That's pretty much my shower.

It's very decadent.

And was that always the plan, to have it behind the secret wall?

Yeah. We had a few debates

over whether or not it should be enclosed with a glass shower screen

because Martin was concerned that it would feel a bit like you were in a coffin.

So as you can see, clearly, on the debate front,

it's a solid wall.

Of course it is because that's what you wanted.

You've got to give it to her, haven't you?

It's quite irritating. I could cheerfully kill her. I don't know how you feel.

From Martin's very own shower to his very own study.

Once a leaky void, this now has a charming, masculine feel,

thanks largely to Alex's choice of wallpaper.

Given that the place is looking immaculate now,

it's hard to imagine that there were any low points

but what was your lowest moment?

For me, probably almost a year ago today,

actually living in hotel.

That sounds quite easy to do

but actually when you're doing it, it's very difficult.

Your whole worldly belongings are in the back of the car

and in a hotel room - it's not a very nice place to be.

Was there a low point for you, particularly, Alex?

I think it links in to what Martin said

but actually it was probably more about being away from the house -

that was really probably my low.

It was at the top of the stairs that you realised

that this was going to be a commitment for you,

that you were actually going to take this house on.

How does it feel a year on, looking back?

I think we were a bit crazy but I'm incredibly proud of what we've achieved.

Is this going to be forever, this house?

I fell in love with the house - we fell in love with the house -

before we bought it.

The house, emotionally, means more to us now

and I've never felt that before for a house.

I certainly can't imagine us leaving here.

Transforming something and saving something has given me so much pleasure.

Alex and Martin have truly saved Rock Farm.

Without their determination and their vision

in the face of terrible obstacles,

I believe it wouldn't be here today.

In fact, when the experts stripped it back,

they thought it only had a couple of years

before it was just a pile of bricks on the ground.

And that's because Alex and Martin fell in love with it.

They have saved a 200-year-old house,

its stories and its characters

but now... they've got to do the same thing

for a 500-year-old one.

It's crumbling, it's leaning, it's very rare.

But I think with Alex and Martin in charge,

well, just like Rock Farm, it's been rescued already.

Next time on Restoration Home.

They were enchanted by a fairy-tale castle.

Once we walked through that gate, we were hooked.

And are battling to save it.

It was going to fall down if somebody didn't take it over now.

But as costs shoot out of control...

I woke up in a cold sweat, thinking, "What have we done?"

..will their dream turn into a nightmare?

We have literally sunk our savings into this trench.

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