The Grand Designs ‘Chesil Cliff’ house is up for sale

[TeapotCollection]

Can’t get the link to paste from Rightmove but it’s up for £10 million and looks absolutely stunning

Really hope it gets him out of debt and he can move on with his life

It is a modern parable of a greedy man.

He risked everything he had, wealth, a home and even his family, to build an ostentatious house that he neither needed, nor his family wanted.

He left a huge scar on a very beautiful bit of coastland and forced local residents to look at it every day.

He doesn't deserve anyone's pity.

@Minimalme
yes, sums it up really I remember one of his daughters saying how she really missed her pink bedroom overlooking the sea, they were all happy and lived in a house most people only only dream about and to see it bulldozed was really sad, his wife and daughters looked heartbroken. It just wasn’t ‘enough’ for him to have a beautiful traditional house in a perfect location, he had to be ‘Billy Big Bollox’

@Daftasabroom i have a house by the sea and this house is a sight more closer to the sea than mine is. Regardless of erosion, it would have been better to be set back from the cliff edge. Mother Nature rules after all.

@Longdistance there is no cliff edge, there is no cliff at Downend, how well do you know the area?

The buyer will need cash in the bank because they won’t get a mortgage with no kitchen.

it would make an ok Airbnb I guess.

i’d personally live in the Eye annexe, that’s definitely a baddy’s lair.

So a kitchen has to be a working kitchen to get a mortgage in the UK?

Yes - unmortgageable otherwise.

So the building was designed so that if coastal erosion did occur it would still stand? Presumably, that means that in the future you'd need either a bridge to be built, get in a boat or some sort of light aircraft/helicopter get there? I'm almost speechless.

Is it just me imagine a fekking enormous Jetson's style house in mid air on stilts when that cliff erodes around it? Hopefully the flying cars kick in before it goes.

The buyer will need cash in the bank because they won’t get a mortgage with no kitchen.

Assuming there is actually a kitchen but it hasn’t been fitted out yet, it would only need a sink and a cooker adding to make it mortgageable.

That could be done for not very much at all. Potentially, even nothing.

i dunno, i re watched it and rather than blind pride, i thought it was more that the initial stablisation works were so hugely underestimated he was sunk before he began. he's ploughed such an extraordinary amount in before it was even out of the ground that he had no choice but to continue. it was the sunk cost fallacy, except he would have been left with a massive debt and no way to recoup had he not kept going

whoever did (or didn't do) the feasibility work was to blame - oh the rock turned out to be far harder than expected so there goes all the budget and the contingency on the piling, jeeze why didn't they do a trial before committing?

Perfect anti-Zombie house.
But in the real world who would be interested in a house like that? It does not even have a helicopter pad, so it will be a future logistical nightmare.

I imagine people don't like the word 'cliff' so what then shall we call the area in front of the swimming pool that looks disturbed down to the beach level? Because this is what I think people mean by cliff and it would really worry me if I lived there, it looks like a crumbly edge.

It quite clearly is a cliff.
I would not care that a house stood on the same spot since the 1930s. Has no one heard of climate change and the impact this is having on coast erosion?

Imagine spending £10m and having no garden.

person i think its ugly house. Too big, too much glass and there is no character on it. If i got the money I wouldn’t buy it. Big houses makes me feel cold. You will rarely see your family

He built a driveway that was a bridge from the road. It’s accessible despite the erosion.

I didn’t know that. Thank you.

But why?

So you could end up driving across a bridge to a house standing on a platform with the rest of the coast eroded around you? And if the erosion goes back to the road, you could be building more bridge in the future.
I know there are amazing views, but no garden at all does seem strange. And no room at all to change the outside in the future.

And an earlier commenter is right, the salt water will make the maintenance costs for this house large. Fine if you are super wealthy I guess.
I am really surprised there is no helicopter pad though as surely that is what someone super wealthy would want?
I think it would work better as a super expensive hotel. But it does not have enough parking to make that feasible.

I think because houses without a working kitchen tend to be semi-derelict wrecks that are risky for lenders.
You might be able to get a specialist broker to lend you money though.

@senua Three acres sounds like a fairly decent sized garden to me....although personally I'd expect more outside space if I was spending £10m 😅

I love a sea view and think it's a stunning location, but agree it's too lego-like in appearance and doesn't suit the surroundings. Definitely a villain's lair 🙄

I remember watching the original GD episode and also felt extremely sorry for his wife and daughters.

Oh! I hadn't thought there was any garden at all as there does not look like any garden. So some of that scrubland comes with the house? So you could create a proper garden if you wanted to.

antelopevalley "It does not even have a helicopter pad, so it will be a future logistical nightmare."

According to the brochure it does have a helipad.

content.knightfrank.com/property/exe160202/brochures/en/exe160202-en-brochure-34bcc8d5-b606-4ab2-8b4a-ec6b28dc8c6d-1.pdf

@antelopevalley please understand there is no cliff and no significant erosion, there are seasonal comings and goings on the actual beach. There are buildings that are much closer to the sea, some of them are even designed so that the basements flood.

Please show me where this cliff is: