The self-build revolution is here! DIY house-building fever is sweeping the nation, with a plethora of self-build conferences, workshops, building groups and now even pots of governmental money for it – all fuelled by our insatiable appetite for Grand Designs' dramatic journeys of doom, gloom and eventual domestic triumph.
But move over Kevin McCloud. Innovation in the field is now coming from unexpected quarters: the Queen.
It was announced this week that plans are afoot for a new self-build community within the grounds of the sprawling Balmoral estate in Scotland. The move follows a long history of queens building model villages. Marie Antoinette had a miniature hamlet, le hameau de la reine, built in the gardens of Versailles in 1783. It was a rustic retreat of hobbity houses, where she could escape the pomp of the palace and play at being a peasant. Not to be outdone, Catherine the Great ordered an entire Chinese village to be constructed in her palace grounds at Tsarskoye Selo, when Chinoiserie was all the rage. She died before it could be completed.
The Balmoral estate ... home to a new kind of self-build?
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