Brideshead replumbed! How owners of historic home halved its heating bill...with a bit of piping and some anti-freeze | Mail Online

Brideshead replumbed! How owners of historic home halved its heating bill...with a bit of piping and some anti-freeze | Mail Online

Simon Howard rolls his eyes when I ask him how many rooms he has. ‘Depends what you mean by a room,’ he says, ­gesturing at the Long Gallery.

It’s 160 feet long and as tall as a house. You could get a respectable ­terrace in here. But the Long ­Gallery would, presumably, only count as one room.

I try again and ask Simon to tot up his bedrooms. Again, it’s a rather nebulous concept. There is the family wing, the caretaker’s wing, several flats, not to mention the grand bit called the Bedroom Passage . . . How many windows, then? ‘No idea. But I can tell you that none of them are double-glazed because they’re all listed and it’s about £1,500 every time we need a replacement.’