51, Giles Keating at Athelhampton

Giles Keating, current Owner of Athelhampton – one of the finest Tudor manors in England, dated 1495 and pre-1066. Giles describes his restoration work and their Athelhampton Zero project with Spase Ltd Architects and Surveyors.
As a team, clients, architects and suppliers provided an award-winning conversion of a Grade 1 listed estate into becoming carbon neutral.
Listen here for restoration stories of their huge kitchen hearth, writer Thomas Hardy’s deep association with the house after his career as an architect, the house as a film location and sharing carbon-neutral power installation expertise with Hampton Court consultants. Athelhampton is also open to visitors.
Visit https://athelhampton.com and https://spase.co.uk/portfolio/athelhampton.zero/

Episode Transcript

(00:16):
I'm incredibly honored. This is Rosalind'sderby here on local architecture now here and
why can I New Zealand air TiaRower And I'm talking with Giles Keating,
who I know that British listeners willbe probably familiar with, not so here
in New Zealand. Hi Giles,Hello, Rosalind. Lovely to talk,
lovely to talk. I mean,I'm kind of overwhelmed, I must admit,

(00:37):
how did we first make contact?Goodness? Did you say that you've
seen one of the reports and I'mtrying to remember which one it was now.
I was sitting at home watching Netflixand watching a movie called what was
it called with Maggie's Time, Yes, from time to Time, and I
was just looking at this movie andthen I thought, gosh that that house

(00:57):
looks a little bit familiar. Itlooks a little bit like maybe ethel Hampton.
And I went online and it wasethel Hampton. And then of course
this whole new kind of history openedup about you as a as a recent
owner and your understanding of the historyof the place, and it was really
exciting. And the whole story ofyour residency in ethel Hampton is very contemporary

(01:22):
is very incredibly like rewarding it.It's giving great benefits to Dorset and also
a contemporary view on how to retainyou know, new technology in an old
heritage building. And and your journeyof getting there was interesting. You were
looking for a Tudor house you decidedthat was your your niche. Yes,

(01:47):
I mean I just kind of fellout. I think there's lots of people
who fell in love with the Tudorera, the history, the romance,
and it sounds silly, but Iparticularly wanted a house with a minstrel's gallery,
which seemed to bring all that together. And of course you can only
have a mince fulk's gallery if you'vegot a proper great hall that's double height,
and athel Hampton has that absolutely fabulous, dating back to fourteen eighty five.

(02:12):
So it really is wonderful, wonderfuland you have sort of breezed new
life into it. Apparently the Cooksdid wonderful restoration over there thirty year tenure
there. But you are seeing itfrom the current perspective, Yes, no,
very much so. I mean theCook family who I bought it from,
had owned Athelhampton for as you say, good or three generations I think,

(02:36):
actually not quite fifty years anyway,many many decades. Absolutely amazing,
and I think they did incredible restorationwork, including on some of the stained
glass and all sorts of things.But obviously and also they opened it all
up to the public and created acafe and visitor center and really drew people

(02:59):
in, which was wonderful and Ilove that. That was another reason for
going there. But like all oldhouses, you know, this had an
enormous energy bill and it was jollycold as well, and they decided they
apparently have moved on to another restorationproject. It hasn't got them off.
Restoration isn't not at all, No, They've they've gone to something I think,

(03:21):
if you like, a bit moremanageable, a bit smaller, which
they can very much I think gettheir hands around, but doesn't kind of
completely take over their entire world,right, And there is always a risk
of that with Athelhampton, and insome ways that's wonderful, but at the
same time, you don't really wantto be having to chase your tail every

(03:42):
minute checking up on everything that's goingon. And so I understand why they
wanted to move away and from myperspective. I mean, there's an amazing
team of people there, many someof whom have been around twenty twenty five
years, and so they really reallyhelped it to keep everything going right.
And I mean, I'll get toa day in the life of ethel Hempton

(04:04):
shortly, but I just sort ofwanted to trek back to how you got
to being in a place where youwere searching for a tudor home and why
you wanted to and what it wasgoing to do for you in terms of
a new business venture. I mean, you never know what you're letting yourself
in for, but I definitely wantedsomething very different. I'd been working.

(04:26):
I was an economist, I'm aneconomist by training, and then i'd been
I worked as an academic, andthen I worked in the city of London
for a long time, which bythe way, doesn't mean so much physically
in the city, because you spendan awful lot of time traveling the world
and talking to people and you getI think, a wonderful historical perspective that

(04:48):
way. But I wanted a bitof a break, a little bit of
a break from that. And althoughI still have one or two financed things
going on in the background. Theidea was to do something which you can
quite literally get your hands around kindof physically, as well as really get
involved in the history and the architectureand as you say, the business side

(05:11):
as well. And you obviously knowsomething about architecture, or you knew it
before that, or you've discovered itas you've gone along. After having purchased
ethel Hampton, I would say Iam a total amateur, but I had
done a pretty full on restoration oftwo much much much tinier old houses,

(05:34):
one in Wales and one in France, both of which were in total ruins.
You know, we're talking about noroof, four walls kind of thing,
no electricity, no nothing, asit were, as well as doing
fairly extensive renovation on a eighteen thirty'shouse in London. And so I've been

(05:57):
involved, and I think i've alwaysit's never been a matter of just giving
the plant, giving it all toan architect. It's very much been sort
of designing a lot of the conceptsand then working with the architect to actually
realize that, okay, and soyes, so I think in that sense
getting involved in Applehampton was was verylogical. If you like, and of

(06:18):
course there you're you know what Ithere was no question of course of altering
the roof or putting extra levels offlaws in or new windows that you know,
I'd be up. I wouldn't betalking to you now, I'd be
in jail if I love that yelisted buildings. But nevertheless, there's lots
of scope to do to do wonderfulstuff there, to do wonderful stuff.

