Joining the Dots: Nature, History & Craft [Pt1] - Sally Coulthard - BS105

Jeffrey Hart: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Building Sustainability podcast. With me, jeffrey Hart. Every fortnight, join me as I talk to designers, builders, makers, dreamers and doers. Together we can explore the wide world of sustainability in the built environment by talking to wonderful people who are doing excellent things. Hello and a warm welcome to episode 105. This episode is with the best-selling author and columnist, sally Coulthard. Now Sally has written over 25 non-fiction books. Her books have covered a wide range of themes, from native bees and hedgehogs to folklore and the history of rural buildings. The countryside remains a constant source of inspiration, whether it's barn owls or earthworms, and many of Sally's books share her love of native wildlife and sustainable living. Sally also writes a column for Country Living Magazine, a Good Life, in which she reveals the triumphs and disasters of growing her own fruit and vegetables and keeping an unruly gaggle of livestock, including soe sheep, runner ducks and hens. So I first stumbled across Sally's work earlier this year. I had a quick peruse of her website and found that every single title on there was one that I wanted to read, and many of the topics were the cornerstones of this very podcast. So I sent her off a very overexcited email straight away before I really had time to think about it, telling her all of this and inviting her to be a guest on the podcast. Thankfully, she wasn't put off by my fanboy email and we recorded this conversation at the beginning of October 2023. I am really, really excited for you to hear this conversation. I have split this conversation into two hourish chunks and this is the first one. Episode 106 will follow straight after this and will focus more on biofilia and craft. As always before the episode, we have some news, and the big news is that we have some of our courses for the Nettocoum Craft School online and available to book, so regular listeners will know about this project and that we have been setting up here in the woods in Nettocoum that is, exmoor in the southwest of England. So Nettocoum Craft School is a craft school. It teaches traditional craft skills. So we have currently got courses in spoon carving, book binding, a wooden covered book, introductions to green woodworking classes. You can come and make a rush hat, learn to collect and process wild fibres into usable materials for textiles and basketry. We've got an ash split basketry course, a traditional Welsh split hazel basket course. There's leaf printing, lino printing, turning bowls on a foot powered Viking lathe. There's chestnut bark baskets and we haven't even put all the courses online yet. So do head on over to Nettocoumcraftschoolcom there is a link in the show notes and check back in the next couple of weeks, because we've put the craft side up. We'll be adding more of the traditional building skills workshops in the next few weeks. That will definitely include an earthen floor weekend. We can come and learn everything I know about earth floors. There'll be some drystone walling and hopefully some thatching going on later in the year too. So that is all the courses for 2020-24 online. Now I'm ready to book at Nettocoumcraftschoolcom. Okay, podcast patrons if you would like to spot this podcast and it is independently produced by me, takes quite a lot of time and quite a lot of hard work then it would be gratefully received. If you can support, then please do at patreoncom. Forward slash building sustainability. But equally, if you can't afford it, then enjoy this for free. We've had a bumper load of supporters this month, so sending out a huge thank you to everyone that signed up. Let's read these from the top. We have got Ingo Johns, who has joined at the spoon level. We've got Wales Hollow Wood Butcher also at the spoon level. Donna Straderick also at the spoon level. We've got Benji. Charlie Haslam is also getting a spoon. Nathan Morgan also getting a spoon. Remi Rembies no, that's got exclamation marks after it Remi Rembies Remi is also on the spoon level. We've got Marcus Keveney, also on the spoon level. We've got Denisa DeVocca and finally we have got Sarah just Sarah from Nelson Studio, and Sarah is on the spoon level as well. So that is anyone on the spoon level. I will be carving a wooden eating spoon for them in the next few weeks. Thank you for all of you. That's. It's really overwhelming that so many people have signed up this month. Obviously, your support is so gratefully received, but do remember to cancel your subscription if you can't afford it. I think that's it. I think we should just get into the podcast now with Sally. Oh, I should also say what with Sally being an author. There are lots of links to books, to her books in the show notes. All of these will be linked through Hive. They are my preferred online retailer. They are not owned by Amazon and they give a percentage of all of the book sales go to your local independent bookshop, so you can be helping out an independent bookshop. A little tiny percentage of it also comes back to me by way as a referral fee. Obviously, always look for the book second hand if you can. If you do want to go for a new book, then I think Hive is the best. Just before we get going as well, there is one little swear of the shh variety. If that is offensive to your ears, then maybe skip this episode. All right, then here is Sally Coulthard.

