From Warehouse To Eco Home

Alan Simpson and his wife, Pascale Quiviger, have transformed a derelict former lace mill into a quirky, environmentally friendly home - without breaking the bank.

It's not just Blue Peter presenters who can rustle up something useful out of old jam jars, toilet roll tubes and sticky-backed plastic. The building materials for Alan Simpson's unusual new home are remarkably similar - including recycled cardboard tubes, broken bottles and straw - but the end product is far from shoddy.

A derelict former small-scale lace mill, right in the heart of Nottingham's vibrant and historic Lace Market, has been transformed into a contemporary and sustainable home for Alan, his French-Canadian wife - author and painter Pascale Quiviger - and their daughter Elie, who was born in January.

The kitchen is fitted with Homebase units, recycled Ikea worktops and Bosch Class A appliances. The marmoleum flooring - a natural product made of limestone, wood flour, resin, pigments, jute and linseed oil is ideal for people with allergies.

Although born in Bootle, Alan has lived in Nottingham for the past 30 years and in 1992 was elected as the Labour MP for the Nottingham South constituency. A strident campaigner on environmental issues, Alan was determined to practise what he preached when looking for a new home in the town, so he set out to find the most unpromising structure to regenerate for modern living. 'In the past I had looked for older houses and done them up, but I had never tackled anything quite on this scale before,' he explains. 'My plan was to find the most run-down property that I could and turn it into an attractive, sustainable home on a realistic budget.'

When a friend drew his attention to a disused mill, completely hemmed in by other buildings and with all the windows boarded up, Alan realised that this was the challenge he had been looking for. He didn't hesitate to snap it up for £100,000. 'It was a real eyesore so it ticked all the right boxes,' says Alan. 'People recoiled in horror, however, when they walked inside and saw the knee-deep piles of pigeon droppings.'