(06:40):
I did notice, and this iswhat I rather love about contemporary loving in
in period homes, is that youhad some maybe yourself are a wonderful onteior
design and you're furnishing as quite contemporary, lovely strong colors, very simple.
So you've got these very very ancientspaces as and a queer environment, but

(07:01):
you've kind of enhanced it by havingsimple contemporary finished and some of the pictures
I might have seen somewhere. Isthat right as an approach, it's very
much there is somewhat by room fromroom to room. So I would say
that the core of the Tudor house, so the fourteen eighty five area and

(07:21):
some of the area that we callthe modern extension that was built in Elizabethan
times in about fifteen fifty fifteen sixty. All of that, virtually all of
that has got Tudor period furniture orin one or two cases some contemporary some
modern furniture. But then there isthere's one room which we believe was used

(07:45):
by Missus Hansworth, the wife ofthe press baron Lord Rovermure in the nineteen
thirties, who had no Coward andothers to stay, and so her room
is done in nineteen thirty style.Oh okay, oh, and that's very
popular with visitors and I love tostay in that, and it's also nice

(08:07):
to stay in one of the Tudorrooms and sleep in a four poster bed
as well. But then alongside allof that there's a wing at the back
of the house which was built inthe nineteen twenties and from the outside it
looks very much you know, itdoesn't clash. But inside that is the
area that really is furnished in themodern style, as you said, with
the bright colors and so on,so young, which is a lovely kind

(08:31):
of refreshing contrast all of the Cock'santiques that was all sold. So when
you entered the home, was thereexisting furniture or that had it all gone
to that big option a few yearsago. There was no furniture whatsoever apart
from a billiard table that we couldn'tget or they couldn't get out. So
that was the one piece that Idid buy from them. But interestingly,

(08:56):
that was the second time in onehundred years that there'd been a tote will
sell out of the furniture, becauseyoung mister Alfred cart de la Fontaine,
almost exactly one hundred years earlier,had had a big furniture sale, and
rather like the Cooks, he'd beena great collector of wonderful antique pieces.
And so the furniture that the Cookfamily sold five years ago, that was

(09:20):
all furniture that they themselves had accumulatedover their their fifty year tenure. And
so yes, I was left witha complete blank sheet, which is very
exciting actually and intimidating when you knownothing really about furniture. But she can

(09:41):
just absorb the qualities of the ofthe spaces and then gradually gradually lived within
them. Absolutely, but I thinkthere was there was very much. I
mean I did create with the helpof a consultant. I didn't use very
many consultants, but I think withfurniture I just had to. But there

(10:03):
I did create a furniture plan,and I've mentioned to you the way that
we have Tudor furniture in Tudor roomsand then nineteen thirty and so on,
and so the furniture plan laid outthat kind of scheme, so we weren't
just going randomly of saying, oh, there's a nice piece in a shop
or an auction will buy that.It was very much right, this is
a Tudor room we are going tohave as either actual tutor Tudor furniture,

(10:28):
which by the way, is expensiveand very difficult and often faked. I
mean, that's the other big warningwe had. It's so careful. But
so we aimed for Tudor or perhapsjust in some cases immediately after Tudor furniture
in the Tudor rooms and then themore modern or the later era of furniture
in other rooms. So you havea clear division, and as a visitor,

(10:52):
you kind of you know, aretens of thousands of visitors come in
and most of them are not expertsin furniture, very few are, but
they immediately know which era they arein when they enter a room, and
I like that. And then whenwe couldn't get furniture, like in the
kitchen for example. We've even hadlocal crafts people who have remade things,

(11:18):
you know, we've had people inthe great hall, we've got these amazing
candelabra with about fourteen or fifteen candlesin and those are all made by a
local blacksmith who's also called Gilets,which is rather nice actually, so yes,
just PEPs. We should say herethat ethel Hampton is an ancient British

(11:41):
manner, one of the finest tudentmanners, and it as open to visitors
and you live there, and howmany how many rooms do you live in?
How many people are there? Othergroups? Are there other people talanting
in the place or just your familyor yes, so it's a complicated situation.

(12:03):
So I'm there quite a bit,but also coming and going as everybody
does. And then there is oneguy who is there all the time and
on that because we need that forthe fire and on the rare occasions when
he has a holiday or whatever.Then you know, there's a kind of
rotor and either myself or someone elsewe always make sure we're there. And

(12:24):
then we also have rooms which wedo rent out to people, So we'll
sometimes have families coming in and stayingthere. And then also if we're having
an event, we might have forexample, we have the Royal Ballet,
so the ballet answers came and stayed. We have the Tudor re enactment,
so all the people who are dressingup in their Tudor costumes, they'll come

(12:48):
and stay. So all it's mixand matches the answer in terms of who's
there. And so it's not yourfull time permanent home you have a home
in London or how does that workyour family all of there or your grandchildren
or your children. So yes,I mean I kind of alternate there between
there in London, and then wealso have big family events there. And

(13:13):
yes that the first grandchild has arrivedand started kind of racing around the corridors,
so maybe there'll be some more ofthat well well to see. But
yeah, but I've got four kidsof my own, so that there's you
know, there's a fair sized familythere there already that kind of fills it,
which is nice because it was alwaysa family house and you look back

(13:35):
to when it was built in Tudortimes and you can just see and all
the history is there these generations ofchildren who were brought up there. I
know. That's what I loved.In one of your and your writings,
you were describing how you could feeljust the scale of the place, even
though it's so old. You couldsee that the children running up and down,
running in from the garden into themeals, and very very natural,

(14:01):
I think it really is. AndI think when you go there, and
you know, like many old houses, it's got different staircases, so you
can kind of go up one staircaseand down another, which I always think
is very exciting for kids actually,And and you know, so the book,
which by the way, just grewout, I mean it's a series
of books in fact, and thekind of central character is a sort of

