A timeline of all that has happened

 March 2008 we purchase a barn with planning permission to convert to a 3 bedroom dwelling.
 July 2008 new plans drawn up to improve on previous and informal comment sought from the planning department, this included the rebuilding of 2 brick lean tos and a large number of openings being made.
 August 2008 a formal full planning application is hand delivered to the Planning Department in Llandeilo.
 October 2008 a phone call is made to the department as we had heard nothing, this phone call identified the paper work had been lost.
 October 2008 a second copy of the full application is submitted to the Local Planning Authority. This time it is acknowledged, no request is made for a new structural engineers report even though a substantial amount of structural alteration was being proposed. (Though we didn’t realise the importance of this until later)
 Planning permission was given in December 2008, signed by Graham Noakes, senior development control officer.
 24th February 2009 building starts and the Building Inspector makes his first visit to the property, he states at this time that he had not looked at the plans and also demands to see the new structural engineers report, we explain that we only have the original and that no other report was requested.
 26th February, substantial collapse of barn gable occurred. The collapsed wall was removed along with other areas of wall that were identified in the original structural engineers report as being suspect and needing to be removed and rebuilt or were specified in the planning permission to be removed to create openings.
 2nd March Building Inspector turns up after the weekend with camera, he informs us that we do not have planning permission for the works and we understand that he had phoned the planning department to inform them we had gone outside the scope of our planning permission.
 4th March Local Planning Authority say on the phone that we require a new planning application, they told us at this stage they would not support it, our architect sends them a full report of what had happened and why it was all within the scope of our planning permission.
 6h March Building Inspector turns up but refuses to speak with us, he informs our builder that our 300 year old barn had concrete underpinning and that our architect was telling “porkies”.
 10th March, we receive an email from the planning officer stating that we had gone outside the planning permission and that a new planning application would go outside the scope of the Local Authority’s planning policy.
 15th March our architect sends a further email trying to arrange a meeting and explaining all the elements of both the structural engineers report and the planning permission and therefore why we had not breached our original planning permission.
 16th March we receive a terse reply which ignores both our request for a meeting and assistance.
 March 2009, after this second email from the planning department, we phone our local councillor who agrees to meet us, he takes away all the paperwork and recommends a planning consultant.
 By the end of March we have entered into a contract with the planning consultant who spends the next 3 months grappling with the complexities of the case. He talks at length with the original structural engineer, who fully supports all that we have done as being in accordance with his report, and the architect who provides him with the plans which also demonstrates that nothing we have done goes outside the obtained planning permission.
 15th July, we meet with the Local Planning Authority (LPA), we went through our case and it was clear that they had not looked at the paperwork. This was identified by the fact that they told us we should never have knocked the brick lean to down, once it was pointed out that this had been given permission for in the latest planning a serious amount of paper shuffling went on. At the start of the meeting we were told that the LPA do not give permission for people to rebuild half of their barn, by the end of the meeting those present seemed to accept this case was exceptional, and had started to suggest appropriate ways forward.
 Subsequent correspondence between the structural engineer, the planning consultant and the LPA resulted in a general agreement that we had not gone outside the planning permission and that what had come down was all identified either within the new planning permission or within the original structural report.
 The planning officer felt he needed some guidance on proceeding forward and so had to refer the case upwards, on the 5th of October we receive this email “I have now had the opportunity to discuss this application with Eifion Bowen, Head of Planning, at which it was concluded that the extent of the building that remains is beyond that which was it was (sic) proposed to retain and that the implementation of the permission in respect of a conversion is no longer possible.

Your argument in respect of the amount of the original structure that was indicated to be demolished is noted, however, it is clear that the initial permission was granted in the context of a conversion, with the second informative note attached as a note to that permission advising as such.”
 So three months later and we receive a reply which is nonsensical at best, they also do not disagree with our arguments which leaves us wondering why we cannot implement our planning permission and it refers to the initial permission and not the subsequent one which overwrites the original.
 So finally we are so distraught and upset we seek legal advice and secure the services of a barrister. The response we get is 13 pages listing why the local authority is wrong and that there are no legal grounds whereby we should not continue with our development.
 On the 26th of October we hand deliver another letter to the LPA which gives them 28 days to provide us with a reasonable response and should we receive nothing then we will assume that works may continue unimpeded.
 On the 30th October we post all the relevant correspondence to our local councillor.

The end??!

a bit of an update

Ok we've had an email from the LA, it seems to contradict itself and doesn't make sense. So we are still in the dark. We have confirmation that we are legally in the right so we are still hanging on in there.

So we had a stunning spring and reasonable summer and now we seem to be entering a pleasant autumn, other than the fact that we have been in a living hell at times it's all tickety boo!

The gardens are coming along, the pond is looking great, damselflies, dragonflies, broad bodied chasers, diving beetles and whirly gigs have taken over. The heron makes a regular visit and I guess is munching on frogs. The swallows and bats love the pond with the swallows dipping into the water over the summer months. It's a fascinating thing watching it all develop.

We have laid out a lot of beds and we are just getting them planted up with garlic, onions and various brassicas. Our rasberries, donated by our lovely neighbours across the river, have romped away giving us a lovely and unexpected crop.

