I may be a little short on experience when it comes to “living with a listed
Building” as I have only lived in one for eighteen months. Fair enough, my
lifelong trade has been with old buildings, whether knocking them down (sorry,
dismantling them) or supplying reclaimed material for renovations to cottages
and castles. I have lived with, and been fascinated by other people’s Listed
buildings whenever I have been involved in a project.

My order book this week contains a Blue Lias & cobble courtyard for a National
Trust Property, a perfect brick match for a Country mansion, and a run of Staffy
Blue Copings. I’m semi-retired and dread the thought of losing the “semi”.

I renovated my first house in 1973. I should say “We” or suffer the wrath of my
poor Mrs who scraped the paint off a million stair-spindles. OK, not a million, but
at a spindle a week for the perfection required, and kids to look after, it might
well have been. An end-of-terrace spacious Victorian typical first-buy. By the
time we sold we understood every bit of her construction and managed to
restore everything in sight. Anything out of sight was covered up. Woodworm
eaten the loft? Board it! Acres of falling plaster held up with PVA, Polyfilla and
woodchip. The window-frames more filler than fabric.

And it was most definitely “We”, aged 29, who grafted into the early hours of the
morning, (hard labour after a day’s work to pay for it), who tackled a derelict
sprawling early Georgian farmhouse. We. Who bought a caravan for £25
thinking it would be for a month or two. Eighteen months later we made a profit
on the caravan – a tenner, to be precise – and moved into a still-derelict house
but with the benefit of electricity, water, and sewers. And experience.

The kids were in their teens when we returned to a caravan, and roughed it
again while converting a 17th Century barn. Three beds three baths later with a
granny annexe & tennis court, we surely had had enough. Never mind the
mortgage, and 90’s interest rates that now sound Dickensian…

Thirty years later, I write from a caravan, in the grounds of a Listed Building.

Busby