Sally Coulthard: 6:32

I write predominantly about the crossover between three areas and they're quite broad topics. But people, history and nature. I'm really interested in where those three circles overlap In that kind of sweet spot. There are lots of different topics, everything from folklore and the history of certain animals to natural building and craft and all those kind of things. I have a very broad range of interest and I've written lots of different books about everything from as random as kind of how to build a shed right through to the history of the chicken. So I'm not a specialist in anything, but I'm very interested in pretty much everything.

Jeffrey Hart: 7:21

Brilliant. Well, yeah, the reason I asked you to be on podcast. I can't remember quite how you sort of popped up in my world, but I started looking through the list of your books and just with everyone I was like, oh well, that's my thing as well.

Sally Coulthard: 7:38

Excellent, oh good, maybe it was through biofilia, that was probably. It's quite a good crossover but really between the built environment and if you're interested in ecology and nature and well-being and that kind of thing.

Jeffrey Hart: 7:57

Yes, it seems to sort of I don't know. It's like the science of why people that hang out in nature are happy.

Sally Coulthard: 8:05

Exactly, Very succinctly perfect. Yes, it is.

Jeffrey Hart: 8:10

I've talked to quite a lot of smarter people than me about biofilia, so Well, don't worry, I won't be one of those.

Sally Coulthard: 8:16

And nonsense.

Jeffrey Hart: 8:22

So when I look back through your titles, it sort of seems to me like there's a bit of a journey happening. How would you describe that?

Sally Coulthard: 8:30

So that's a brilliant question and actually one that I've never been asked before, and the answer is that it's probably 50% pragmatism and 50% me maturing as an author and having the confidence to write about the things that I'm really interested in. So to give you a bit of backstory of kind of how I got into writing, I studied archaeology and anthropology at university and so I've always been interested in history and material history and ancient history and also sort of how people organise themselves and cultures and that kind of thing. And then when I left university I went to work in television for quite a long time and did a lot of lifestyle programs and history programs and that kind of thing, but very sort of popular programming, and I loved it. But it was really stressful as well and it was really sort of full on, as anyone who's ever worked in TV production will tell you. It's full on and after about sort of maybe and I was living in London as well, maybe after about sort of eight years I started to feel unwell and ended up having to come home back to rural North Yorkshire to recuperate and I didn't really know how I was going to earn a living and I'd really enjoyed this sort of I love the communication side of working in television. I love the idea of taking a complicated topic and expressing it in a clear way and in some way that kind of brought people along on a journey with you. So that was what I got from television and so I thought, okay, maybe I can come up with a book idea, maybe this is something I can write kind of nonfiction that will interest people. And some of the first book I ever wrote was about organic living. Basically it was about natural materials, it was about low chemical living, and that was because I'd become personally interested in it to kind of get better and recover from my illness. And so the first book that I ever got was with BBC books, and so that was a brilliant start and that was a brilliant way into writing nonfiction books. And then from that you're almost taken on a journey as an author, especially if you're kind of a jobbing author, as I would consider myself, you take the work you're given often, and so as soon as I got involved with the BBC books department they would ask me to write about lots of different topics, anything that I kind of felt comfortable with. So I ended up writing about restoring buildings and salvage and things that tapped into my own kind of practical interests, because I've been doing a lot of renovating houses at the same time and so I wrote quite a lot about lifestyle, houses, interiors, that kind of thing for quite a long time, partly because it was my interest, partly because it was also the kind of books that were selling really well and we're talking about maybe 15 years ago, 20, 15 years ago. And then I was lucky enough to be asked to write a nature book and I thought, oh, that's a brilliant, that's what a brilliant challenge, because I've actually never written anything about nature, I haven't got that kind of background and found that I really loved it, and especially because I was living in the countryside. By that stage my husband and I had managed to script together the money to buy a small holding in North Yorkshire and I was learning about the countryside and nature and wanted to kind of communicate what I was learning about. So from kind of homes and interiors and kind of being practical and that kind of thing, I then sort of moved into nature and the history of nature and also it then kind of morphed into writing about a history of the countryside and about the people that live in the countryside and their concerns, and it's just kind of snowball from there. So the kind of culmination of that is the recent book I've just finished for Harper Collins, which will be out next year, called A History of the Countryside and 100 Objects, and for me that's kind of that's literally you know, the pinnacle of all my interests kind of coming together. So that's a very long winded way of saying I've written about lots of different things, but it is a journey that isn't completely scatty. There is a kind of logic to it, but you also just write about what people ask you to write about.

Jeffrey Hart: 13:09

I think when I looked across your range of books, I saw similarities between your work and what I do with this podcast. Like there's an overarching topic of well, it's quite a spread out topic really and it burrows into little bits over here and over there and I feel like they're all linked but I can't really explain how. I just yeah, and that's the sort of feeling I get from your work, but I imagine you can probably explain how they are linked.

