We are building our forever home. We want to live in it till we are old. Dianthus isn’t in the middle of no-where miles from its neighbours, nor is it in a faceless city street. Instead Dianthus is in the midst of a pretty village. Our neighbours will likely stay the same for years to come, if not generations. These neighbours and this community we are joining is as important to us as the 1.3 acres of meadow, garden and derelict house we have bought.

We know that knocking down an old house, digging holes in the ground and building a new home is disruptive. It’s noisy, it can be dusty, dirty, and all those lorries in small village lanes!

Being good neighbours is one of the most important things for us all the way through the process and something we have invested as much time and energy into as we can.

We don’t want to be presumptuous that we have gotten this right but here are some of the things we did:

We introduced ourselves to all the neighbours. I think they thought we were a religious order at one point as we went from door to door saying hello. We listened hard to their advice and their concerns and will continue to do so throughout the build. We have joined the village email group and do our best to let them know of days the build will be particularly annoying.

We wrote letters to introduce ourselves to the head of the village parish council at the time and the local councillor. We met with the head of the parish council who was also kind enough to share the draft village design statement with us. We spoke with our local councillor on the phone. He gave his blessings based on our conversations and asked us to go ahead with our plan designing.

One important comment from him was, don’t build a pastiche house. We don’t need them.

The meeting with the head of the parish council was crucial.  He kindly explained to us what would work and not work in the village from the Parish Council’s perspective. We were very keen to build a Passivhaus using flint and British oak cladding.  Flint in any case was is in keeping with Hampshire villages given the amount of flint locally. There was a meeting of mind on that he was also very enthused when we indicated we were thinking of a sedum or wild flower green roof. He stated that the village would appreciate that. We discussed our aspiration for the conservation meadow to remain green and wild enough for our local barn owls to hunt on.

For us, the flora and fauna we’ve inherited is just as important if not more important than the home we were about to build.

From that stage, we started to feel really confident our design would fit in the village. Ultimately, we’d rather align to the village design statement externally and keep any crazy individual stuff inside the house.

The end result of this rapprochement with key members of the community set us on a good path for planning.

Ultimately, the key point is we don’t plan to move again once we move into Dianthus if it can be helped. Therefore, the onus is on us to build a good relationship with everyone in our community.