For 10 years, Ben lived in tents and caravans in a wood in West Sussex. As a woodsman, he needed and wanted to live among the trees, but now he wanted a house for some creature comforts. He invited volunteers to help him build one by hand, from the materials growing around him.

Ben owned a third of the sweet-chestnut woodland and rented the rest. The house he designed was to be made almost entirely of wood, with an A-frame made of tree trunks, a wooden platform for a floor and oak shingles on the roof.

All the timber would come from the surrounding trees - sweet chestnut is a strong hardwood, ideal for this kind of building. Because Ben coppices trees instead of removing them, roots and all, new growth would quickly replace the old.

Grand Designs Season 3 Episodes...

• s03e01 - Peterborough: The Wooden Box
• s03e02 - Chesterfield: The Water-Works
• s03e03 - Sussex: The Woodsmans Cottage
• s03e04 - Surrey: The Victorian Threshing Barn
• s03e05 - Buckinghamshire: The Inverted-Roof House
• s03e06 - Hackney: The Terrace Conversion
• s03e07 - Cumbria: The Underground House
• s03e08 - The Traditional Cottage, Herefordshire
• s03e09 - Revisited - Buckinghamshire: The Inverted-Roof House
• s03e10 - Revisited - Hackney: The Terrace Conversion
• s03e11 - The Former Electricity Sub-Station: Revisited
• s03e12 - Revisited - Peterborough: The Wooden Box
• s03e13 - Revisited - Surrey: The Victorian Threshing Barn
• s03e14 - Revisited - Cumbria: The Underground House
• s03e15 - Revisited (2) - Sussex: The Woodsmans Cottage

Grand Designs Show Summary

Grand Designs is a Channel 4 TV series covering unusual architectural house-building projects, presented by Kevin McCloud.

The properties featured in the series vary wildly from homes underground to converted water towers, with the only common factor being that they're all rather unusual or extravagant in some way.