Sally Coulthard: 13:45

Well, I mean, I know exactly what you mean and sometimes people can say you know you write about such a lot of diverse subjects, but for me there are kind of some core themes that always come out and on. Often it's about the relationship between people and their environment, and not just the environment, as in nature, but the built environment. And there's also something for me about I've resisted my entire life being made to do one thing and to pick one topic, because actually I think a really rounded person is someone who and I get this from my dad, who was a very educated man but also deeply practical, and so he could make fine furniture but he could also lecture on sociology or whatever and for me that's really appealing, because I think one person doesn't have to be an academic or you know artie or creative or all those kind of things, and I pride myself on being trying to be as rounded as possible Because also, you know if you're a creative person, that actually helps with your writing and how you think about an approach or topic. Or you know if you're doing a practical job, then applying to intelligence and then kind of analytical thinking and logic to it is really important. And so for me. You know I'm sad that kids have to choose so early on in their school life to be one or the other. And I keep saying to my kids you know, you don't have to just go down one route and so that's. I'm trying to kind of live the example of not being pigeonholed, as it were, without sounding too worthy about it. That's good, yeah.

Jeffrey Hart: 15:31

I feel very much the same. I've definitely always been a person that had very wide interests and quite often if I'm on a building site or something you know, there's the person that has just dedicated their life to plastering and I can see how incredible they are at plastering and you know it's their thing and I feel a bit you know, oh, I don't really know that much about anything and I think that's sort of a yeah, because we are pushed into that sort of specialism route, choosing something early on. So it's very nice to hear that you're you're owning it and loving it.

Sally Coulthard: 16:11

Yeah, I should have. I should have Jack of all trades tighten up written on my tombstone or master, master of master of none at the end of it. But actually, sort of joking aside, you know, there there is a view that if you don't really know a topic completely inside out, then you, you know you shouldn't be allowed to speak about it. But I don't, I don't, I don't agree with that. I think you know, you can, you can educate yourself about lots of different topics and then they can, you know, and you've got to keep learning as you get older and you know, absorbing new bits of information. And I like learning new skills and whether it's, you know, trying to learn to play the piano or liner cutting or having to go at line plastering, all these kind of things, because I think it's such good exercise for your brain. And often you know a lot of kind of, especially like practical jobs and craft, and I mean sort of true craft by that, not kind of crap, crafters I would call it. You know, which is sticking sequins on things, but those a lot of skills are kind of applicable across the board, right? So if you're good at, if you're good at, thinking in 3D, you know that's a great skill to have for lots of different crafts, or if you're really good at being efficient with materials or you have a good sense of kind of design and what makes a beautiful curve, and all these kind of things are really useful for lots of different skills. And so you know, I think if you sort of keep practicing those and keep improving them, I think it can only be a good thing. I don't know where, I don't know how I got onto that topic. I do. I do go off at tangents. I've just realized that's.

Jeffrey Hart: 17:40

that's all good. I'm here for the tangents Excellent.

Sally Coulthard: 17:44

Do you mind if I ask you a question?

Jeffrey Hart: 17:45

Oh, absolutely yeah.

Sally Coulthard: 17:46

Brilliant. I'm curious about, about your sort of background and how you found your way into sustainable building and and whether you've. Is that coming from a an architectural point of view or a construction, or is this a? Is this something that you do as an adjunct or something else? Or?

Jeffrey Hart: 18:07

Well, I started off studying product design, so very much interested in 3D form, and then got sort of tired of that by the end of university, became a graphic designer. Quite quickly became tired of that because computers, yep, and I. I ran away to Canada to I just thought I'd go snowboarding and do the thing that made me happy. And when I was there discovered all these people living in little small holdings and building straw bale houses and community, and yeah, that well, one summer living in a community like that, and it changed my life completely, wasn't.

Sally Coulthard: 18:49

British Columbia. By any chance was it?

Jeffrey Hart: 18:52

Yeah, of course it was. Oh, dear.

Sally Coulthard: 18:54

We all got. Everyone goes to BC and basically it changes their life. I did exactly the same when I was about 16 and went to Vancouver rainforest too, because I was kind of on a mission to save the trees and just life changing about how people viewed their environment and building and community and all that kind of thing and it really it really changed my view on everything. So it's really interesting to hear that you had that same experience. And having the feeling that you had some kind of agency in the kind of buildings that you'd even build or that you know. People thought, oh yeah, you know, I'll build a house and I'm going to design it and I'm going to use that you know and all that kind of thing and use local materials and Amazing, what an amazing place.

Jeffrey Hart: 19:42

It all just made total sense and the people seemed just really content and happy and for them I don't think it was in any way different or alternative, it was just living.

