North Devon

Lighthouses pepper our coastline, often precariously perched on wild, craggy, inaccessible outcrops. They are cramped, vertical and never intended to be lived in full time, let alone by a family. For most living in one is a pure fantasy. Not so for Edward and Hazel and their two young daughters. Back in 2012, they set out to build a brand new, art deco, shining white lighthouse tower with additional bedrooms, guest rooms and infinity pool on the side – all on a rugged but beautiful clifftop in an exclusive spot in North Devon. Edward and Hazel spent £1.4 million on their plot and intended to spend £1.8 million more on their four-storey lighthouse home. Despite a sloping, hard to access site requiring foundations drilled into super hard blue slate rock they gave themselves just 18 months to finish their vast, highly ambitious super-home.

 

But almost immediately their wildly optimistic plan runs into trouble. The lender that had agreed their huge £1.8million loan pulls out and Edward is forced to radically re-think. A smaller second house is built on the side of the plot, the sale of which is meant to finance the main project. Their old house on site is demolished and painstaking piling work begins on the new lighthouse, helping to eat up their entire £200k contingency. This is an epic tale of financial brinkmanship, with the chances of completion a cliffhanger as precarious as the lighthouse itself.