We have two ducks now, Poly and Pato, and love them they lay two eggs a day regular as you like. Sadly Gloria the chicken died, don't know what happened...

Hope to be updating this with something positive soon.

On hold

Hi all - it's been a long time since our last up date and we are in a bit of a strange position at the moment. The planners felt we had gone outside our planning permission and had therefore negated it. All quite horrific really! We had a meeting about 3 weeks ago where they seemed to realise that they had given permission for all that had happened, it just happened a bit more dramatically than we had hoped and we weren't able to save as much of the barn as we would have wished. However we have heard nothing since. So at the moment James and I are on tenterhooks waiting to find out whether we have lost it all or if they agree that everything which has happened was within our planning permission. Our hopes are relatively high as our case is a strong one, for example in the meeting they referred back to the original planning which was to convert the old brick lean to into a kitchen and said we should not have knocked that down, however in our application that was to come down and be replaced, it was interesting seeing the realisation cross their faces. So keep your fingers crossed for us... and I hope that people are still checking this occasionally. I can only apologise that I haven't updated this, all I can say is I didn't have the heart to, as I was feeling pretty down about it all.

So I promise I will work on this soon and put up photos and stories of our Spring and Summer, which has been both glorious and horrendous.

Getting to know the neighbours via their bathrooms and, er - where's the barn?

People are quite curious about your cleaning habits when you live in a yurt, and are not in possession of a bathroom. Rather wonderfully, we have a number of neighbours who are very generous with their facilities. Brendan and Della, who look down on us from the Bron, are generous shower offerers; we do have to time our ablutions with them on a non school night though, because of the wine intake. We popped up there the other night and Della just happened to cook enough food for all of us. Showers with extras, how cool is that?Brendan also happens to be a plumber, and it looks like he's coming on board with the build which is exciting.

Pat and John live across the river and again they are fantastic about us nipping over for a shower, it's a very sociable affair, normally with a cup of tea or a pint of bitter. John has been an electrician and has also offered to help out where he can. He also knows all the wildlife in the area and is just an incredible fount of information. He also used to garden and we've already had rhubarb, yellow flag iris and rasberry canes from him. They are extremely kind people.

Helen and Simon live up on the bog and again are a very sociable bath experience. Helen was once heard to say, in the local shop, that as her water had stopped running she needed 6 bottles of wine... Simon also happens to be a carpenter! As a consequence of using their bathroom, we are now going to their wedding which sounds more like a mini festival.

Then Liz and Dudley at the local B and B in the village itself have always said that their water is hot should we need a shower/bath.

So there you all go - that's how we keep clean, and how we've been getting to know the neighbours.

How many different questions can you answer in a day? Well it would seem an almost infinite variety when you are building your own home.

As we mentioned in our brief last blog, it's all gone a bit busy. The builders have started! It's led to some rather dramatic consequences. As the floor was being dug out the south wall began to show some rather large stress fractures. This wall was always coming down anyhow. It's where the sun room is and the top is made of poor brickwork and bodged stonework. So we were pretty cool about that, until we noticed some more stress fractures in the two walls leading off from that.

Anyhow to cut a long story short... well, we only have a little bit of the barn left, large areas just fell away. So shockingly the direction of our barn has changed somewhat, instead of: repair work, insulating internally, limecrete floors and extreme steels in the roof, it looks like we'll be: starting from scratch in parts of the barn, using durasol blocks (which will give us all our insulation), possibly different flooring (limecrete is suddenly an extremely expensive option with the extra we would now need), and different engineering requirements. We were tormented by the limecrete floor as we felt it was particularly necessary with underfloor heating, but apparently not.

So, to ensure that we can afford solar water heating and a stove with a back boiler on it, we have opted for .... concrete flooring. It's shocking to a green fascist like me that we have gone down this route but to not could have cost us 6-8k instead of a 2k - that difference is the solar panel and the stove . Difficult choices, which are sometimes made for you. On the bright side we shouldn't need any new stones as we have plenty.

Oh and builders do seem great. Woodsy is a character; we were somewhat disturbed to hear him shriek "here's Jonny" as he smashed, rather redundantly now, through a blocked up door way. Neil is a more traditional builder but has a fairly broad mind and may be amused by our eccentric little ways. They have also got that we are not "straight lines" people, in that we want rugged walls with little holes and ledges - it's great for birds, bats, insects and lichens you see. Neatness is never good for wildlife.



We have also had thrown at us the coldest winter in years. A spectacular month of frosts in which we were both horrendously ill; then there was a week of snow, which trapped us in. Fantastic! However now spring is definitely peeking round the skirts of winter. Everything is giving a good old stretch. Owls are shrieking again, different message this time - it's more "oiy come over 'ere luv". Birds are definitely warming up, it's getting noisy in the morning. Buds are emerging on trees. Bumble bees have been sighted. The honey bees are out, pooing apparently. The celandines are in flower. I even saw a marsh marigold flouncing around down by the river.