Sally Coulthard: 20:02

There is something about having such a vast amount of space to play with. They're very lucky. I think in this country we don't have that much space to play with and we don't have the kind of resources that they have to play with. So I think we have to be a bit canny about how we use our resources. But yeah, just that and the connection to the outdoors that the Canadians in BC seem to have, I was really struck by.

Jeffrey Hart: 20:27

You can very quickly be the only person for miles around, just heading off in one direction. I really felt like there was a yeah, it was sort of proper nature as well, nature that could. You had to have your wits about you and you could get into trouble quite easily, whereas we have quite a PG nature.

Sally Coulthard: 20:52

I quite like that freestyle danger, though it's probably because we don't have it in this country. The worst that's going to happen is you get stung by some wasps, where, yeah, there's the genuine kind of dangers in that part of the world. So, yeah, that's amazing that you went there and had that life changing experience, though, and so did that make you then want to train yourself in sustainable building.

Jeffrey Hart: 21:20

Exactly that, yeah. So from that moment on I was looking for the next thing to build. I ended up travelling around the States doing natural building projects, helping out on straw bale buildings and cop buildings and lots of all of the sort of alternative buildings seen out there. Just kind of absorbed it all over the next four years.

Sally Coulthard: 21:46

And do you think people in this country are receptive to those kinds of ideas?

Jeffrey Hart: 21:52

I think they are. Yes, it feels it's a very different sort of scene. I would say I don't know quite the cause of that and maybe there's a lot more of a sort of it's all right to be more alternative, I think, over North America.

Sally Coulthard: 22:13

I think a lot about buildings. Actually, I think I spend a lot of time thinking about why we have such a lot of shit buildings in this country and what that's about In my head. I feel quite conflicted about quite a lot of it, because I appreciate that cost is such a big driving factor for so much building and people need homes and that a lot of the kind of buildings that we hold up as examples of amazing projects which and they are the sort of Georgian and Victorian grandeur of so much city centre life and the big city homes were funded by mega wealth that was in turn created by horrendous economic systems that were backed up by slavery and things like that. So it's difficult to sort of say, well, we know which, we all built nicer buildings. But actually the reality is that there is a kind of financial imperative. But weirdly, I only come onto that because I was listening this morning to a new series on Radio 4. I don't know if you caught the beginning of it. A guy called Thomas Heatherwick, who's a who's a brilliant architect and designers, just started a new, a new series called why Boring Buildings Are Bad For Us, and it's a it kind of it taps into the kind of idea about biofilia and about why so many and he's looking internationally but why so many buildings are doing us harm and why how people feel about modern buildings and living amongst building other buildings and working in them and navigating their way around them and that most people hate them, and I thought that's such a such an interesting. We've got to such an interesting point in architecture and in our landscape, our built environment, where most people don't like the architecture that's been created. And so this, I mean I don't, I don't, you know, I don't live in the world of architecture, I don't, I don't. I don't know what the current discussions are, but I can imagine that it's. It's quite a difficult point. I think we've come to an interesting point where it's not just going to be about economy anymore, it's not just going to be about making grand statements. There's going to be, there's got to be so much discussion about environment and the human experience of being in buildings, and I think that's quite. I don't know about you, but I find that I find that idea really exciting and I mean I'm curious to know what comes out of it.

Jeffrey Hart: 24:42

I mean, maybe I'm just too skeptical, but I think houses in this country are predominantly agents for profit, for a few people who don't really care about the human experience and they don't care about Well, they don't care really about much, you know, they'll put in a bit of insulation because they're told they have to. So I wonder how that that's like the vast majority of houses that people, people are going to be living in are. They're not. They're not designed for the right reason or built for the right reason, but there are that I mean there are lots of people doing really interesting things in a very sort of one off way. I don't know how that, how we get that into the mainstream.

Sally Coulthard: 25:30

I don't, but I suspect there are, there are, there are lots of people having that discussion and I'm I'm reading an article about, because the idea that you can't go backwards and I understand that, and that you know, the idea that you could go, there's kind of some kind of healthy and Time somewhere in the past where you know building was perfect and we were all really happy in the buildings that we had, and so it doesn't, doesn't exist, it's not, it's not true, but that somewhere there's a, there's a kind of sweet spot where all the things we know about technology can can marry up with a really sophisticated understanding of natural materials, and that's I find that quite exciting. You know, there are lots of people doing amazing bits of research with creating bricks that have, you know, really low embodied energy, but also, you know, help a building breathe and probably have other bits of technology. And you know, and I think, well, that's that's really interesting. I hope we can kind of take the best of both disciplines and come up with something really cool, because obviously we're not all going to be living in Iron Age straw huts, you know, in 50 years time. It's just not going to happen. More is the pity, but there we go. Yeah Well you know, I quite like the societal collapse maybe. Yeah, I do feel like I could probably have a stab at building one there.

