The gorgeous North Devon coastline is visible from floor to ceiling windows at Chesil Cliff House, which is perched on a cliff.
An infinity pool with a glass façade and a modernist, four-story “lighthouse” are located on each side of the building.
The six-bedroom house, which is located between the scenic areas of Saunton Sands and Croyde Bay, is supported by 25 steel beams that were recently listed for sale for £10 million.
As a result, the structure is resistant to coastal erosion.
It is amazing, made much more so by the background tale of resiliency and hope in the face of apparently impossible challenges.
The worst project ever seen on Grand Designs on Channel 4 was originally said to be this one.
Edward Short, a 54-year-old music producer who began construction on the mansion in 2011, with a budget of £2.5 million, ended himself in debt by £7 million as a result of several setbacks and divorcing his patient wife, Hazel.
The 2011 financial crisis caused finances to be withheld, drilling into granite bedrock took 18 months rather than the anticipated six, and Covid eventually stopped the project.
When one lender departed in 2018, the mansion was left vacant and seemed more like an abandoned multi-story parking lot than a millionaire’s haven.
When Kevin McCloud, the host of Grand Designs, visited in 2019, he called it a “desolate corpse” with the graffiti “please complete” written on it.
Edward was made fun of for saying he could when no one actually believed he could. But he has finished it three years later.
Debt-ridden Edward claims, “There’s no way I’d sell it if it weren’t for the money.” The home is a part of who I am.
As he leads me on a tour, he makes this clearly evident by pointing out every little detail, including the composite floor next to the pool and the exposed cliff face under the $400,000 partly suspended “floating” driveway.
The lighthouse’s spiral galvanised steel stairway leads to the bedroom he had reserved for himself and Hazel, which has views of the Croyde beach breakers.
“I’m infatuated with the beauty of the weather,” admits Edward, adding that the scenery makes up “two-thirds of the value” of the property, which also includes The Eye, a nearby, 1,500 square foot addition to accommodate possible (very fortunate) personnel.
A secluded cove with pebbles for sunbathing is located underneath the home. He gestures to where there are “big celebrations.” You are welcome to jump into the water. It’s a lot of fun.
He ultimately received funding for the project from lender MSP, who is repaying his monthly interest via a process known as “rolled up interest borrowing.”
I don’t have to worry about paying the interest, but it’s still accruing, Edward says.
I spent many hundred pounds an hour next to you. Fortunately, he has learnt to only see the good.
He admits that before Covid, he believed he would lose everything, but he continues, “You learn not to waste energy worrying. It will prevent you from working.
It will unavoidably be a bittersweet moment when he passes the keys to the new owners given the time and passion that have gone into the home, particularly when Edward explains the true reason he put his heart into it.
Because this property, which has cost him a lot both financially and romantically, represents Edward’s will to convert a terrifying experience into something good rather than merely a victory against the odds.
Because he discloses that Professor Alan Phillips, the renowned architect of Chesil Cliff House, was paid from the £75,000 in compensation that Edward received from Buckinghamshire County Council as a result of the abuse he endured while a student at Dr. Challoner’s Grammar School in Amersham, Bucks, over the course of three years.
Edward quips, “I told he had to make it nice because of where the money was coming from.” “I wanted to make the money mean something,” the person said.
It soon becomes apparent that Edward has experienced extreme lows previously and that a few hiccups during the construction of his home would not be enough to break him.
He leaped over a bridge over a railway line at the age of 15, certain that it would be better for him to die as a result of what he had gone through.
He sustained severe injuries, including broken both wrists, 12 ribs, and a fractured spine.
Edward admits, “I felt disgusted with myself.” I wanted to go. I ought to be dead.
I was resolved to live a decent life after being granted a second opportunity.
After his family lost a male friend to suicide last year, Edward has chosen to speak up.
He is now engaged to Jalia Nambasca, a 38-year-old nurse he met online. The companion was ignorant of Edward’s own endeavour.
Given all I had gone through, Edward, who is married to Hazel and has two kids, Nicole, 23, and Lauren, 21, adds, “I blamed myself for not detecting the indications.” “I hope that through persevering, my tale may inspire others.”
In 1980, when he attended Dr. Challoner’s, a single-sex grammar school, he was 12 years old.
On his first day, one of his instructors stroked him beneath his desk, which lessened his delight.
He remembers that “he knelt near my chair and ran his fingers up and down my leg.”
Groping in class started to become more blatantly sexual and happened every week. Once, as he was making his way to the school bus in the late afternoon, a teacher stopped him.
On other times, he was touched while in the middle of a lecture under the pretext of a play battle.
He didn’t know where to turn and started missing lessons since consent and child protection were topics that were seldom covered in that age.
I would detest attending school. Edward, one of three brothers whose father worked as a money lender at the time, recalls, “I’d sign the register and bunk off.”
Even though he claims to have seen other boys being improperly touched, the more the abuse continued, the more difficult it became for him to confide in anybody.
According to him, “I was too ashamed to inform my parents and I worried my peers would think that I could have prevented it.”
When Edward was 14 years old, history teacher Richard Small, who worked there from 1972 to 1987, began grooming him by asking him out for a pint after school. At the age of 14, I thought that was awesome.
By expressing curiosity, I assumed he liked me. He estimates he was abused by Small following similar outings to the bar more than 20 times. “He groped me in his vehicle afterwards,” he remembers.
