My Place: Pete Tiley

Sandwiched by allotments on three sides and Narroways nature reserve on the fourth is a quiet corner of St Werburgh’s on the far side of the railway tunnel, where you’re more likely to hear birdsong than revving engines. As the Victorian brick terraces peter out, an eclectic and colourful group of timber-framed buildings take their place.

Amidst them is the home that Pete Tiley built, with a soft pink lime render between the timber cladding and a conical roof covered in copper tiles, each one cut painstakingly to shape. “Copper was the only material I could find that would go into that shape,” he says, sitting in the kitchen with partner Sarah Methven, his back to the long, gently curving wall that fronts onto the quiet lane. “I had to cut every single tile: it took weeks to do. Everything took quite a long time. That’s the thing about this house – if you want to build something economically, it takes a long time.”

The back of Pete’s home pictured while still under construction

It took Pete, a former builder amongst other things, around six years to complete his home. He bought into a self-build scheme set up by Ashley Vale Action Group at the turn of the millennium, created when a group of local residents became concerned about plans to  develop a former scaffolding yard. The community group set up a scheme  to purchase the site, dividing it up into 26 plots and allowing each owner to build a sustainable home to their own specifications.

20 self-build plots were created when a scaffold yard in St Werburgh’s was sold

“When I bought the plot in 2001, it was a lump of concrete with a few metal sheds on it,” Pete recalls. “I built it as a kit house using 120 panels, and together with some friends we erected the house together. It went up in stages, but the design hasn’t changed much from my original plans. The house has a timber frame with big cavities in the walls stuffed with Warmcel, which is recycled treated newspaper. It’s very well insulated. Most of the work I completed myself, except for the plastering, rendering and the plumbing.”

As well as being made from materials rated A for sustainability, the interiors and finishing details of the house have been sourced  as locally as possible. “The doors and windows were all made by a local joiner, and the floor came from Horfield Sport Centre – they were ripping it out and I acquired  it for £50.”

The beautiful wooden floor runs out of the kitchen and through the entire house, worn in places from a generation of gym-goers. Pete gestures around at the beautiful dark grey worktops of the kitchen – “that’s slate, which I got from Rose Green Tiles & Reclamation. It’s from an old snooker table.”

The windows at the back of the home look onto other self-builds and green spaces beyond

The kitchen – the last room Pete finished – opens out into the garden, where Pete and Sarah have a covered seating area underneath the upstairs balcony, with grapevines winding up the wooden pillars. A winged sofa makes for a perfect vantage point to look across the colourful borders and through the open back gate to the communal space beyond.

“There’s a culvert running through that area so it couldn’t be built on, so we turned it into a garden for anyone to use,” Pete says. “The concrete slab of the scaffolding yard is still under all of this – we backfilled a metre of topsoil for drainage and built on top of it. The trees won’t grow huge, but they do alright.”

The home is three storeys with an outdoor living space leading off the kitchen

From the garden, the house rises three storeys, with a jutting balcony on the first floor that houses a tangle of plants and a little room with big windows, used by Sarah as an office. The balcony doors open from the living room, which also has a big curved wall – this time studded with low bookcases built into the nooks between the timbers. Above them are a series of narrow coloured glass windows, obscured for privacy with abstract shapes.

The curved wall of Pete’s living room, with hand-made stained glass windows

“I made them with a friend by getting two pieces of glass, putting enamel powder and borax between them and firing it all in a kiln,” Pete says. “We did a lot of test pieces to anticipate what might happen.” The blues and greens cast a cool light over the lofty room with its exposed beam crossing the ceiling, and even with the French doors closed the sound of the birdsong is amazingly loud.

Pete and a friend made the obscured stained glass windows in the living room

The solid wooden staircase winds up past a utility room and a spare bedroom, Pete and Sarah’s warmly-decorated bedroom, and interior and exterior windows adorned with plants that offer views out onto greenery from all angles. At the top of the house is the room that used to belong to Pete’s son, with a dormer window in the sloping ceiling.

The view through it is nothing but the greenery of the allotments. Pollen drifts along on a soft late-spring breeze, and until a train rattles by and momentarily disturbs the peace it’s easy to forget you’re anywhere near a city.

Wood and other natural materials run throughout the house

“Because I built my house at the same time as my neighbours, I got to know them quite well,” Pete says. “There are always people coming in and out, and the neighbours are round almost every day. Any street that doesn’t have through access will develop a community.”

The birds chirp outside and a dog walker passes the kitchen window, boots clomping along the lane. “I take this house for granted; it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get the chance to build it here. I’m very privileged and very lucky.”

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