Jeffrey Hart: 26:52

Yeah, so you've done quite a lot of building over the over the years.

Sally Coulthard: 27:00

Yes.

Jeffrey Hart: 27:01

I wanted to talk a little bit about your shed.

Sally Coulthard: 27:05

Oh, the shed of dread. Yes, yes, okay, this is yet again. It's all in the same vein of working out an idea or communicating an idea in as simple and as accessible form as possible, because I wrote a book called Studio, which was about creating. It was about creative spaces for creative people, and the idea being that if you're doing something creative and you value it, it's really important to have a space that allows that work to happen properly. And there's nothing worse than trying to run a business from a kitchen table and you've got to dedicate a proper space to do something creative. That's my view of it, because it shows that you're taking it seriously. And so I wrote this book about studios and it was fascinating and I was really interested to see how different creative people solved that problem, and there's a multitude of different studios. But I was also really struck by how expensive it was for most people to build or to buy a shed like a decent sized kind of garden room where you could actually do something decent, and so that got me thinking. I wonder if I could design something really simple and build it and see if I could actually do create the instructions so someone who had practically no experience of DIY, could understand and could kind of replicate it. Go get idea on in principle, really really challenging to do in real life, as I'm sure you've had lots of experience with this, where there's one thing having it in your head and then there's another thing actually trying to write instructions for how you create a modest antenna and join, or how you explain the fact that there's a difference between nominal sizes and actual sizes of timber and all this kind of stuff which I'm not massively comfortable with, and so someone who's not used to DIY will be even lesser. Anyway, the end result was actually I managed to do it, and so I wrote this book called how to Build a Shed and I now work from my shed in my garden and we ended up doing it, managed to do it quite cheaply. Well, I think it was quite cheaply. I think it came in under three grand or something, which I think for a good size garden is really good and I want it to be really eco-friendly as well and super kind of energy efficient.

Jeffrey Hart: 29:39

To put that into perspective, I know people that have built similar sized things or had built for more, like 30 or 40,000.

Sally Coulthard: 29:49

I don't understand. I think there's a lot of smoke and mirrors about building and people will tell you that a shepherd's hut will cost you £70,000. And I think to myself well, hold on a minute, let's just break down those components. Where we are on the farm here we have someone who deals with timber, we have a blacksmith who's on the farm. I know how much materials cost and I know how much craft costs. I'm not saying it's cheap, but I definitely think that because people are so disengaged with practical processes, they often get slightly hoodwinked by the costs of things. Anyway, that's a long-winded way of me saying that's why I wrote the book and, amazingly, people bought it and have built their own versions of my shed all over the place, and so I keep getting pictures and photographs of people saying this is my shed and I'm in Australia, this is my shed, I'm in Nevada and it makes me so proud that people have done it and tackled it. So yeah, it's about kind of skilling people up and things, which is what I think is really really important. Yeah, completely, but I'm never going to do another project like that ever again. Just FYI.

Jeffrey Hart: 31:17

That's brilliant, I think. Well, I think shed is a funny word because it gets applied to a lot of things that aren't necessarily suitable, like it can be a little potting shed, it can be a studio, it can be I mean, my house. My landlord called it a shed Rude.

Sally Coulthard: 31:34

Absolutely. Before you truncaled it.

Jeffrey Hart: 31:45

Yes, your shed is more garden room than shed is how I would.

Sally Coulthard: 31:52

Yes, definitely, and it was. You know it's short-hand, isn't it really? For there's something about the word, there's something about shed that means it's about it's a space for one, and there's something kind of about it being unique and isolated from normal life, and so it's quite useful short-hand for me, talking about studios or creative spaces and that kind of thing, places where you can, you know, writing huts and that kind of stuff where people can go off and do the things that they need to do without tripping over kids or Labradors or you know shopping, which is what happens at our house all the time.

Jeffrey Hart: 32:34

That book was illustrated by Lee John Phillips.

Sally Coulthard: 32:38

Who I think we both share in common, don't we?

Jeffrey Hart: 32:41

Yes, yes.

Sally Coulthard: 32:43

What a legend that man is. I mean, I think I pretty much gave him a nervous breakdown. I would send him pictures of things like can you just illustrate me holding a hammer? You know five millimeters above this, but not at this angle. Can it be this angle? And he must have just gone. Christ, you know, I've never worked into this woman again. Bless him. He did it. So tell me about how you know him then.

Jeffrey Hart: 33:10

I know him through the spoon carving world. He is a very talented spoon carver and, yeah, just got chatting to him at one of the events, yeah, and being a big fan of his work, because of course he is. I don't know how far through the shed project where he is. I think it's his granddad shed. He's going through the entire shed and drawing everything in there, from little. You know a tub of washers. He's drawing every single one and labelling them, isn't that?