In the polytunnel we have: broad beans coming into flower, peas a good 5 inches above the ground, rhubarb looking rather delightful, rocket out of your ears, spinach a go go, chinese veg, cabbage, strawberries starting to flower, lettuces and sweet peas. Outside the garlic is looking great, the huge orchard is looking exciting (thanks mom, Charlie and Julian), vegetable beds are being dug, the purple sprouting is just starting to show its' flowers, the secret garden has snowdrops and daffs by the hundred, plus all the wild daffodils, wild tulips and ransoms, I planted last year, are looking very exciting, with the ransoms just starting to produce flower heads. The "shrubbery" is starting to grow. Thanks to Christmas presents from Tim, Lisa, Tamsin, Sharon and Peter we now have many crab apples, cherry plums, rowan, dog woods and hornbeam.



James saw the frogs all at it on the 24th of Feb; no surprise then when we saw our first frog spawn in our pond on the 25th Feb! There's loads of it.

Anyhow there are more photos of the barn on the website www.themaidensbarn.co.uk/imagegalleries.html. We'll try and keep it all up to date .. now where's the valium?

Er, (Belated) Happy New Year

Forgive me father it has been so long since my last confession, I mean, blog! This must be because the builders are about to start, so we've had our head in spreadsheets trying to make the budget work and generally clearing the decks, etc, etc.

We have created a new website, which will focus more on aspects of the build. It has more structure and so will hopefully be easier to navigate than this blog. The aim is for the site to be a useful resource for other people interested in environmentally friendly building, so it will contain information about the products and techniques we are using, as well as photos of the ongoing work. Do check it out: www.themaidensbarn.co.uk

We will continue to use this blog as the diary that it appears to be developing into.

p.s. James has also developed a new website this month for his dad's kitchen business: www.malvernkitchens.co.uk

Late Autumn into Christmas

And after that small advertisement here's an update on the last six or so weeks.

We've planted up our orchard now and have a number of local and old varieties. These include

Pig yr Wydd - which translates as the Head of the Goose, it's an old local variety of cooking apple (early season)

Tin yr Wydd - which translates as Arse of the Goose! and is reference to the fact that this is a later cooking apple.

Marged Nicolas - are "Mature standard trees of this dual purpose variety, with their characteristic fountain shaped habit, grow in several farm orchards in Dinefwr. The yellow apples, speckled with russet markings, are ripe in late October and will keep until early Spring. The variety is hardy and disease resistant." (Dinefwr is where my offices are, just 15 minutes down the road)

Ashmeads Kernel - is "an old English winter russet, medium size, golden-brown skin with a crisp nutty snap, exploding with champagne-sherbet juice infused with a lingering scent of orange blossom. Flesh is dense, sugary and aromatic with intense flavor." Many of the descriptions say it's like pear drops - which is vaguely perverse in an apple.

Stoke Red - "is a traditional West Country medium bittersharp cider apple." (Yes we have ambitions to make cider.)

Yarlington Mill - is a traditional Somerset cider apple producing a medium bittersweet cider. (Lots of cider)

We have plums, pears and cherry as well - so we are looking forward to an excess of fruit in a few autumns time. One of our friends has very kindly contributed to the orchard, which is a lovely present thank you Julian, and for Christmas I know we are getting some native plants and trees to plant up our "shrrrubbbbbery!" from other friends and family, so thank you in anticipation.

The exciting news is that we have planning permission for the additions on the barn, which is great, and we have a builder. Yes we have a builder!! He is keen to work with us to do the lime rendering, flooring, working with Welsh sheeps wool insulation, he has worked with Ty Mawr before and I have been involved with them through Rounded Developments. Work should start at the beginning of Feb and we will be rolling up our sleeves and getting on with some building work (which also means we should be putting up some photos of the barn in various states of change which will be exciting).

It will also be a continuous list of questions, we have already changed our mind a couple of times about the underfloor heating. We have met some other neighbours who have got us back onto the underfloor heating now because we have witnessed theirs in action. These neighbours are the people whose house is on the hill in direct line of sight from the yurt. They were kind enough to offer us a shower as when they were building their place they used to bath out in the front garden! They said they couldn't see anyone else go through that. However when we did go up go for a shower the other week the wine came out, and they are generous hosts! We finally left at 2 in the morning and staggered down the hill after a lovely and funny evening.

Anyhow the last month has been a beautiful one, the weather has been spectacular and created some very magical sights. Perfect for the yurt and the range we have bought! However we have seen the inside of the yurt a little too much over the last few days, we have both had this bug, for those of you who have had it.. how horrible was that!? James is still in bed, we're missing Christmas eve at one set of parents, hopefully I will be able to put enough whisky down him so he doesn't care tomorrow.

So finally - we wish you a happy Christmas / Nadolig Llawen from our yurt in the corner of a field in Carmarthenshire. Hope you all have a fabulous one and thank you for all your cards.

New Business

James has established a new business to enable him to continue working from home. It's called Seren-IT, which is a name that works in English and Welsh and on a number of levels.

Seren-IT designs and distributes funky email newsletters, creates websites, and produces documents for printing, amongst other things.

Check out the new website: www.seren-it.co.uk

James's brother, Tim, has also recently set up a business. He's just received his first delivery of sofas to sell: www.door2doorsofas.com