Going places

Summer on a Scottich railway

Geoff Mann’s awfully big holiday adventure isn’t just a cottage renovation in the southern uplands of Scotland – it’s a full-size working railway, too. A director of the RHWL Partnership in London, Mann acquired a hectare of land near Roxburgh, along with the former village station, stationmaster’s house and a stack of rails and sleepers that were ripped up when the line was discontinued. Over the years, he has refurbished the buildings and relaid one-third of a mile of track with the help of Chris Anderson, a local farmer’s son, and Les Prothero, an ex-miner. “We have a little threesome – they do the heavy work,” he comments. Mann can now run his pride and joy – a 50-year-old industrial diesel engine, together with two open wagons and a guard’s van – up and down the track. Before he returns to London, he parks the engine in the farmer’s cowshed.

Hands-on gardening in Suffolk

Max Fordham, president of the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers, spends the sunny months in the two acres around his Suffolk country cottage, which he gardens with such enthusiasm that anyone would think he was solar-powered. The house is in the sleepy village of Sudborne that Fordham says guidebooks describe as “one of the most boring in the country”. This, of course, makes it perfect for relaxing, although Fordham seems to be unable to slow down. “We go to the Aldeburgh classical music festival more or less every year, and I also like sailing. I have three dinghies that I muck about in down on the estuary.” The cottage itself is a simple 18th-century brick building, in a row where six old houses have been turned into three. Fordham has changed little over the 15 years he has been there, and so far there are no photovoltaics on the roof.

From renovation to revolution

Long before putting up the London Eye, architects David Marks and Julia Barfield were struggling with the conversion of an old stonemason’s house in the Dordogne in south-west France. “Julia’s parents found the place about 25 years ago,” explains David Marks, “so we volunteered to help them fix it up. We spent the summer moving huge stones and nearly breaking our backs.” The reward for the effort has been the use of the house ever since, with the family returning every summer to soak up the sunshine and enjoy the surrounding vineyards. “We go canoeing and visit the little street markets and the chateaux,” says Marks. “It’s also a stone’s throw from where the Hundred Years’ War started, an area steeped in history.” Like their big wheel on the Thames, the stonemason’s house seems to have the power to bring people together. “It has an old bread oven that local people still use at festival time, baking bread and drying out prunes.”

Back to basics in Wales

Richard Feilden of green architect Feilden Clegg Bradley has a holiday home that is so environmentally friendly it has no running water. The 200-year-old farmhouse in Dolgellau, north Wales, also boasts a temperamental Parkray stove and dodgy light fittings. Feilden and his family go there every few months to enjoy the peace and quiet. “It’s definitely a way of getting away from it all. But even cooking a meal can become an ordeal, because of all the trips to the stream you have to make to get water,” he says. Feilden carries out the odd bit of DIY, but has no plan to restore the lodge. He has begun to tire of the “back to basics” holiday and plans to join the Chianti-drinking classes for a holiday in Tuscany this summer.

Dodging cowboys in the wild south-west of France

Neil Clements was so taken by his holiday home, he gave up his career for it. In February, the former group director of building services at Buro Happold bought Le Coussol Haut – a dilapidated 18th-century house set in 12 acres of land in Tarn et Garonne, south-west France. Clements and his wife spent the next five months refurbishing the property, which they now rent out as a holiday home. Clements planned to hire local builders, until he heard about their laid-back approach to deadlines. “I met other expats who said they’d only got about one week’s work done in two years,” he says. Instead, he did most of the work himself, working 12-hour days in the hot sun to insulate ceilings, install plumbing and electrics and build new bedrooms and bathrooms. He lost three stone in the process. “I had to buy myself a new wardrobe, which I hadn’t budgeted for,” he says. Clements had expected his rusty French to cause problems but this only led to one snag: a local builders’ merchant misunderstood his order for six sections of pipe and delivered six toilets instead. Despite all this, he says: “I don’t miss my old job at all.” You can view Clements’ handiwork at: www.thebonegroup.com.

Away with the modernists

The directors of Richard Rogers Partnership have bought glamorous holiday homes with some of the money they made from the development of their offices and apartments on the Fulham riverfront. John Young has built himself a modernist bolt-hole in New Mexico, Mike Davies has restored a 1930s glass and steel bungalow in the Chiltern hills designed by the early modernist master Berthold Lubetkin, and past RIBA president Marco Goldschmied (above) has gone against the practice’s grain by taking over a Lutyens-style classical house in Hampshire. Curiously, Lord Rogers himself does not own a holiday home. The practice has even gone as far as to acquire and is restoring a second Lubetkin bungalow in the Chilterns for the pleasure of staff and their friends. Built on a steep hillside, the house enjoys a spectacular panorama.

True love at a fairy-tale chateau

Janet Harris, an associate at Sidell Gibson Partnership, discovered her dream holiday home 10 years ago on a visit to Normandy in northern France. Since then she has been trying to find enough time to deal with the ever-expanding workload that restoration requires. Nick Jay, a partner at the firm, got involved three years ago, similarly hypnotised by the building’s doll’s-house charm. “It is a fin-de-siècle petit chateau,” explains Harris, “a cross between gothic and Swiss architecture – it’s very cute.” So far, the top-floor apartment has been rethought in a minimalist style, although the work taking place on the other three floors mixes modern and period with restoration work on the original cornices and the french windows. The slow progress has been partly the result of problems with builders. The first was apparently a holidaying English cowboy who “made a mess of the top floor and then ran off with the money”. After more lessons with inexperienced French restorers, Harris and Jay have found two people who are now at work on an iron canopy with hanging flowers and scallop-work. “It’s been a hole in my pocket,” says Harris, “but it is the love of my life.”

Alsop art and architecture

Architect Will Alsop kicked off an extended series of holidays last month at his holiday home in Norfolk. The house is a 19th-century stable conversion in a small town by the sea. But the brains behind Peckham Library can’t resist tinkering with the architecture. “I’ve added a hut in the garden, and a bigger one for table tennis. There’s also a library extension and a big glass box on the back.” Alsop is also paying an annual visit to Minorca to paint with his artist friend Bruce McLean. “We rent the same place every year. It’s a very simple old cottage made of thick stone walls – not precious, but pleasant. We’re going to spend 10 days between the beach and a farm that Bruce and I use as a studio. We’ve been working on large canvases and have a book out later in the year called The Minorcan Works.”

Planning the perfect Greek-island retreat

While running HTA Architects and suing the Greenwich Millennium Village joint venture for £4m loss of fees, Bernard Hunt dreams of escaping to his holiday cottage on the Greek island of Alonissos, next to Skiathos. What he can’t escape so easily is the bane of architectural practice – planners. At present, his holiday cottage is nothing more than a lovingly conceived design – one that was rejected last month by the island’s planners. “I was really happy with the design, but the planners didn’t like the gently concave roof,” sniffs Hunt, who had planned to pave the roof with stone to act as a roof terrace, while also collecting rainwater. Confined to London while he plans his next move, he pines over what he is missing on the Greek island. “The site is just three minutes walk to the beach, which has three restaurants,” he sighs.

Walking, skiing and ecology in the Alps

The Swiss Alps draw Alan Cherry, chairman of developer Countryside Property, back every year like a magnet. “I’ve had a chalet there for about 12 years – it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world,” he says. Though reports of yodelling in lederhosen remain unconfirmed, Cherry does admit that he enjoys mountain walking in the summer and skiing during the winter months. Cherry, the man behind sustainable brownfield projects such as the Greenwich Millennium Village, points out that the chalet has suitably green credentials. “It’s typically Swiss – high on energy conservation and very environmentally friendly. We have a very low electricity bill.”