(14:22):
twelve thirteen year old girl actually,who was one of the four surviving children
of the last generation of the Martinfamily. And it just seems such a
kind of romantic thing, these fourgirls who are going to inherit from this
amazing wealth from their father who didnot want to give it to a distant

(14:43):
male relative. But so Anne hasall these adventures and the idea is that
that Athelhampton, I think you canjust see it through the eyes of a
young person growing up there and kindof, you know, on the one
hand, racing around with her friends, you know, for games, and
then the kind of dark side aspeople kind of start to sort of want

(15:05):
to try and get their hands onApplehampton and and so on, and she
has a pet ape to help her, because the ape is the family symbol
and because literally again going back toTudor times, there were pirates who brought
apes from Africa to Dorset, andso that all that that just kind of
told itself that story because Mum alwayssaid the symbol was the ape with looking

(15:30):
at a mirror. And my motherwould say the motto of the Martins was
he who looks at Martin's ape,Martin's ape looks at him. I don't
know why I remember that, butMum would sort of try to tell me
that, and that was that wasthat was the what do you call it
the shield? No? What doyou call those things? Yes? Or

(15:50):
whatever? And that was what itmeant, he who looked at Martin's ape
Martins. And so the eight theygot that because apes had arrived in Dorset
from Africa and abroad. Well well, in fact, that was just like
a happy coming together or coincidence.Because Martin's ape as a heraldic symbol,
the crest on the shield, Ithink that goes back much further than that,

(16:14):
several hundred years, and I thinkthe origins are in these medieval mystery
stories. I don't remember Raynard theFox, who is particularly in the Germanic
tradition but also English, is thereal bad guy who kind of you know,
cheats and swindles and beats people up. And Martin the Ape is the

(16:36):
kind of good guy who tries tokind of calm him down and push him
on the road back to being theyou know, good person, but I
don't think he really succeeds. So, but all good sort of tales that
talk about try to just talk aboutthe nature of human life. That's where
they come from, these old tales, don't they. Yes like to convey

(17:00):
to people that you have written acouple of novels. That's what you're referring
to, that you're inspired by theancient life and the family nature of the
place, and that you've written thesetwo novels about Anne of Ethelhampton because you
were so interested in the fact thatI didn't know that until you had pointed
it out that Sir Nicholas Martin hissons died and he and he left all

(17:25):
his lands to his daughters rather thanfind a close male relative to leave them
to, which is which is quitedelightful that you followed that through in your
novels. And it feels such aromantic almost like a kind of early early
feminist, an early feminist thing.Yeah, but I mean and of course

(17:45):
in a way though it's always difficultwhen it gets divided up, and quite
rapidly within a generation, three quartersof it had come together into one share,
and then around the time of theEnglish Civil War, that actually was
sold off and disappeared from the descendantsof the Martin family. But the one

(18:08):
remaining quarter, which actually attached tothe youngest daughter, to Anne, the
one that I read about her family, actually retained theirs for another quarter of
a millennium, so they were reallyowners and sometimes living for a long long
time. Yeah. I don't knowwhere this connection with Alban Martin came from,

(18:32):
but we were always told that hewas one of he came from the
Martins. I don't know that's whatwe were told. But Alban Martin came
to New Zealand from Dorset our mygreat great grandfather in eighteen sixties. And
yeah, I don't know if it'spart of their old family or not,
but that's now. Looking into itnow, I'm not sure what the connection

(18:55):
really is. I think it's highlylikely that it would be Martin family.
Even by the time of the Tutors, the Martin family had many, many
branches, and of course since then, I mean, we know what it's
like, the family trees, theyget bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
And in fact, one of ourmore distant projects is to create a
Martin family network and try and drawlink together people's family trees. But I

(19:18):
think if we drew it all out, it'd probably be half a mile long.
But almost certainly your ancestor there wasindirectly at least from the Martins.
Highly likely yeh, yes, becausehe was based in Dorset. But he
married Jemima Kim and Jemima Kimp's sisterwas a woman called Eliza Brave who wrote

(19:45):
novels. And my mother picked upall these ancient novels when she was over
there, and I read them,and one of them was actually supporting these
sections, and it was looking atthese sections who were under strict from the
Normans and and whatnot. And Imean the Martins were Normans. I was
told they came over with William theConqueror, and so they were given this

(20:07):
property as a sort of like gift, as being part of his support,
you know, team or whatever.But the wife of Alban Martin's sister in
law wrote many novels about medieval timesand it was so interesting who kind of
empathy for the sex And it's abit like in New Zealand, you know,
our empathy for the Maori, theindigenous and all of this, and
trying to understand the Saxons under threatand all of that sort of spiritual change

(20:33):
that they were going through. Yeah. I mean, I've never got my
head fully round that, because clearlythere were there was intermarriage, and I
don't mean in a bad way.I think there were romantic and political marriage
is between in some cases the Normansand the Saxons. So I think while
in some cases land was just expropriated, I think in others that there were

(20:56):
marriages which brought it together. ButI really don't know all that historic details.
That's another vast, great project initself. But certainly the Martins actually
came to Athlehampton again as a resultof intermarriage, but with another family that
came over with William the Conqueror,with the wonderful name of de p Dell,

(21:18):
which has given its name to theriver that goes past called the Piddle,
which is spelt Piddle, which everybodylaughs at. That's where it comes
from the French. Yeah, yes, exactly. Yeah, And I did
say that before all of the Martins, prior to teen sixty six, it
was a sex and seat of sexand king. Yeah, and that's just

(21:41):
what I'm reading into your history andyour website and things. Yeah, No,
that's absolutely spot on. It.It is a it was in the
Domesday Book, there was an ancientSaxon settlement and so on and again just
all the details of that are stillto be found, but no doubt we
will do. We work all thetime, yes, And I mean this
is an architecture program, and soall of us is very totally you know,

(22:04):
fascinating that you've brought this building tolife and opened it up to the
community and increased sort of like thevitality within the Dorset community economically and culturally
and all of these things. Butyou've had this incredible relationship with your architect
survey of practice Space Limited, whereyou've explored contemporary energy technology. Yes.

