The renovation of a historic Grade II*-listed 16th-century farmhouse in Pembrokeshire is such an impressive highly-skilled renovation and restoration that it has won the Federation of Master Builders' (FMB) Cymru award for best Large Renovation Project Award 2023. It means by the project, by Just Lime Ltd and their team, will now go on to compete in the UK final.
The awards recognise excellence in the nation’s small and medium-sized construction companies and are run by the FMB, the largest trade association in the UK construction sector. The judges were completely enchanted by the restoration and updating of the site near Nevern that dates back to around 1578, particularly taken by the attention to detail and high level of skill brought to the epic three-year project that included updating outbuildings on the site as a new home for the nine species of bats before they could even begin on doing anything for the humans at the property.
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But Paul Walters from Just Lime is very keen to point out that it was very much a team effort. "It wasn't just myself – all of the sub-contractors, architect, and owners are all part of this award. Over the project timescale there were over 100 bodies on site working for over a year on the main house phase. There were a lot of people involved in creating the final outcome.
"It all went alarmingly smoothly partly because of the team of the architect and clients as well as me because we were all very realistic from the outset. We didn't say: 'Let's all do this in six months' like they do on TV's Grand Designs.
"Andrew Faulkner is a conservation-based architect I've worked with numerous times in the past so we were genuinely really fortunate that we were all on the same wavelength and trying to do the bare minimum to the vernacular architecture of the building whilst modernising it but not in an extravagant, modern way – it was a sympathetic approach to bringing it into the 21st century."
The project began with the outbuildings for the bats and then a grain store building converted into an apartment for the owners to live in while the main house was being renovated – no leaky caravan onsite during the worst weather on record for them, as you see in so many TV grand design projects. See more of how Llangoras farmhouse looked like before the project here.
The perfect teamwork of Just Lime, architect, and client was also a bonus when the interior of the main house was being considered, including attention to details such as door handles and latches and even a wooden toilet seat that paid homage to Tudor privy chamber.
Paul said: "Most of the sympathetic touches inside such as the kitchen and wooden toilet seat were down to the client – they've got an artistic background and they've got immense attention to detail, especially with colours.
"They were very colour-obsessed. We had hours of meetings where we discussed various shades of browns and we were planning the colours of the windows 18 months before we even ordered them.
"Whilst the drive for the aesthetic was the owners and the decisions were ultimately theirs it was still a three-way conversation between myself, them, and the architect."
Paul was the main contractor on the project, overseeing the bulk of the practical running of the site with site manager Oliver Hearn taking the burden of the administration roles and health and safety. Paul said: "Having Oliver on board meant I could then run the site from a tradesman perspective – my role was to fill the gap between what the architect and the client wanted and the information filtering down then to ensuring the carpenters executed it in a particular way.
"I'm a lime plasterer by trade so I was heavily involved with anything to do with the wet trades – so all of the rendering and the mortars, structural repairs, lintels, and windows installation and I helped build the stone chimneys. I was hands-on every day but in between juggling the other trades as well."
The location and landscape was a also an important factor to incorporate into the project for all involved so Paul and the team used local sand and clay for all structural rebuild elements and collected many resources – sheep’s wool insulation, hemp plasters, water-based paints – from the natural environment to mirror the farmhouse's authentic craftsmanship as much as possible.
Taking on a listed building, especially one so historic, can be a challenge and a rather daunting one at that for many owners and contractors but Paul was captivated by bringing an old building back to life, safeguarding its future by restoring and preserving its past.
He said: "Electrics and plumbing can be challenging as there aren't straightforward routes. Unlike a modern build you can't just drill through a wall – it's listed, you can't do certain things.
"But I don't find it remotely a problem and never have done because I'm trying to do the right thing for the building, trying to cause the least amount of damage and upheaval and alteration to a building and also getting that point across to the sub-contractors.
"The cherry on the cake for me, why I stay in this sector, is that with it being a listed building I know it's protected into the future – a future owner can't undo our good work. When we walk away from a job we know it's going to be there for hopefully another 200 years."
There are certain elements of restoring a building that get Paul the most excited and, apart from plastering of course, it's chimneys. Along with the exterior colour of a building it was the size, shape, amount and design of its chimneys that were ways of boasting wealth and status in the past.
Paul said: "My favourite aspect of the house now are the chimneys. I hate an old house where the chimneys are gone – it looks really weird, out of proportion.
"Also the oak panelling inside the drawing room and the slating of the roof as it's a diminishing-course roof, a very traditional way of roofing, so the slates towards the guttering are 24in slates and as you get up the roof they get smaller. They are diminishing in size to 10in but they're also random width so no two slates are the same size and it now looks beautiful and is very rare."
When it came to the exterior walls of the main building the team hit on a bit of luck that resulted in the house being cloaked in the rich shade of deep orange it now proudly wears.
Paul said: "Everything has to get approved, including external paint, but we were fortunate that the adjoining building, when we removed the cement from that, there were lots of sections of limewash. One of the colours was this rich sort of orange colour so because we found that on one of the buildings it becomes an allowance under the 'like for like' historic precedence approach."
Being one of only a handful of conservation builders in Wales Paul, aged 41 and originally from Gorslas, Carmarthenshire, is very experienced in historic restoration from epic whole-site projects to smaller-scale work having started his career as a plasterer and then trained at Towy College, Llandeilo, as part of a heritage bursary.
The course is an opportunity to upskill bricklayers to stone masons, plasterers to lime plasterers, and develop heritage carpentry skills and for a year Paul was based at the companies Ty Mawr and Jones and Fraser.
Paul said: "I also gained a place on the William Morris Craft Fellowship programme run by the SPAB (Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings). It’s the highest-regarded conservation training scheme in the UK and absolutely one-of-a-kind experience without which I would not have the background knowledge to take on projects such as this farmhouse.
"The award is amazing – I'm super-excited to win. It’s a big deal considering the competition. This win is a brilliant seal of approval and means a lot to me but it was very much a team effort and I consider it a pleasure to have been involved."
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