The couple camped out with their children Cosmo, seven, and Elsie, six, to create the wooden-framed, turf-covered property using scavenged and second-hand materials.
They paid nothing for the land because the owner of the Welsh wood wanted someone to take care of the area.
‘We didn’t think about Lord Of The Rings when we made it,’ said Ms Saville, 37.
The couple spent only £3,000 building the the house (Pic: www.SimonDale.net)
‘We didn’t deliberately design it to look like that, but there’s something about using that wood that naturally brings out that Hobbity look.’ Freelance photographer Mr Dale, 33, and his writer and gardener wife had been looking to move to the country to bring up their first child but were dismayed by the cost of mortgages.
‘We were about to rent a house and we met a lady in a car park who had built her own – and she was 62,’ said Ms Saville. ‘She said we should go for it.’
Simon Dale reckons it took 1,500 man-hours to complete the home which he carefully blended in to a Welsh hillside (Pic: www.SimonDale.net)
Mr Dale said: ‘Being your own have-a- go architect is a lot of fun and allows you to create and enjoy something which is part of yourself and the land rather than, at worst, a mass-produced box designed for maximum profit and convenience of the construction industry.’ The couple have recently moved into their third self-built home on their own smallholding in West Wales and devote most of their time to building projects.
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