(22:29):
Well, we were very, verylucky because we had two commercial tenants on
site who I kind of inherited fromthe Cooks, and one of those,
as you say, was Space,which is run by Stephan Pittman, who's
you know, absolutely fabulous architect whohe does do modern buildings, but he's
also really into old buildings. Andreally working with him, I mean,

(22:55):
we did two big, big projectsand one of them, as you said,
is renewable energy, and then theother was restoring the Elizabethan kitchen which
had been completely lost really, sohe did the restoration of the kitchen as
well as the renewable energy project.Absolutely he did. Yeah, and again
I think with myself providing, notbeing a passive partner in that, but

(23:18):
very very active in terms of thedesign of that. And I mean Tudor
kitchens. There's a book by PeterBriers, there's a complete what's the word
literature on Tudor kitchens. And oneof the things I was very keen to
discover with the hatches for taking thefood in and out, and you know,

(23:40):
we were able to kind of unearththose behind the walls, and I
think Stephan thought I was being abit mad, but I insisted that we
kind of opened them up so youcan now pass the food back and forth.
And then of course we opened up. Yeah. No, absolutely,
And when we have a reenactment,that's literally what we're doing with the waiters
on one side. Are they calledButler's patches? Are they called Butler's hatches?

(24:03):
No, that's diffine. I meanyou could in a modern idiom.
I think you would, yes,but I mean I'm to be honest,
I'm not sure. I think justserving hatches perhaps in Tudor time. So
could you describe that whole kind ofamazing process where you had this kitchen which
was very much built in and framedin with like an aga or a sort
of coal range or something, andyou had no idea that there was a

(24:27):
completely original, authentic huge half.Was it called a half? What is
it called that great big open whichabout four cocks at one point? One
time? You could call it ahalf or a range, And I think
we knew there was something there,but it was completely covered. The bricks

(24:48):
were covered in thick paint, andthen underneath it wasn't open at all.
It was just completely bricked in.So it was as though you had a
wall which you could see a brickarch, but it was like two dimensional
that you couldn't you couldn't go intoit. There was no space underneath it.
And in fact, you couldn't evenapproach it because you had a modern

(25:11):
or fairly modern arga you know,those great big cookers, and you had
kitchen units, I mean much likeyou might have in a kitchen you installed
last week as it were, orblocking the entrance to it, and then
you know around the corner there weredishwashers and so on, and so it
really was a matter of stripping allof that out. And even when you

(25:33):
strip that out, you can't juststrip out underneath the that you know,
where these bricks were that you couldn'tjust move the the you couldn't just strip
out underneath that. And the reasonyou couldn't strip out underneath that was because
it was structural. After that kitchenwas built five hundred years ago, they

(25:56):
had added two stories above it,and so whereas before all that that arch
was doing was supporting a bit ofwall and the side of a roof above
it. It was now supporting twocomplete extra stories and another whole, much
bigger roof above. And so inorder to be able to take that out,

(26:19):
and this is where obviously I didvery much bow to the expertise of
Stefan, you had to put whatthey call syntec anchors in, which are
reinforced metal cables which they used tobind the whole arch to the side and
the back walls. And only whenthey've done that could they be allowed to

(26:44):
take the bricks out that provided thesupport. But it's all hidden, so
you don't see any of that.That's just that's hidden there. How did
they get in? How did theyget in behind the existing brickwork to insert
these these these bars? Is itsomehow behind? So what they did,
as I guess you might in manyconstruction projects, you reenforce ship away a

(27:07):
small amount of the brickwork of thesupporting brick, not of the old tudor
brick that's supporting bricks underneath it,and you then put in acro props,
and then the acro props are thentaking the strain. Then you can ship
away more of the bricks. Thenyou can get in there and put your

(27:27):
syntac anchors in the reinforcement and thenyou can take your acro props out.
So that was how it was done, okay, And so you now have
the original brickwork from five hundred yearsago and this mass of open heath which
you know you might have four orfive different shifts over two or three spits
doing whatever it is to provide forthe banquet or the lunch or the dinner.

(27:52):
Absolutely, and the brickwork itself.To get the paint off, you
use this some peel away stuff.You're probably familiar with it, but which
you you you paint on a kindof paste. You then put on the
a kind of plastic covering and youleave it for about a week and then

(28:15):
you pull it away and that pullsoff most of the paint without damaging the
underlying brickwork. So so yeah,so we did all of that, and
then in addition to that, asI said, we found the serving hatches
which were all just hidden behind anotherwall. And then on a third wall
we took away the dishwasher and anotherlot of units and found a bread of

(28:40):
them behind that. So it wasdiscovery. Yeah, so you really found
your your niche building in which therewas so much more to explore and to
and to have expert structural consultancy requiredrecked around it. You had to have
that. You had to have that. Yeah. I mean, all the

(29:00):
pictures are both on your website andon Space's website of these huge banks of
solar panels, and then there's longrow of heat pumps, none of them
which I didn't really understand how theheat pumps were servicing the rooms because the
heat pumps were all outside. Butcan you describe the ethel Heapton zero project?

