Episode Information Puglia: The Villa

Date Published:

04/06/2008

The Project

Four years ago artists David Westby and Leonie Whitton bought a derelict olive farm in Puglia, a beautiful region of Italy. Three years after Kevin last visited, have they finished their home and created the artists' paradise they had always envisaged?

With a meagre budget of £25,000, David and Leonie planned to transform a derelict olive farm into a home for themselves and a Roman-style guest house from which to run painting holidays.

They barely start before they hit a massive problem. They want to build the guesthouse on the site of a derelict animal shelter but because it has no roof, it is not considered to be a proper building. According to Italian planning laws they are only allowed to put up a building where one already exists.

What's more, permission is only granted one year out of ten, and the deadline is about to expire. In 24 hours and in the pouring rain, they battle to throw up a temporary building.

But that's not all; the building permission costs them dearly: almost a third of their budget. They have no option but to build their Grand Designs themselves, despite never having built a house before.

After a year of hard labour, carving their home stone by stone, they managed to just about complete part of the build before their first guests arrived. Their own house was still untouched.

Three years later Kevin McCloud returns to see if David and Leonie have finished their home and created the artists' paradise they had always envisaged.

Budget And Build

The Cost

Land and buildings: £150,000
Estimated restoration budget: £16,000
Final Budget: £19,000 (plus additional £8,000 for planning permission)

David and Leo paid a hundred and fifty thousand pounds for this secluded site, but what they've got is a collection of ramshackle outhouses, and no builder to transform them. David and Leo plan to do all the work themselves.

The Build

David and Leo aren't just rebuilding this old farm, their vision for just sixteen thousand pounds is extraordinary. They are reaching back two thousand years and creating an imagined complex of buildings and open spaces that will look like a Roman country estate.

The aim is to create a sanctuary for guests to retreat to, enclosed within high walls. And it will be designed entirely by David and Leo.

Commanding the site will be the central accommodation villa for guests, converted from an animal stall into four bedrooms, each with an en-suite bathroom.

Next to it sits a gatehouse, which will become the guest's kitchen and dining room. Both these buildings will be extended by two magnificent stone colonnades that will overlook the walled garden. The two colonnades cross a courtyard by the front gate.

The main accommodation block will have four, elegant, simply furnished bedrooms, each with a modern shower room.

The magnificent vaulted colonnade will shade the bedrooms, be an open-air sitting room and link to the terrace beyond, which will sit above a beautiful plunge pool set into the rock.

Paths will connect this complex of buildings with the lower garden, where Leo plans to build a pergola for artists to sit and paint.

Eventually they'll add a veranda and balcony to their mill house, but for now, their priority is phase one, the guest accommodation.