'Horror of Ham Hill' home created from a million pieces of stone
ONCE dubbed the "horror of Ham Hill", a house made entirely out of dry stone wall techniques could become a Cheltenham landmark.
And it is believed to be the first in the country.
At the age of 23, builder Jason Peart project managed the scheme to create a new three-bedroom house in Charlton Kings. But what sets it apart is that the home is made out of more than one million pieces of Cotswold stone – all of which were hand cut in the famous dry stone wall tradition.
Jason, who works for Upton Builders of Gloucester, worked on the site every day for the last year-and-a-half with two other labourers.
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He said: "When the plans went to the council people were calling it the horror of Ham Hill. The residents and planners, nobody wanted it to go ahead. Now it is transformed into a dream house which sets back beautifully in the countryside."
Dry stone is a building method where structures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind them together. They are stable because of the unique method, characterised by a load-bearing façade of carefully selected interlocking stones.
When he was approached by the owner of the house, now known as Elysium, Jason knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
"We did wonder if it would be possible at all. The reason why there are no other dry stone wall houses is the expense of it and the weather we have in this country," he said. "We have used concrete sheeting to provide a cavity with stone slate vents so the back of the stones will be ventilated in order to stop them fracturing in cold weather."
The building is 400 square metres and there are 300 stones per metre. Cotswold stones were delivered from a local quarry and the builders had to cut each one ready to be laid. It also features frameless glass windows which have been expertly set into the stone to create a sharp edge.
Jason said: "I want the residents to see what we went through and how we built this incredible house which I believe will become a landmark for future generations."
Comments
by beckyfoulds
Tuesday, July 03 2012, 4:19PM
“Jason Peart - Any chance of arranging an open morning/afternoon one weekend with the owner so that the local residents and any other interested parties (me included!) could take a look for ourselves? Sounds and looks fascinating...well done!”
by CBCGCCMORONS
Tuesday, July 03 2012, 11:39AM
“A million pieces of stone? TIG's 'trusted source' I imagine. Like the 'trusted source' who gave us the hoaxed ghost photo a few weeks ago. Shoddy journalism more like”
by ToJo100
Tuesday, July 03 2012, 11:27AM
“Raiderman UK, yes I believe you are right that the stone is acting as cladding on to the main PolySteel structure. I think you can find more information out about the Polysteel build on their website.”
by bdbear
Monday, July 02 2012, 6:52PM
“I always thought the idea of a dry stone wall is not to cut the stone to shape all square edges etc but at the most a light trim , in fact you should not really cut any of the stone. Personally I think it is a very well designed modern house , lets face it ,it could have been a souless estate style mock any english look . We need more of good well designed modern housing instead of 10 of thousand housing estates”
by Matt1006
Monday, July 02 2012, 6:06PM
“raidermanuk - ah, of course. I'd forgotten the old journalism rule - "never let the facts get in the way of a good story".
I'll let others decide whether this is a good story, or not.”
by raidermanuk
Monday, July 02 2012, 5:45PM
“It took "more than one million pieces of Cotswold stone" because someone made the figure up!”
by Matt1006
Monday, July 02 2012, 2:22PM
“SecretAdder - your sums are way out (although you do admit there is a chance of this yourself). A UK standard (metric) brick is 65mm high by 215mm long. With 10mm mortar courses / joints that's 75 x 225mm. So a wall 8m high (8,000mm) equates to 107 courses. At 80m long (80,000mm), that's 356 bricks per course. 107 courses @ 356 bricks per course = 38,092 bricks total, assuming all walls were solid with no openings, which obviously isn't the case so fewer bricks needed. Give or take, 1 square metre of brick equates to 59.25 bricks, so multiplied by 640 (8 x 80) = 37,920.
A dry-stone wall contains pieces of stone of varying size, but I'd say that the average piece of stone is no smaller than a standard brick - so how did this house consume 1 million pieces of stone???”
by raidermanuk
Monday, July 02 2012, 1:54PM
“Polysteel needs to be faced with something so I'd suggest that the cotswold stone is cladding only on the main structure. As for the the accuracy of the reporting Matt1006 - well it is the Echo/TiG!
Design, well its appeal is subjective so each to their own. Personally it looks like it was designed by an ex military architect schooled in second world war coastal defence structures. Probably would get a prize in the design a Portacabin contest too.”
by SecretAdder
Monday, July 02 2012, 1:06PM
“It is 400 square metres but this equates to, for example, a 20m width by 20m depth. There are therefore 4 walls in total equalling 80m in length. I have no idea how tall the house is but it appears that it may be on 3 levels so call that 8 metres for arguments sake. 80m of one layer of bricks is 80 x 300 which is 24,000 bricks per level. If you call a brick 10 cm, again made up but not that far off I suspect, that is 8 metres * 10 bricks per metre * 24,000 bricks per level which is 1.92 million bricks. This is now double the amount quoted, so I am sure there are plenty of errors in my made up measurements (it looks, for example, that the ground floor isn't bricked all the way around, plus there are large windows to subtract, and garden walls to add in). It does demonstrate though that 1,000,000 bricks isn't so implausible after all.”
by Matt1006
Monday, July 02 2012, 12:25PM
“One million pieces of stone? Really? Is it built of stone rubble?
The article states that the house is 400 square metres and there are 300 stones per metre - so that's 120,000 stones (so not quite "one million"). But then of that 400 square metres, 95% of is open floorspace, so the figures are meaningless anyway.
And the garden walls in the 3rd photo - they are coursed stone, and certainly looks like there is mortar in it, which means that wall (at least) isn't a dry stone wall. I find it hard to believe that a house wall several metres high and many tens of metres long could be built solely as a dry-stone wall and be 100% stable (or at least as stable as a conventional masonry wall). Is any of this house really dry-stone construction as stated?
Looks a nice house from the very limited photos attached, but I do wonder if the suggested construction (the stone facings, at least) is accurately reported.”