(29:21):
Absolutely? So. I mean thevision was, look, we're emitting
a hundred tons of carbon per yearand we're probably in heating, yeah,
and cooking for the cafe and soon, and we'd probably emit a lot
more than that if we realized ourambition to open the house all year round,

(29:44):
because in the past it was onlyopen half the year. So we
had to do something. And allthe gas boilers were falling apart anyway,
so we said, well, let'sjust go absolutely full full blast on this
and take all the gas tanks out, all the fossil fuels, and so
we go entirely renewable. And inorder to do that in a house dating

(30:10):
back five hundred and fifty years.Of course, you can't just plunk a
few solar panels on the roof.And what we did was to put the
solar panels about five hundred yards awayin a paddock that was part of the
property, and another lot about thesame distance in the opposite direction in the

(30:32):
yard that was used by the gardeners, but kind of carefully positioned so that
they could still put their equipment underneathit. But we looked at all sorts
of other solutions. We looked atlaying pipes within the river to extract heat
from the river. We looked athaving pipes under the tarmac, We looked
at all sorts of things that discoveredthey weren't going to work. But then

(30:56):
in the end, but again itreally was a partnership with the contractors as
well, who came up with lotsof brilliant ideas and who pointed out that
there was a new generation of heatpumps that was fifty percent more efficient and
fifty percent quieter that had literally justappeared on the market. And they then

(31:18):
very kindly in the middle of COVID, this is all the mid of COVID,
they then went brought us up quickly. They sort of said, right,
we're going to quickly go and bilethese before they get sold out to
other people. So that they werejust very very proactive as well. And
by the way, the paddot thesheep can still and they do. We

(31:40):
have sheep that eat the grass underthe solar panels and in England it would
be facing south right absolutely, yes, the opposite of course, but it's
exactly exactly that. Yeah, yeah, And you work out all the angles
for optimum at different times of yearand all that, and then so then

(32:00):
you obviously have to have your cablingthat brings that power to a kind of
central point. And at that centralpoint we then have a big bank of
Tesla power wall batteries and those allowus to do two things. It means
that in summer time and also inautumn and spring, we can charge up

(32:29):
the batteries during the day from thesunlight and then we're able to use that
at night time and then for heating. But in winter we kind of turn
it on its head and what wedo is we charge up the batteries from
the grid at night, which iswhen the grid is not just cheapest,

(32:50):
but it's also very low carbon contentof production because you're using renewable power from
the grid. But in daytime it'sthe other way around. The grid.
In the middle of the day,the grid has to use a lot of
fossil fuels because they don't have enoughrenewable power to meet the peak time demand

(33:13):
in the daytime, if that makessense. But in summer time, we'll
be helping the grid because we'll beputting excess power not only into our own
batteries, but we put it backinto the grid to reduce the amount of
fossil fuels that they're having to use. So when I say we're carbon neutral,
we are carbon neutral across the yearas a whole. But even in

(33:37):
winter we would have very few carbonemissions because we're getting this power in the
middle of the night anyway. Andthen you then have the heat pumps,
as you rightly said, but theheat pumps, and you know, this
was another bit of magic, whichyou know, I think, and Stephan
Pittman from Space and Ryan Matshade forEmpower and and Mike Stevenson from H two

(34:01):
Eco. These are our three kindof real big partners in this. What
they told me, which I haven'trealized at all. Is that with a
modern insulated pipe, you can haveyour heat source, your heat pump a
good seventy or eighty meters away fromthe place you're trying to heat. So

(34:22):
I didn't like it. I didn'tknow that at all. It is completely
extraordinary. And so and your heatloss along that distance is maybe one degree
or something like that. It's tiny. And so so we can install the
heat pumps. Again, you wouldn'tbe allowed to put wouldn't want to put
them right up outside the wall ofa tudor building. That you can put

(34:45):
them at a goodly distance away,and then you just send the heat into
the house from there. So theheat is seen them through parts which are
so well insulated. Is that rightof some sort? And then the as
parts are they vinted into romes orare they running through ducts, or how

(35:07):
are they getting into rome to rome? So the warmth comes, The warmth
is not warm air that's coming through, it's warm water. So very similar
to the way that a gas boilerwould work. The heat pump just heats
up water and the only difference isthat it doesn't heat it quite as hot

(35:27):
as a gas boiler does. Butthe modern heat pumps get almost as hot,
not quite, yes, and soyou're bringing hot water very hot.
I mean we're talking fifty five degrees, sixty degrees. You wouldn't particularly want
to put your hand into it intothe house. And some of the time
we use radiators. So some ofthe time that just goes into conventional radiators.

(35:50):
But in lots of places we've beenable to put in underfloor heating.
And I mean I mentioned, youknow, the restoration of the Elizabethan kitchen,
well, as part of that,we took out the floor, which
was again a kind of nineteen fiftiesquarry tie. We took that out and
we put down a proper line creekfloor which is really good and flexible and

(36:13):
also lots of good insulation. Andthen we put underfloor heating. And then
we've put beautiful quarry tiles that camefrom the Purbeck Stone quarry, which has
been used as a quarry for aboutseven or eight hundred years so, and
that's just the sort of stone usedelsewhere in the house. So we created
that. The floor is a thingof beauty in itself, but it's got

(36:36):
this modern underfloor heating underneath it.And then the final thing was that in
the Great Hall, where we couldn'thave done that. But fortunately mister Lafontaine,
I mentioned him before, who wasthe Victorian guy who had the Athlehampton

(36:58):
in Victorian times. He had putin very elegant little trench heaters, and
what he did was to he justtook out some stones and put these very
very beautiful metal grills which had hadpipes underneath. It had been heated by
coal, and so we took thoseout and put in modern pipes that were

(37:20):
heated from our renewable energy in theheat pumps. So your new heat pump
energy is going into those old rills. Because I read that heat installed them,
I thought, well, maybe youhad to take them all out,
but you've just reused his installation exactlythat, which I just have a lovely
feel to it, doesn't it lovely? Fields, Because I'd like, I
think we might just mention that Lafontainewas, you know, Anna much like

(37:45):
yourself. He understood, you knowthat he really wanted to take real care
of the building, and he diddo a lot of work, but he
did it with great consultation to well. The likes oftly Thomas had hardly the
writer who was a local member ofthe of the district and he had been

