When entrepreneurs Lizzie Vann and Michael Thrasher set out to build a modern version of a Japanese haiku house in the heart of the New Forest not everyone was convinced by their vision.
It took the couple three years to win planning permission for the property, with one local planner likening its design to the notorious Stalag Nine prisoner of war camps.
The build was charted on an early episode of Grand Designs, with an initially dubious Kevin McCloud eventually admitting: “It is more successful than I thought possible”.
Now the circa 2,000 sq ft house, set in some 50 acres of grounds between the towns of Ringwood and Bransgore, is for sale with estate agent Spencers of the New Forest with an asking price of £2.95m.
When Vann and Thrasher bought the land it already had a house on it — a New England-style bungalow built from a converted chicken shed.
But the couple, who were avid travellers, had something less twee in mind.
In June 2003, after several attempts at winning planning consent, they finally began work on their vision: a timber house with three constituent parts.
The main section of the house holds an open plan kitchen and living room. A glass walkway leads to the bedroom wing. And a three-storey tower, with space for a utility room and two offices, is set just behind.
“We know a tower is totally impractical, but it is very romantic,” Vann, founder of baby food company Organix, explained to McCloud.
Haiku houses were popular in 16th century Japan; minimal wooden homes with steeply hipped roofs set upon stilts to protect them from flooding.
Vann and Thrasher’s house is also timber framed, with the living room raised on concrete and timber columns, a zinc roof, and a wide veranda.
Sections of the exterior are painted in vivid lilac and pale green.
McCloud was initially worried about how the three sections of the house would fit together, and about the “adventurous” colour scheme, telling viewers back in 2004: “The risk was that this would not be one coherent house.”
When completed he had to stand corrected, particularly admiring the tower with its 360-degree countryside views, the “sexy” interiors, and newfangled mod cons — for the time — like a wall-mounted TV hidden behind a painting and fancy steel kitchen tap.
Post-Grand Designs, Vann and Thrasher, head of marketing for Organix and the project manager for the build, continued upgrading their two-bedroom home.
Over the years they added a raised walkway leading to an elevated terrace, a fully functioning vineyard, and a two bedroom annexe, as well as several garages.
The couple married after the show aired, but later divorced. Thrasher, who kept the house, died in March at the age of 79.
The proceeds of the sale will go to his three grown-up daughters from a previous relationship.
His sister, Pauline Freshwater, 76, who lives on the Isle of Wight, has long been a fan of the house.
“It was quite exciting to see the plans, because it looked fantastic and it was perfectly suited to the couple who built it,” she said. “It has got wonderful views and wonderful spaces, and it is all made using local wood.”
Her brother made the most of the house, she said, building an air conditioned wine room behind one of the garages to store the wine his vineyard produced, and hosting an annual sit-on mower race around a circuit marked around the land with hay bales which was fiercely contested by local farmers.
“He had a wonderful life,” she said.