Sally Coulthard: 33:44

amazing. It's not only amazing creative task. Okay, so this is why and you know, we're talking about the kind of like the mystery of why all these things are connected right what he's doing is not only creative and an interesting artistic exercise. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just an interesting exercise, but he's honoring his grandfather and there's something about memory and heritage and you know ancestors and all that kind of thing that's going on, which is why you know craft and building and an artistry and all those kind of things are so fascinating. They do have so much crossover and you know the fact that he's doing that. It might seem like a bit of a joke, but it's also an amazing thing that he's doing. And I don't know what he'll do when he finishes. I mean, it'll probably be a strange sensation when he actually finishes, because in a sense, that's when, I don't know, does the grieving start then or is that like? the monument to his grandfather finished, or I don't know. I find that very curious.

Jeffrey Hart: 34:48

I think it's a really beautiful sort of portrait of the type of person his granada must have been. You know, the sort of to collect jam jars full of washes and nuts and bolts and, you know, have everything stored and a bit of jumbled and a bit of everything.

Sally Coulthard: 35:05

But that's, I think that's people of a different era as well, isn't it? And I think we've lost. You're probably younger than I am, but I am of that generation of the. I'm kind of a child of the Thatcher generation, where you didn't keep anything, didn't reuse anything, everything was disposable, and I can't imagine what my grandfather's generation must have thought of us as we were ripping through materials and resources and whilst he was carefully, you know, collecting every bit of, you know every every, reusing nails and you know keeping bits of wrapping paper and all that kind of stuff. But I love the fact that we're coming around to that again now and actually, you know, there was such wisdom in that, in that, in that carefulness with resources. Something, there's something really beautiful about that which I really like.

Jeffrey Hart: 35:56

Very much so.

Sally Coulthard: 35:57

Can I just ask are you in your? Are you in your house right now?

Jeffrey Hart: 36:01

I am yeah.

Sally Coulthard: 36:02

So is that the sorry? I'm being very curious and nosy. No, no, that's all right. Have you built that? Yeah, oh my God, that's amazing. And do those stairs go up to like a mezzanine floor?

Jeffrey Hart: 36:13

Yes, so that's my bedroom. Up there I can just about sit up in bed sort of mattress on the floor.

Sally Coulthard: 36:21

Yeah, yeah.

Jeffrey Hart: 36:23

Yeah, there's my kitchen behind.

Sally Coulthard: 36:25

Did you make your kitchen Yep Amazing? And have you got? Presumably you must have a workshop. Yes, yeah.

Jeffrey Hart: 36:34

So the whole, the whole tiny house living is is somewhat fraudulent when you realize that I've got a workshop that's just full of stuff.

Sally Coulthard: 36:41

That's huge. Yeah, why don't you? Just live in your workshop. It's massive, I suspect. Wow, that's, that's really beautiful. Oh, thank you. Gosh, that's such an amazing thing to so, did you? I'm being very nosy. Did you have to buy the land and then get permission? Or is it mobile so you can visit around or it's mobile.

Jeffrey Hart: 37:03

I live on a big old country estate that I definitely don't own. I work for my stay. Yeah, part of a part of a drive for me to sort of try and reclaim living a little bit in terms of I didn't want to just keep giving away all my money every month and being kind of in nature.

Sally Coulthard: 37:30

What's the plan in terms of how does it? I mean, is this kind of the forever house, or are you planning other ones, or is it? Is? It is the process of building it more interesting than actually living in it? Oh, like I always find, I find with building projects I get really excited about the project and then think when I finished.

Jeffrey Hart: 37:55

I was definitely. I mean the the build was all encompassing. It really took over my every sort of thought. But yeah, I mean I don't see any reason to not live here. I mean, it's designed to fit me like a glove. You know, the desk I'm sat at now is my work desk. You know, there's a living space, there's a space for stretching, there's, you know, a good size kitchen for cooking. It sort of does all the things that I need a space to do. So I mean, currently I couldn't. I don't know why I would live anywhere differently. I mean, I really value outdoor space and I've just built a workshop in the woods where I'm going to park my house kind of near to and, and so you know, once I've got all of that, why, why would I need anything else?