(38:06):
trained as an architect, and sohe had fallen another the building as a
teenager going there while his father wasa stonemason or something, and he did
in form. They worked together,Lafontaine and Thomas Hardy to make sure that
all of the work that they didwas appropriate to the heritage of the building
back a hundred years ago. No, you're you're absolutely spot on, and

(38:28):
and I mean the whole Thomas Hardyconnection is another fascinating thing, and in
fact it's wonderful because Stephen Pittman trainedat the firm, the firm in Dorchester,
although the name has changed, Whi'sthe same one that Thomas Hardy had
trained after amazing Who knew that ThomasHardy was an architect? Well, I
know, but we're very conscious ofit because he also worked on building the

(38:51):
church that is just outside the gatesas well, which is a lovely connection.
And you can actually see the drawingsin the local museum that have got
his on it for that church thathe was working on. I'd always known,
I'd always know. My mum hadalways told me that the wonderful movie
Far from the Maiden Crowd back inthe sixties was sit one of the locations

(39:14):
was ethel Hampton, and that ThomasHardy had written Far from the Maiding Crowd
was a movie Offor's book, andthat was a long time. I think
that was a wonderful movie. Absolutelyyes. I mean I'm not sure how
much was actually feeled, but Ithink Thomas Hardy was inspired by athel Hampton
when he wrote that book. Andthe thing is that his connection was very

(39:36):
personal, not just that his dadworked there and he worked on the church
and his grandfather was born there,but he also fell in love with a
girl, his cousin who went tothe school just outside the gates, so
which was actually was operated by thelady who lived in Athelhampton. So it's
a very close connection, with veryclose connection. And it's just so nice

(39:58):
that it's that, you know,you're bringing all this back to life with
a kind of renewed freshness. Sojust the site. So we've got the
solar panels and they're feeding power intothe Tesla batteries. Yep. But then
how do the heat I've never quitegot it myself. How do the heat
pumps get fired up? They're fromthe direct from the solar panel, or

(40:22):
they're direct from the solar panel,aren't they, So that you can do
that, you can have literally youcan pump water through solar panels. So
but but but that's not what we'redoing. We're using the solar powers panels
to generate electricity. Yes, andthat electricity either goes into the batteries for
u slater or it gets used immediatelyin the heat pumps. Right, and

(40:45):
the heat pump very clever bit ofkits. So what it's actually doing is
it's extracting warmth, either from theground or from the air. So if
you imagine how a ground source heatpump works. You pump water through a
pipe under the ground, and whenthe water comes out, it's four degrees

(41:10):
warmer or maybe even more than that, maybe five or six for ground source
warmer than when it went in.So you're heating up that water. And
the reason you need the electricity isin order for the pumping. That's really
all that the electricity is doing.The electricity isn't heating itself, it's pumping
the water. And then once you'veheated the water up, either from the

(41:32):
air or from the ground, youkind of multiply that up through a heat
exchange that so you as it were, you'll have water on a different circuit
which gets raised four degrees once andthen another and then another and another four
degrees, so it ends up gettinga lot warmer, and that raises that,
as I said, to say,fifty five degrees. So how would

(41:55):
I thought, I mean, I'msort of trying to get heat, you
know, I'm dealing with heat pumpsand air conditioning on all my houses all
the time. But I never reallyget too close. I never really fully
understand it. You know, whowould have thought that I would have had
such a clear understanding of how heatpumps work, and by someone who's installing
it in an ancient Tudor manner.That's so helpful to me. I've never

(42:19):
really had the time to get toomuch into it. But now and you've
clarified it, and it's all ifreaders can understand, can visualize this bank
of heat pumps that you see onyour website, which are all in the
line, which are completely removed fromthe building. It's really, you know,
great technology, and I think apparentlyit said that you know, it's

(42:42):
informed future. It's really quite informingfuture servicing of historic homes. I think
that was always one of the hopes. And do you know, rosalind it
was extraordinary because we put all thisin and it was kind of all fired
up that what nearly two years agonow, and I mean I think myself

(43:04):
and Stephan and the team at Athelhamptonthought, oh, this is wonderful,
but nobody else seemed very interested.And that was a bit disappointing. I
mean not because we wanted to kindof say, you know, wow,
how wonderful we are, but wejust wanted people to get inspired by it
and do the same. And then, amazingly, over the last six nine
months, there's been a kind offlood of absolute fascination with it. And

(43:28):
it's been a mixture of kind ofpeople with small houses and I'm talking mainly
old houses but sometimes not so old, and then right the way up to
really really big historic houses. Sothe team at Hampton Court from literally came
down to Athelhampton had a look,and then they invited me back to Hampton
Court to go and talk to allthe team there. And we're having people

(43:52):
from other historic house organizations. SoI think now everybody wants to sort of
really see what can be done.That's fantastic because that really gives a sense
of just really helping other people tokind of, you know, to be
different everywhere, but to help othersto kind of go down the same road.
Well for me too, I meanI just find it really off putting

(44:14):
seeing these heat pumps. So soyou know, right outside your building or
even inside the building, you know, but this idea of that these farms
of solar panels off site, youknow, to the side, and then
like a nicely ordered, absolutely placefor all of the heat pumps together.
Then you're not just the architecture ofthe building is not fighting with this visual

(44:38):
technology junk. Completely agreeing. Infact, I think the heat pumps actually
become a thing of beauty in theirown right. Yeah, because they're in
their own place, yes, andexactly not fighting it puts it perfectly,
I do agree. Yep. Yeah, it's new to me, and thank
you for that. I think onSpace's website, what if they're saying that

(45:00):
that, to our knowledge, consideredthe first exemplar of converting a Grade one
fourteen eighty five tudor US state intobecoming carbon neutral. This nationally recognized award
winning project was a pleasure to workon and involve the installation of two solar
arrays, twelve Tesla batteries, oneof the largest power wall installations for gs

