DOUBLED


The new build part of the house has almost doubled the size of the original 250-year-old cottage but blends almost seamlessly into the old


LOW POINT


“Thinking we had planning permission for the house we originally wanted only to have our hopes dashed on the day the building work began.” – Mark & Clare Gittins


M


ost people wouldn’t have given the dilapidated old cottage on the edge of a busy main road a second glance. It was damp, dark and crumbling after years of neglect, and the garden was completely overgrown.


Despite this, Clare and Mark Gittins saw beyond the dilapidation of the 18th century former toll house. Although it had everything going against it – including its location in a green belt area and associated restricted covenants – the couple saw huge potential in the old stone walls. “We spent two years looking for the right house in the right place at the right price, and found nothing we liked,” says IT consultant Mark. “We had put in a number of offers on other houses but nothing stuck. Then we came across this one.” Clare recalls their initial impressions: “It was a nightmare,” she says. “There were steel shutters over the windows, no floors, a couple of awful extensions at the back and everything inside had been wrecked.”


In spite of its condition, an open day july/august 2019


attracted 30 prospective buyers – all of whom fell by the wayside once they realised it came with tight restrictions. This opened the way for Mark and Clare’s £120,000 offer, which they withdrew after friends and family told them they “must be mad”. But the thought of breathing new life into the cottage gnawed away at the couple until they re-submitted their offer, knowing they were taking a huge gamble. “We were effectively buying three stone walls,” says Mark, “but we wanted a big garden and we liked the views from the back of the house. We were prepared to work hard to achieve what we wanted.”


But what they wanted – and envisaged – for their new home wasn’t what the owners of the estate on which it sits had in mind. “We actually wanted to build a light, modern house with lots of glass,” says Mark. After several meetings with architects they invited Sheffield-based architect Paul Testa to draw up the design and submit it to planning. “Paul really understood what we were after – three bedrooms and an open plan living space with


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