B january/february 2019


uilding their own home was something Matthew and Emma Greenland had always wanted to do. A builder by trade, working on private residential projects, Matthew had the inside knowledge on the merits of doing it themselves, as well as the necessary skills. Matthew and Emma had been keeping their eye out for suitable plots around their village – St Dogmaels on the Pembrokeshire coast – for a while, as they were after something with a good amount of land to house Emma’s horses. They finally found an elevated 10-acre plot with great views overlooking the village and the River Teifi that had been up for sale for some time, and it won them over. “Standing on this plot looking at


the view, we just said ‘this is it.’” Matthew tells Selfbuilder & Homemaker.


The plot was actually part of a group of three situated on an old farmyard. These plots had been given planning consent twice before – originally as four plots for semi-detached houses which lapsed after five years, then for three detached – but nobody had bought or built on them due to what Matthew says was “bad design”. He approached the owner with a view to doing a deal. He proposed to buy the large plot at the top which came with the farm’s agricultural land, while an architect he had worked with previously would buy the other two, situated between Matthew’s plot and the


www.sbhonline.co.uk 9


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