Little gems

NOT all those with the budget necessary want (or need) to live in a 10,000sq ft house. Something half that size is generous enough to check off all the standard must-haves: enough space for entertaining, a large eat-in kitchen, a boot room, utility room and five bedrooms with their own bathrooms.

From a practical perspective, anyone looking to build a country house of this size is likely to be using a knock-down-and-rebuild approach. The Paragraph 79 clause of the National Planning Policy Framework (once known as Gummer’s Law, as it was introduced by the then Environment Secretary John Gummer in 1997), allows entirely new homes to be built in the countryside. However, it can be a long and expensive route.

There is a key financial incentive to knocking down and rebuilding: new