(45:23):
HP and fifteen at whatever that means. Yeah, so it's been well,
well well. Space obviously happy withhaving been involved. Absolutely yeprect. Did
I see somewhere that their address isactually Hathorhampton their studio address or yeah,
yes, tis as I mentioned that. So now one of the commercial tenets

(45:45):
that we have on site, yep, right, you know the kind of
little wing at the back, yepright. And the restaurant is that is
that like a date daily thing ora weekend thing or or was it a
cafe? Or is a day dayor night? Or yeah? What is
the day in the life of Ethelhampton, you know, the day to day

(46:06):
business? Yeah, no, well, I mean so you know, you
you kind of wake up and usuallyperhaps I mean I might wander around the
gardens because the gardener is always inearly and you often get absolutely beautiful kind
of sunlight coming in at a lowangle, and so sort of the gardeners
are kind of already, you know, setting up and getting ready for their
day, so sort of chat withthem a little bit and and you know,

(46:31):
having pulled back I should say,the great big bolts on the inside
of this amazing old tudor door toget out. And anyway, after looking
at the gardens, then usually Imight hopefully somewhere along when I've had a
cup of tea or coffee or something, then you'll you'll go over to the
cafe actually, and in the cafe, which is another old building, not

(46:54):
quite so old, but lovely thatchedbuilding that there, the team will be
setting up ready for the day.And so yes, they offer kind of
snacks and coffee and tea and lunchand lunch every day of the week.
We don't normally do dinner unless there'sa special event. And obviously there's a

(47:17):
gift shop, and we've also gotto kind of visit the center with one
or two videos and kind of panelsof timelines and all that sort of thing,
and you know, quite a fewbooks and other things on sale for
people, gardening tools that sort ofthing. A lot of local food produce
as well, which we both sell. And we're using the cafe and know,

(47:38):
so you talk to the team andthey're all busily getting ready, sorting
out, you know, sort ofdiscuss perhaps what happened yesterday, any big
things that are coming up during theday, because sometimes we get quite big
groups of people, and we dohave some people from down Under who come
on cruisers actually which which dock fairlynearby, so that's that's nice. And

(48:05):
then we we you know, thenthings really begin to get very busy,
and usually there's some kind of asit were, mattered, to meet with
somebody in discuss it might be anew bit of a bit of building or
repair work. Sewers are always aproblem, the bane of my life,
sorting out the sewers, and thenmaybe something a bit more exciting. We're
doing some videos for YouTube about ThomasHardy's love poems and so chat with some

(48:34):
of the actors and the directors forthat. I've sort of drafted out some
scripts for that. So that's aproject that will take place over this year
and then we'll start releasing them atthe end of this year or early next
year. And then yeah, no, and then so then the day goes
on and maybe there's bits of repairwork to be done or looked at and

(48:57):
so on, and then and ofcourse always chatting to visitors, which is
always lovely, and then it's alsoit's lovely having people there, but it's
also nice towards the end of theday when everybody begins to gradually sort of
fade away, and then the housegoes all quiet again and you're just really
left there with perhaps the odd ghostkind of knocking around in the corner.

(49:17):
But I know what you mean aboutthe light. I mean, I think
as you get older, you're actuallythe day to day experience of seeing light
in your building or in your gardenis as part of the kind of amazing
drama and change throughout the day ofhow light falls around the house, either
inside or outside, and particularly inthe gardens. The changes through the day

(49:42):
make it so alive and vitle Ido agree, No, I absolutely agree,
up yup. And what's very interestingabout Athlehampton is that although the oldest
part of the building faces pretty wellduped south, this the bit that I
mentioned that was built about sixty yearslater, in about fifteen fifty fifteen sixty,

(50:07):
that comes out at a quite astonishingangle. It's an oblique angle to
the older building, and you veryrarely see that in a building of any
age. People tend to go forrectangles, and if you look at a
photo of it you'll see that.And and of course the effect of that

(50:27):
on the light you mentioned the lightthe sunlight inside is fabulous and really means
the sunlight floods in to that buildingat that angle almost all day long.
Wonderful. Do you have these smalltiny windows? You know, you know
the problem of glass back in theday where it was a very expensive thing
and the windows weren't that big.Are you know these tiny blazed tudor window

(50:53):
systems. Are they getting the light? And well, well, you see.
I think it's a sign of justhow wealthy of the Martin family must
have been that they went for reallypretty big windows. And I mean,
obviously you have smaller glazing within that, but the overall expanse of glass is

(51:13):
very big. So I think theymust have had a lot of money to
be able to pay for that glass, which, as you say, was
a real luxury item. Yes,a luxury item. I did hear that
there was a fire, only itdamaged one part of it. Was it
a newer part that it damaged?So I mean this is far is always
the worry and the fear, ofcourse, in any old house, and

(51:36):
that was in the Cook's time,that was in the nineteen nineties, and
that did damage a part of theupper stories of the east wing and some
of that the bit that was mostdamaged had probably been added in around about
the eighteen hundreds, I think,So the lower part of that building was

(51:59):
tudor, but that wasn't damage verymuch, or there was a bit of
smoke damage, but it was itwas the the upper part that was actually
burnt and they had to replace thewhole roof up there. Ye, But
the rest relief because you know,we heard that it had a fire and
I just thought, oh my gosh, all of that great hall and all
of that, But that wasn't reallydamaged. That the Great Hall was completely

(52:21):
unaffected, which was very fortunate.Yes, And they obviously got there in
time and it was protected by thevery very big thick stone wall there.
Yeah, you know, that's that'sso lovely to think that everything is still
as it was, because some yearsago I was thinking, oh, you
know, will it ever will it? Will it ever retain and maintain a
new lease of life? You know, as the decades go by, that

(52:43):
yus it has there's just so much, so much reference to to Ethel Hampton
and your work on the net.When I was going through it, the
work that you do with empower energylimited. The other thing I noticed that
you you something on Desert Island disand what your book of choice was a
pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. Isthat correct? Indeed? Yeah? Well,

