FEATURE SUSTAINABLE BUILDING
BUILT two-and-a-half metres to hide the house. From the path, all people see is a living roof and hedging. When we dug, we hit the clay. We stockpiled it, dried it, and used it later for the walls.” FROM
O n a quiet stretch of Herefordshire farmland, behind a rise in the landscape where walkers see nothing but hedgerows and a living roof, a house is emerging from the earth itself. “This build is a bit out of this world,” says Nick McHale, founder of King N Construction based in Newent, who has spent the past five years learning to work with clay dug from earth. “It all started with planning permission – the client wanted to build on farmland that was classed as greenbelt, and the only way to get permission was to do something completely unusual,” McHale recalls. “It took five years. The planners kept rejecting ideas until it became clear the only way forward was to use as much material from the land itself as possible.”
That realisation sent him on a journey into rammed earth construction – an ancient technique now finding a new audience among small, sustainability- minded builders. “The estate is 800 acres, 70 per cent of it woodland, so we had plenty of timber. We thought about cob because we had hay, but then realised we were sitting on clay. That changed everything because we could use it structurally. So we shifted to rammed earth.” McHale’s approach to this project demonstrates his originality and patience. “Because we had to dig down about four metres for the house, we moved 50,000 tonnes of soil, reshaping the landscape as we went,” he says. “Footpaths run alongside the property, so we raised ground levels by about
He recalls an important miscalculation: “we thought we needed seven tonnes of clay, but it was actually 70.” McHale and his team turned the mistake into momentum. “We just kept digging and prepping. We used farm equipment like rotavators to break it down into a fine dust. That’s how we got into it.” The result is a home that is truly of the land, with walls made from rammed earth dug on site and a bedroom wing built with timber harvested from the property. When it comes to building with rammed earth, there isn’t much room for error. “It’s
Master Builder 34
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