Grand Designs: Lincolnshire couple build miniature village of lakeside roundhouses to create their family superhome

'Celtic meets Star Trek' inside this cylindrical multiplex home near the North Sea coast.
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Kristy Gray18 September 2019

What happens if you take the structure of an Iron Age Celtic roundhouse and give it a 21st-century twist, with an ever-so-slight nod to the Starship Enterprise?

We've seen some pretty bonkers builds on Grand Designs in the past 20 years, but this big-budget circular superhome in Lincolnshire is definitely one of the most complicated and ambitious projects attempted to date.

Paul Wilkinson, 46, and his wife Amy, 39, are so fascinated by ancient roundhouses built by the Celtic/British Iceni tribe almost 2,000 years ago that they modelled their forever home on these circular structures.

"It's always been our dream to build our own home, and to build one that's really strange and really unique," Paul tells the Channel 4 show, as planning permission is granted and the build is set to commence.

"We're interested in history, especially the Celts and the Celtic design of the roundhouses and that's inspired us to build our house," adds Amy.

Watch their progress

The plan

Paul searched online and spotted the 16-acre plot of marshland in picturesque Lincolnshire countryside by the North Sea coast, buying it the very next day for £140,000. The couple then set up a holiday let and leisure business, Lakeside Fishing Lodges, which Amy runs.

However, the section of the site that boasts the biggest and best lakeside views was reserved for a home for themselves and their children, Terry and Johnny, and Paul's elder daughter, Lucy.

Local architect Robert Lowe worked with them to design the complex 360-degree structure. Eight cylindrical timber drums, prefabricated off-site, would become the main structures to house the living room, kitchen, five en suite bedrooms, a swimming pool and spa room, a music and games room and luxury dog kennels.

Three interlocking drums connecting the main house would be linked by raised wooden walkways suspended above the fishing lake.

"So I shouldn't think of it as a house, but more a series of interconnecting buildings with walkways between them, just like a little Celtic village, almost?" asks Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud as he considers the complex and ambitious task ahead, which the couple tell him they aim to complete within a year.

The challenges

Cylindrical houses are difficult to construct, yet Paul is convinced he can finish the entire “mini village” within a year and within a budget of £1 million. A project of this scale and intricacy would usually be given a timeline of two or three years.

"On a project as complicated as this, it's not a matter of if things go wrong - it's when," says McCloud as the build commences in May 2018.

Keen to plug the project into the local economy, the construction of this huge, curvy multiplex is carried out mainly by Paul's friends, on handshake deals rather than contracts.

Within weeks, concrete is being poured into the maze-like foundations of the main house, causing McCloud to reference cult sci-fi hit Star Trek as he likens the scene, when viewed from above, to the Starship Enterprise.

The complex timber-framed superstructure, which is made up of 117 laminated wooden posts and beams and 153 curved external panels, is prefabricated to exacting measurements at a site 20 miles up the road. The £150,000 frames need to be accurate to the millimetre or a total remake would be required.

The complicated build proves difficult and the couple’s ambitious schedule of completing the project in a year soon looks out of reach. Self-confessed insomniac Paul spends countless hours on-site, night and day, until he requires surgery for ongoing back pain and is begrudgingly ordered to rest for three weeks.

The budget starts to blow by hundreds of thousands of pounds as Paul and Amy are forced to invest in extra manpower to complete the build.

The big reveal

Thirteen months after digging the spider-like foundations, Paul and Amy's version of a reinvented Celtic roundhouse is complete.

Larch-clad interlocking cylinders house their living room, kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms, with separate drums for the pool and spa, music and games room and those luxe kennels, just as the couple had envisaged

Floor-to-ceiling exposed timber beams create a dramatic jigsaw effect in the circular living room. High-gloss white ceramic flooring creates a watery effect throughout, with sky blue accents complimenting the natural timber.

"It's Celtic meets Star Trek," says McCloud, as he spots the Lazy River quartz-clad sink in the circular kitchen, which reminds him of a “psychedelic riverbed from a James Cameron film”. He enthuses: "It's so totally funky, it's great."

An upstairs terrace off the master bedroom overlooks the lake and the countryside.

Nothing was simple or straightforward in this scheme. "I think we've gone over budget a little bit, at £1.2 million or £1.3 million. We've not really added it up. We're proud of it. This is our forever home. We're going to enjoy it," says Paul.

"But I shall never build another roundhouse, ever again," he adds. Which says it all, really.

This episode of Grand Designs airs at 9pm on Wednesday, September 11 on Channel 4.

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