Lincs Pride MAR 224.qxp 02/02/2021 09:53 Page 30
GRAND DESIGNS
Grand Designs
ON A NEW HOME Lincolnshire couple Nathan and Amye Marshall had grand ideas to create a Dutch-barn style property when they happened across a plot near Weston Hills in South Holland. Channel Four’s Kevin McCloud and the Grand Designs team also joined them on their journey to create their forever home… Words: Rob Davis. Images: Channel Four.
At what point does a house become a home? For Spalding’s Nathan & Amye Marshall, it was when the dust settled, and the camera crew left. At that very moment, their project became their home; their labour, their love. The two have created a great home in South Holland with a spacious living room, a cosy sofa and big TV from which to watch the story of how they created their home unfold on Channel Four’s flagship property show, Grand Designs. Nathan is a bit of a property polymath. He’s worked in construction, as a property consultant, as an estate agent and as a developer of properties, in addition to building his two previous homes. This project, though, was slightly different. It was to be a Grand Design such as the type the TV show of the same name is keen to see come to fruition. Nathan & Amye met in Spalding after Amye had left behind her native Ballydehob to come to Lincolnshire in order to take on a teaching post. Nathan was running his microbrewery at the time and drove past a plot of land which was on the market, having been denied planning permission twice already. “It was a bit of risk, given that fact,” he says, “But one of the ways to secure planning permission is to utilise the National Planning Policy Framework’s so-called Paragraph 79 which allows for construction of buildings which would ‘significantly enhance’ the areas in which they’re situated and represent the highest standards of architecture.” 30
In other words the couple had to build something really special. And so, working with architectural firm Studio 11, based at nearby Wisbech, Nathan and Amye devised a giant cathedral-like new home modelled on the Dutch barn style houses of the area – but with a sleek contemporary twist and a rather striking 5,000 tile ‘armadillo’ roof. Adjacent to the property, which sits in about an acre of land, was an additional annexe which would accommodate Nathan’s mum and stepdad to provide multi-generational living. It was easy to anticipate the quality and practicality of the architecture, but less easy to anticipate the circumstances in which the property would be constructed. “We found the plot back in early 2019 and Studio 11’s Kris Baxter and his team had completed the drawings and gained approval by August 2019, so work began the following month.” >>
