Caroline Quentin fronts this BBC Two factual series that tracks the fortunes of British owners who buy crumbling manor houses, rectories and castles with one aim: stop the rot and make them habitable. Each hour-long episode follows a single property over months of building work while architectural journalist Kieran Long documents the structural challenges and historian Dr Kate Williams digs through parish archives to piece together the lineage of the people who once called the place home.
The format stays tight. A drone shot swoops over missing slates and bowing walls, then a local archivist produces a 1740s rent roll or a Victorian servants’ wage book that explains how the money ran out. The owners wince at rising damp readings and £80,000 roof quotes while Quentin presses them on budget overruns and where the £250,000 contingency has gone. Long, notebook in hand, quizzes the conservation officer about lime mortar versus cement and why replacing 18th-century sash windows with double-glazed uPVC will breach listed-building consent.
Three series broadcast between July 2011 and August 2013 visited twenty properties, among them a Georgian vicarage in Northumberland, a Tudor manor in Kent and a neo-Gothic castle in Perthshire. Ratings held steady around 2.3 million, enough for BBC Two to recommission but not to extend beyond the initial run. Remarkable Television produced; Annette Clarke and Lisa Edwards executive-produced, with Joff Wilson on location managing multiple-camera crews who captured both collapsing rafters and the moment owners finally move furniture back into a drawing room stripped of scaffolding.
Production Details
BBC Two / 3 Seasons / 20 Episodes / 2011 - Present
Producer(s): Joff Wilson
Main Cast
Kieran Long as
