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ormer city dweller Alan Gore and his wife, Alison Taylor, embarked on a journey back to their coastal roots when they discovered an enchanting property during a stroll through a Saturday market in Bridport, Dorset. The home, displayed in an estate agent’s window, boasted an expansive plot of land adorned with some breathtaking views that immediately captured the couple’s hearts. “My wife said ‘we’ve got to have that,’” Alan exclaims. ‘That’ turned out to be home to a dilapidated


three-bedroom house albeit sitting on an impressive plot of almost two acres looking across Charmouth Beach in West Dorset and Lyme Regis. The plot came with stunning views over the UNESCO Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty with a picturesque coast path only a few strides away.


The 96-mile-long Jurassic coast runs across Devon and Dorset and is named for the fossils found in the cliffs which date back to the Jurassic period (around 200 million years ago). The spot of land they had chosen spans 185 million years of geological history. Coastal erosion – which has caused the moving of the coast path in from the sea front – has exposed rock formations as old as the dinosaurs. So it is no surprise that the geology of the plot was more than challenging. The cliff erosion is well-


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known to locals, with the coastal path having to be moved back. Before they made the purchase, the couple’s first step was to order a ground surey which reassured them that the land wouldn’t be falling into the sea for another millennium. Alan explains: “It was a very long process that lasted about nine years.” Despite this lengthy process, Alan claims that it has been worth it!” The home sits between two fields from the sea edge. The original design was for an ‘upside-down’ house where the open plan living space was on the top oor and the bedrooms below, but the siting of the land in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty created limitations on the height of the house. Instead, the house now has been built as a single storey. The new home follows the contours of the hillside and houses three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a study and a living/kitchen/dining area where the couple spend much of their time. “We always liked the idea of building our own home because I think the homes you buy don’t ever tick all the boxes about what you want in your living space,” says Alan. “It’s always been a fantasy.” One prominent challenge of the local geology was that it made the land very unstable for traditional building methods. The solution was to design the house as a oating house. There are


FAVOURITE FEATURE


“The whole house. The kitchen and the cooking aren’t tucked away in one part of the house.”


jan/feb 2024


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