Visit this new-build eco home in the Cotswolds
Hidden deep in the Gloucestershire countryside is a secret world, more Nordic than Cotswolds, where poplar forests surround a vast string of lakes. Threading its way through the water is a slender ribbon of land where James Edmondson’s newly built home blends seamlessly into its tranquil surroundings. It’s hard to imagine that just a few decades ago, this idyllic nature reserve was an industrial moonscape of gravel pits.
James’s father Anthony began the site’s rewilding in the 1980s. ‘When he bought it, there wasn’t much growing here,’ explains James. ‘It was just scrub. He planted more than 50,000 trees, large areas of wildflowers and all the reed beds, which are now colonising large areas of the lake.’
By 1993, what had once been pits mined for motorway gravel was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and became home to the family’s holiday cabin business, comprising eight idyllic log houses dotted around the lake.
After a brief spell as a city banker, James returned to manage the site in 2013 and has lived and worked on the reserve ever since. His house, finished in October 2020 (after a 14-month build), marries cutting-edge eco-technology with the rustic aesthetics and traditional craftsmanship close to his heart. Keen for the house to look ‘like an old building from day one’, he opted for rough-sawn oak frames rather than the usual planed finish, and had a clear vision that he wanted to create ‘something that looked like two old farm buildings that had been joined together’.
James made a cardboard model – ‘back of the envelope stuff,’ he says modestly, but in fact near identical to its present incarnation – and, with the help of oak-frame specialist Border Oak, made the model a reality. The two interlinked barn-like structures create a separation between the family’s own living space and bedrooms in the larger barn, and guest accommodation and a snug in the smaller barn.
Staying onsite throughout the build (in a smaller cabin nearby) allowed James to respond as the project developed. One of the living space’s most striking features, a hand-built Cotswold stone wall spanning the length of the entrance hall, was a last-minute addition, made possible when he unexpectedly sourced some local stone. The geometric tiles in the main bathroom were originally meant to reach up to the ceiling before James realised he loved the ‘unfinished’ look.
Although keen to capitalise on the panoramic lake views with floor-to-ceiling windows, James always kept the house’s eco-credentials in mind. The building is completely airtight, with every detail carefully considered to maximise efficiency. ‘The kitchen gable window is due south,’ he says. ‘I asked that the main side walls and roof extended out a couple of metres, so when the sun’s high it doesn’t hit the solar glass and overheat the house, but in the winter when the sun is lower, it warms the property up naturally.’
Solar panels rise out of the reed beds opposite the house and move with the sun to provide most of the site’s electricity, while heating comes from a ground source heat pump and 800 metres of submerged glycol pipes. ‘Normally people would have to dig trenches to install these,’ explains James, ‘but we could just lay the pipes on the bed of the shallow lake, where a heat exchange process occurs. It’s a very efficient way of heating all the holiday cabins and the house.’
The interiors were inevitably inspired by the nature reserve around them, with an earthy palette, rustic textures and vintage finds. ‘Having the luxury of being able to store things on site definitely helped us to collect pieces that we could then work rooms around,’ says James. ‘We were picking furniture for years before we moved in.’ The large antique kitchen table, for example, was bought long before the foundations were even laid – ‘when we saw it, we knew it was perfect, so moving that into the house finally was quite momentous’.
The house continues to evolve. ‘Everything we buy is typically made from natural materials, normally a muted colour, and as a result it all tends to go together fairly cohesively,’ says James. Family heirlooms – most notably uncle Simon Edmondson’s 1991 painting The Lotus Eaters, which takes centre stage in the hallway – mix with concrete-look porcelain flooring and rustic wood from the reserve’s storerooms.
Although they relish the site’s seclusion, James and Sophie in fact share the lake with an abundance of wildlife. There is a constant thoroughfare of wild birds, from migratory geese to elusive bitterns, and a family of otters, the escapades of which the couple enjoy watching from the bedroom window. ‘There are so many fish here that the otters aren’t going anywhere for a long time,’ says James. Even dog Ranulph (named after the explorer but ‘much less brave!’) has acquired a taste for fishing and spends hours gazing into the water.
James sees himself as a custodian, sowing the seeds for a rewilded landscape that will develop with the generations. ‘The walnut tree at the back of the house was planted the day I was born,’ he says, ‘and we planted the strawberry tree outside the kitchen when our daughter Aubrey was born.’ The barn, like the lake it sits on, is already steeped in family history, yet fresh with new growth.
Visit borderoak.com for more information. For more on Log House Holidays, go to loghouseholidays.co.uk.
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