Sally Coulthard: 38:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I suppose it's a factual question really, isn't it? Because that's coming from a kind of old fashioned mindset where it's like, oh, you know, once you've done that, we'll surely want more, or surely want something else, and and actually that's the kind of it's such a pointless pursuit is constantly kind of looking for new stuff all the time. I am really interested in the kind of idea about, about human sized spaces, and it's something I think about quite a lot. We live in a. We live in an old Georgian house, very late Georgian, early Victorian farmhouse that was. That was built as a, as a kind of experiment, I suppose. So. So we live in North Yorkshire, which is the vernacular is is limestone, beautiful, small, intimate spaces, farmhouse, you know, the idea being that you didn't have to heat anywhere. That was too big and you know everything was on a kind of human scale. And then and then, with the advent of commercial farming, a lot of land, a lot of estates, probably like the one you're on, built these kind of model farmhouses which were suddenly like it's like, it's like a, it's like a childhood drawer house. You know it's like a square with, you know, windows there and a door in the middle and that kind of stuff, and the rooms are very uniform and they're tall and all that kind of stuff. But I can see the and I love that and it's really interesting. It's a really interesting house to live in. But I can see the appeal of having a more human space and the barns are much older than the house and I actually prefer the barns to heat to the to the house because they're built of local materials, they respond to the landscape, they're even orientated the right way for the sunshine and the wind and all that kind of stuff, and I love that. And so eventually I always say to my husband oh you know, one of these days we're going to, you know, we'll rent out this one and we'll do the barns. When you know, some relative pops off their perch and I'm joking, by the way, obviously. But I'd be really interested to kind of live in a, in a, in a much, um much cozier environment, because you know, the house can feel often feel quite cold or a bit echoing and and and stuff, and I've always wanted to live in a timber-framed house and I'd love to do a timber-framed project. That would just be, that would be so exciting. I remember seeing a grand designs years ago it must be two decades old now. That was. It was the daughter of someone who ran an oak-framed do you remember it? An oak-framed company down in I don't know if I do. Near Ludlow. I wish I knew that they were called oak something. I'm kicking myself. I can't remember, but it was the first time I'd seen anyone. She built a new build oak-framed building and she did it with such sensitivity and used lime mortar and you know lovely old tiles on the roof and stuff. I'm thinking, oh that you know that really appeals and the idea of the house kind of shifting and creaking and moving and having a kind of energy of its own, that's. You know that would appeal, but maybe in the next life.

Jeffrey Hart: 42:07

Yeah, I mean, if the shed project, it feels like it could be an enlarged all-incumbecing, probably nervous breakdown inducing version of that.

Sally Coulthard: 42:18

Yeah, so true. Yeah, I don't think John would be on for that, really would he? I think that would be a firm, hard no from him. I suspect He'll stick to his nails. So how did you learn to, how did you learn to do all the craftsmanship? Because there's one thing, kind of knocking together, you know, being able to kind of hammer together a shed and there's another thing, to be able to kind of craft a home, and so where did you learn that?

Jeffrey Hart: 42:47

Oh well, I was sort of learning craft alongside it, very small-scale craft, sort of woodwork wise, while building quite big homes, yeah, and I just sort of, I guess, found the middle ground of that. And I think that one thing I'm really interested in is kind of systems and how things go together and thinking about the sort of holistic all the components coming together and sort of ordering that, that kind of that's a thing that I enjoy occupying my brain with. So yes, it's sort of building. Very much captures that for me. And then the crafting of individual elements is probably just nerdiness, isn't it?

Sally Coulthard: 43:35

It's exercising a different part of the brain, isn't it? I do find it interesting that amongst carpenters or woodworkers I know, there is such a spectrum of how people approach stuff. And someone like my dad he's a fine furniture maker and he literally, you know, everything takes forever to make and everything's about millimeter precision and things right through to to Chippies, I know who could, you know, knock you up a building in two days practically, but with not much finesse. And I'm curious sometimes about how people can kind of flex between those positions and depending on what the project is. And you often find people, or some people, just kind of resolutely stick to one point. You know they're just people who can kind of get stuff done. They're not really bothered about having a sparkly finish. Or you get people like my dad, who you know don't get them to bid a stud wall because it will, you know, it'll be beautiful, but it will take three hours. I've got three days to do whatever. So where do you kind of see yourself on?

Jeffrey Hart: 44:40

that I flip quite frantically between the two. I mean I would love to spend my time making timber frame buildings at proper jointed timber frames, but the reality of certainly for client work is that's a very it's quite an exclusive sort of type of customer that can can afford that, because they are slow and precision and you know big, expensive bits of timber, so doing quite quick stud framing is is sort of means to an end. It is very satisfying because it is so quick. And you know, you can go as you say, sort of two days, you can have a whole space framed out. Yeah, how, what did you ask me?

Sally Coulthard: 45:37

No, I just wondering, like you know, like are you a? I even think the titles you know, like are you a joiner, a carpenter? Are you, you know? Would you call yourself a chippy? Or you know? Do you? Do you know? Do you do find carpenter, you know? It's like, almost like how you define yourself. I find interesting about you know different people approach crafting different ways.

