We love the great outdoors and have enjoyed camping and glamping holidays in our beautiful countryside for many years. We particularly love diverse and interesting locations and shepherd huts soon became some of our favourite places to stay. These cosy, peaceful and charming little buildings are a treat to stay in.

Soon after, we decided that it would be wonderful to have a hut of our own in our garden. We set about researching all the options available and thereupon encountered two fundamental problems…

Firstly, the shepherd huts available then were usually supplied as completed finished units or consisting of large sub-components. This was no help to us as we had only a small gate to access our garden. The hut kits available also featured large floor sections and a chassis that was far too big to deliver to our location. The only way to have done it would be to lift it in with a crane!

Secondly, we were working on a modest budget and we found the huts available to be extremely expensive. There was no doubt about the quality of these exclusive products but their prices seemed well beyond our means.

These two factors prevented us from buying our dream hut but they got us thinking about a solution. We soon realised that there must be many more people who had encountered the same problems and the seed of an idea was born.

Fortunately, one of us is a time-served Mechanical Design Engineer and we were able to think about novel design solutions to overcome the problems of budget and access space.

With some careful thought, we were able to design a hut suitable to our location, access restrictions and budget. The key to this solution was to self-build the hut from smaller, more manageable parts that could be assembled on-site and carried “through the garden gate” by hand, rather like flat-pack furniture.

Self-building eliminates the cost of using contractors and prefabricated hut sections make it quick and easy to assemble.

We built our first hut in the summer of 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic rolled through. During that summer, above our heads in the workshop’s rafters, there were some nesting House Martins who became our companions and inspiration. After travelling many thousands of miles these beautiful and graceful birds come back every year to their safe haven.