He was cunning, drank, and pretended to be pals. When I got in trouble for skipping class, he promised to purchase me a leather jacket and told the head of the school that he had received a call from my parents informing them that I was unwell.
Edward was 15 years old when he realised what was happening to him was wrong. He was perplexed and attracted to females.
He claims, “I felt such thoughts were improper — that if I wanted to touch a girlfriend, I was as evil as them [his abusers].” He just once attempted to report his abusers, but he wasn’t taken seriously.
When summoned to meet the headmaster John Loarridge for skipping class at age 15, he said it was because his teachers were “touching” him. As Edward recounts, “He gazed at me blankly, as if I were coming up with anything to get out of trouble.”
In the end, he had the bravery to warn off his abusers thanks to his increasing physical strength.
But as the abuse ended, I had a growing realisation that I could have stopped it earlier.
I felt ashamed of myself. I started to worry about other people learning.
One night, after he had been drinking at a party and had just kissed a new girlfriend, his fear and self-loathing reached a boiling point. “I had no idea where I was.” I didn’t believe in myself.
He tore himself away from the party in agony and crossed the footbridge to his house in Gerrards Cross. “I was bawling out of control.”
I simply wanted escape,” he adds in reference to what followed. Later, Edward said that his “fall” was really an unsuccessful effort to save a cat, which he believes others bought into.
He felt “fortunate” and “thought there was a reason I had survived” thereafter.
At the age of 19, Mario Warner at Polygram Records employed him as a sales representative after he had failed all but one of his O-levels and had been working inconsistently.
According to Edward, who swiftly rose the ranks of the music business by compiling popular dance songs, “It was a life-changing event.”
Hazel, a fashion buyer he met via a common acquaintance when he was 21 years old, was the first lady he confided in about his abuse.
Even yet, he didn’t do it until after their 1999 nuptials.
I at last felt secure enough. She supported me in going to the police and gave me courage.
He reported the abuse in 2002. The ensuing research showed that his instance wasn’t unique.
A female instructor at Dr. Challoner’s said that a different student had accused Small of touching him after bringing him to a pub.
The instructor contacted Loarridge about it, and it was alleged that Loarridge instructed Small to leave the school during the 1987 summer session without having to provide a reason.
Before he left the school in 1992, Loarridge, who passed away in March 2020 at the age of 89, allegedly sent a letter to the Buckinghamshire council instructing them to consult a note outlining the alleged abuse in the school file should Small ever want to deal with children again (the letter was reportedly lost by the council). There was no call to the police.
Small, who was at the time serving as the campaign manager for Aylesbury Conservative MP David Lidington, was detained in 2002, while Neil Bibby—another teacher Edward had accused of abusing him—hung himself in his Brighton house the same year after Thames Valley Police searched it.
Edward fell apart over the three years it took for the case to reach Reading Crown Court in 2005, and his marriage was entirely destroyed.
He claims that, rather than Chesil Cliff House’s construction, which has frequently been cited, the lead-up to the court case played the largest role in his divorce.
“The house is 20% at fault, the business with the past is 80%,” he claims. “I was not the one she married,” she said.
In the end, he was spared from giving testimony because Small, then 57, admitted guilt to five charges of indecent assault—three on Edward and two against two older boys—and was sentenced to four years in prison.
Even yet, Edward made an effort to make eye contact with his attacker in court: “He couldn’t look at me.” I was more robust.
The school cooperated completely in the investigations that resulted in the conviction in this instance, according to the school’s current headmaster, David Atkinson, who made this statement this week.
The school now promotes the safety of all students via a highly professional culture of safeguarding and welfare.
‘Like many councils, Buckinghamshire County Council has apologised where there have been identified failings and victims of abuse have not been protected,’ a spokesperson for the county council said.
It declined to address Edward’s assertion that the council gave him compensation.
Edward had been residing in Devon with Hazel and their daughters for four years by the time of the trial.
Professor Phillips was asked to design the home after he paid £1.4 million for the land in 2011.
Edward found beach life soothing despite interminable delays, rising prices, and related stress – in 2014, he borrowed £500,000 from a hedge fund, and in 2016, he took out a further £2.5 million loan from private investors.
He loved going kayaking and going on beachside treasure hunts with his daughters.
Since they were teenagers, they have been aware of his background: “I said “no one can touch you if you’re not happy.””
He and Hazel stayed connected because they both cherished their kids.
We loved each other, but we weren’t in love, he recalls, adding that their marriage deteriorated as their debt increased. She expressed great concern and wondered why I didn’t.
Although the sun would still rise and set, whether seen through the prism of £200,000 storm-resistant glazing or not, Edward knew that no issue was insurmountable.
Edward gives Hazel credit for ending the marriage in 2019 by making that choice. I don’t believe I would have had the guts. We pledged to be there for our kids.
He promised to complete Chesil Cliff House for Hazel despite their breakup so that she can use the money from the sale to purchase a home.
He claims that he won’t necessarily gain $3 million since he would have to deduct months of interest on his loans and £100,000 in agency costs from the profit.
It doesn’t matter how much it sells for, he asserts. Hazel is happy with it. That was my driving force. Don’t give her any more embarrassing details about your past, I reasoned, as you’ve already burdened her with one. She and I had been standing shoulder to shoulder.
Whatever else transpires, he declares: “My main objective was to complete.” I can’t help but feel proud.