Jeffrey Hart: 45:58

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess I really struggle with that Because I do quite a lot of different things. If I probably would be a general builder who specializes in natural materials, but I think that undersells me in quite a few different aspects. But yeah, I'm not a specialist plaster. I'm not a specialist timber frame. I just try and I do bits of them wherever I can. And and you know, try to make them beautiful.

Sally Coulthard: 46:28

I think sometimes that kind of you know, that expression of personality and an individuality and character and stuff is a lot of often the thing that's kind of missing from modern buildings. There's no kind of flourishes, is there? There's no kind of sense of the human that's built the thing and and I don't know how you go about reintroducing that, but I love the idea of I mean, even that guy who I was laughing the other day about, the story about the guy who built a gargoyle, carved a gargoyle Did you see that about the that's his local counselor made into a gargoyle and apparently the local counselor thinks it's hilarious, which is great, but I, you know, I'm sad that we don't do those kind of things, you know, and that buildings seem to have so little personality, or even just decorative personality. There's no decoration. I went to, I went to a college to do my undergrad graduate degree called Keeble College, which was part of University of Oxford, and even that, which was a brick building which could have been so, could have looked like a Victorian prison. They took such great care to to to create patterns with bricks and it looks like an amazing kind of knitted jumper. It's, it's, it's fabulous and you know, and things like the woodwork is really beautifully carved in it and you know, there are just some lovely kind of bits of attention to detail and we just, I don't know, we just seem to build public spaces like like that anymore, which makes me sad that where you celebrate craftsmanship, but maybe I'm being. Maybe I'm being naive about, about. You know the amounts of money involved, but I don't know.

Jeffrey Hart: 48:11

Yes, I do wonder. Well, I've heard it said that the sort of well, the cost of labor you know people need to be paid a lot more these days and therefore to to spend the time to do different brick patterns just adds a adds a cost. Or maybe that's just an excuse. Maybe that's just a capitalist excuse, though, for not making as much money.

Sally Coulthard: 48:37

Well, you wonder, don't you? Because people like dry stone wallers were always traditionally paid quite well. Or you know, stone masons, I mean there was a, obviously a higher. You know, if you had a, if you had a group of stone masons building, building a minster, there was obviously a hierarchy amongst those stone masons, but it was a good living. There was no way that it wasn't kind of peasant workforce, you know, being made to kind of chip away against their will. You know this, it was proper craftsmanship and it was. You know people formed guilds and all that kind of stuff so that you could actually demand proper prices for your goods. So that kind of argument it doesn't quite, it doesn't quite add up for me. I suppose you've got, like you say, they're kind of, you know, a lot of building projects are big money making exercises. Now, rather than a means to an end possibly, or a, you know, a state statement, you know, I don't, I don't know how much you know the government invests in state architecture or or that kind of thing or, you know, takes any pride in those kind of buildings. I mean even stuff like you know there was when there was the phase of building public swimming pools or public libraries in sort of the late Victorian era. Even some of those are glorious and really highly, really highly decorative for really kind of mundane purposes, right, like, you know, like going for a swim or, you know, borrowing a book and they were more than mundane purposes because they were about. They were about public health and that's really, really, really important and public education. But the fact that they you know people showed that they, that those things mattered by spending money on the buildings is is really telling for me.

Jeffrey Hart: 50:21

That was a thing that struck me about poundbury. You know whether you like or dislike that place. One thing they were talking about was that there needed to be a hierarchy of buildings and you know, the more flourishes, the more. The more grandeur the sort of, the more important the building and its purpose. And that's always struck me as a thing that we've definitely lost.

Sally Coulthard: 50:46

I have funny. I've mixed feelings about the poundbury experiment because I, because I'm one, you know, on on, on, on one hand. Yeah, yeah, but actually I think at its heart is a really good idea and a recognition of the value of, of, of lovely spaces.

Jeffrey Hart: 51:14

Brilliant. Thank you so much, sally. This is just the first half of our chat. Make sure you roll straight into part two, episode 106, where the conversation turns to biofilia and craft in much more detail. A reminder that all the books mentioned are linked in the episode description. And I wanted to say about that poundbury comment I made at the end. I don't think I did a particularly great job of explaining what I meant. What I was trying to convey is that all of the buildings have a visual hierarchy, so the more ornate, the more important the building is, and so you can quite quickly read the town. It's quite a nice feature that I'm not doing a very good justice. I'm. I am doing no justice too. If you are interested to know more about poundbury, then head to episode number six with Noel Isherwood. There'll be a link in the show notes. Otherwise, head straight on over to episode 106.