Our approach
A home on open ground should not cost the ground. Everything we do starts from that, from where a house stands to what it is made of.
01
Place
Keep the meadow
We walk every field before we draw a line and fit each home to the slope. At Fernwood, eighty per cent of the land stays as uncut meadow.
02
Make
Build indoors
Homes are made in our workshop in ten weeks: dry, warm and to the millimetre. Weather never touches the timber until it is finished.
03
Land
Tread lightly
Steel posts on ground screws, no concrete slab. A home is lifted in on one day, and the meadow grows back beneath it by spring.
Materials
We work with engineers, foresters and a handful of suppliers we know by name, so every part of a home can be traced back to where it grew.
We never use:
— Concrete slabs
— Spray foam insulation
— PVC windows or doors
— Chemical stains or varnish
— Fossil gas
Silver larch
◦ Untreated ◦ Weathers to silver
Cut in Scottish forests and laid vertically. It needs no stain and greys evenly in its second winter.
Birch plywood
◦ Formaldehyde-free ◦ FSC certified
Every wall and ceiling is one continuous skin of plywood, oiled by hand so it glows in low sun.
The first Hide, before it left the workshop
Twelve years of building in small numbers
2014
2018
2021
2024
2026
2027
2014
Our first house, No. 1 Larch Hill, built by hand on weekends
2018
The workshop opens in Hexham with a crew of four
2021
Fellside: six homes above the water, sold before completion
2024
Fernwood granted on four hectares of old hay meadow
2026
Fernwood phase one lifted onto the hillside
2027
Headland, our first clifftop scheme
Founders’ note
Calder & Stone began with one house on a hillside we could not afford, built over two summers with friends who could swing a hammer. We learned that a small home, made well and placed carefully, can feel bigger than any amount of floor space.
Ellen Calder and Tom Stone, founders
Featured developments
Three places, a handful of homes in each