(53:07):
I mean that's remarkable, I think, because that's such a wonderful book,
and I mean I wouldn't have imagined. I mean maybe as an economist
you have a sort of you've studiedphilosophy and you've somehow got down to that
you've come by it that way.I mean. In fact, that book
was a present to me from mybrother about thirty odd years ago, I
guess now. And my brother's verymuch into books in perhact, he runs

(53:31):
a library. But he did givethat book to me, and I did
absolutely fall in love with it.And of course it has so much in
it, I mean, so manydifferent strands to it, and the way
it combines this idea of that theprivate spaces and the public spaces, and

(53:55):
the way the book itself is laidout. I mean it's written I think
in the nineteen sixits long before theInternet anyway, and yet it's full of
hyperlinks. And it literally is designedwith hyperlinks, so that at the end
of each chapter and even during thechapter, there'll be, as it were,
cross references, and they're even donein heavy type, as you sort
of might see on a website,so that you can flip and so that

(54:22):
you don't necessarily read that book straightthrough. You'll read a chapter and then
you'll jump some either at the endor even in the middle of it,
to a completely different bit that you'vebeen led to by these hyperlinks. It's
just lovely. It's lovely. Imean, when I first went to I
could score. That was one ofour first ticks, and I thought,
okay, I've arrived. This iswhat it's about. For me, you

(54:43):
know, it was my first yearand reading there among others, but that
was one of the things. I'mdoing this because this is what it's all
about. It's about people in placeand how we engage with public space,
and how public spaces support our humanity, our psychology, our social lives.
And having that spelt out, youknow, it's and and and lately i've

(55:07):
heard other people say mentioning that book, it's come back into into people's discussions
which is really great. I thinkwe really are talking more about public space
more now. You know, we'vewe've been built, we've built ourselves as
far as we can go technically,I'm sure. But now I think we're
looking at what the buildings really provideus as people living in cities, and

(55:30):
it's it's very much the places wego to between buildings and cities serving us
as places where people love to gatherand love to be and they need to
meet all of those needs that we'relooking for. And that's books like that,
getting back into currency, I thinkI absolutely agree with you. Yeah,

(55:51):
quite fantastic. And you had saidthat you in your work, you've
traveled all over the world and we'refascinated by in your particular career about the
different sorts of just how power overthe centuries has power and people has been
and how it's just how it operates. Very very much. So, yes,

(56:15):
And I mean it's always interesting gettingthe perspective of I don't know,
say, somebody in Malaysia, howdifferent that is from I don't know someone
in Germany. It says everybody hasa difference and yet they have a common
perspective as well. And I thinkthe danger when you read history as you

(56:37):
tend to see it from your own, very much your own perspective, and
it's I think it's very It's justit gives a completely different way of thinking
about it when you look at itfrom every different angle and and some of
it's quite dark. I mean,you have to face that. But people
are obviously, by and large,I think understand that. But and you

(56:59):
knowing that, back to the Tudorera in England, I mean that I
think the endless fascination with that isit does draw together so many of those
human themes of power and sort ofgood responsibility and bad plotting and all the
rest of it. And that theinteraction of personal with political and as well

(57:23):
as the kind of international linkages utterlyutterly extraordinary, really right. And so
that what we're going through at themoment and having that perspective is that you
can see that groups of people andand you know, society has these power
plays throughout history, throughout history,and unfortunately at both as in Tudor times

(57:49):
but as now, I'm afraid itcan all kind of collide and explode and
lead to bad outcomes as well asgood ones. So so yeah, we
just look, all we can dois look to the history and learn and
try to hopefully you know, understanda bit about the current times. From
that. It's wonderful. Here youare restoring and retreating, not retreating,

(58:13):
but reflecting in an ancient old Englishmanor house and taking all of that,
you know, with all of what'shappening in the world today, and and
your observation of it, and andand then you're getting, as you say,
down to the tools, which isobviously one thing we can do is
sort of again for the whole sometimeswhen things get really tough, and and

(58:35):
do something solid and concrete, whichinvolves people very much. So yep,
yeah, no you are somewhere.There's a video of me actually in a
hard hat, actually bashing out oneof those some of those bricks to reveal
the kitchen. So yeah, it'sfantastic. I hope the viewers will go
online, go on to the hecton'ssite and the many other linkages hyperlinks of

(59:00):
what you call them, and seethese various images of banks of solar panels
and heat pumps in this ancient kitchen. And yes, of course in New
Zealand out the oldest buildings we haveare probably two hundred years old, eighteen
eighteen sixty maybe, so when youknow, Kiwi's what we do is our
oe and we all go overseas andlook at the ancient world, the old

(59:21):
world, and so having this discussion. And yeah, the only reason that
it came across my path was becauseI have family connections to Ethelhampton. I
don't even know what they are rarelybut my but my mum has brought me
up with it, you know,talking about ethel Hampton. She visited it
and I showed you the brass robbingcopy that she made. So I've never

(59:44):
visited. I don't think the restof my family are even aware of it
really, but my mom has kindof schooled me a bit on it.
My mum, if you come over, you must come and visit. Oh
yeah, well, my brother livesin England and I will tell him good.
This is local architecture now here inNew Zealand, Etia. We're talking
with Charles Keating, who is theowner of Ethelhampton and one of the oldest

(01:00:07):
tun or manners in England, butdoes have a connection back here in New
Zealand. Alvin Martin came to NewZealand in eighteen sixties and hear is from
that family and he was considered thefather of art in Auckland. But anyway,
thank you Giles, thank you OZMA. A great to chat and thank
you for the opportunity and yeah,I hope everybody enjoys it. This program

(01:00:34):
was made with assistance from New Zealandon Air for radio broadcast and through the
Accessmedia dot m Z website. Thankyou New Zealand on Air.