Towards the end of 2009, I went to Bath for a signing of my book ‘Spirit’, which had been published earlier that year. It was an opportunity to stay with old friends, Jane and Donald, at their farm just north of the city. We walked the land the next day, through the rubbly holloway with tall overgrown hedges and up onto the high ground that gave way to blustery views of rolling pasture and verdant dells. Despite our proximity to Bath, it was a day of being lost in landscape. In idle passing I mentioned that if anything ever came up for sale in the area, could they let me know.

I was finding it increasingly difficult gardening within the confines of a London plot and living vicariously through those of my clients with horizons and room to expand. The feeling had been there for some time and Huw and I had been drawn into looking at land more than once over the years. On a couple of occasions we had got perilously close to buying what I now know would have been the wrong property. The trail had gone cold several years before, though, and we had decided to focus our energies on the design business and our home in Peckham.