The Making of
The Horse Hut & Lotus Spa

A word from the creator

The Horse Hut was converted and re-designed by myself, Ralph.

I love the creative use of natural timber, using old materials and upcycling them.

The Horse Hut, Wagon in the Woods, Wagon and the Wigwam, and Bluebird are more of a passion than a job - I love designing and making beautiful places for people to enjoy.

Timeline

• The Bluebird Penthouse & Land Rover Hot Tub was my first project, launched 11 Feb 2016.
• Then followed Wagon in the Woods, which we somehow launched to the public before the Bluebird in Nov 2015.
• In Feb 2018, we launched Wagon & the Wigwam on the same site as the Wagon in the Woods.
• The last, The Horse Hut and Lotus Spa, was ready in March 2020 — a week before lockdown!

Where we are now

My wonderful wife Lucy works as a physiotherapist and is my creative sounding-board. Myself and Lucy have now moved to Devon and are starting on the next little places!

Joy, your host

My sister Joy has now taken over the running of the Wagons and The Horse Hut.

Joy brings her background as an artist and more recently working for the National Trust to keep guest experience going and add some extra artistic input.

Look for the Wagons across the valley

The Wagons and our family home can be seen on top of the hill, over the valley to the right — we are under the two tall poplar trees.

Graham & Sue’s Farm

The Horse Hut has been built with Graham & Sue who live here at Old Soldridge Farm.

Sue made the beautiful blinds and Graham was always on hand with his valuable time and a tractor! They are keen to share this parcel of their land with you so you can fully appreciate the views and experience the countryside.

When you visit, we ask that you respect that this is a working farm with livestock, dogs and heavy farm machinery. Please stay within the area of the Horse Hut and public bridleways and do not walk around the farm.

And here’s to you, our guests!

We hope that you truly enjoy your stay whilst you are with us and that you find peace, rest and inspiration here.

Each booking enables us to develop the existing projects and increase the creative ideas for new ones. By staying, you are helping make this happen. Thank you!

— Ralph

Building the Horse Hut

The Horse Hut is the fourth ‘Little Place in the Country’ and we are honoured for her to join our small collection. It has been a privilege (and lots of fun) to learn from the other little places I have built and to keep improving (and pushing) the creative boundaries.

Historically, The Horse Hut was originally mounted on the back of a lorry and was used at Polo and Shire horse shows, then in later life used by Dexter cattle breeders.

The Horse Hut on the back of it’s original lorry with horse box.

The lorry also towed a large horse box and The Horse Hut was used for parties at shows.

It did not have a bedroom, but instead, a small store room, corridor and a staircase that went out a hatch in the roof. The roof had pop up rails (perhaps in an attempt to keep the champagne-soaked revellers on the roof!) Unfortunately to get a bedroom in (and keep the rain out) we had to change the design.

Arriving at the farm.

Lifting the Horse Hut into position, a finely coordinated job by Graham, his brother and some very handy JCB’s.

Building the verandah supports, needed some serious machines to lift the poles.

Lucy climbs the missing stairs that used to go onto the roof.

Graham fixing the new insulated ceiling into place.

Lucy planting up the tractor tyres!

Old Church Posts

The posts for the four-poster-bed are antique pine and came from an old church in London, we love the character they add to the place.

The verandah

Having an outdoor covered area has proven to be a great asset on our other little places, enabling people to be outside for much more of the year… so this time we went huge!

The power poles had been purchased by Graham’s father with the plan of building a barn that had not been built. When discussing the building of the verandah, the idea was hatched to build it with the old power poles – it meant we could make the huge span of decking and avoid dividing the view up with multiple supports.

‘Horse field’

The area where The Horse Hut now resides has funnily enough always been known as ‘horse field,’ as years ago it was where the farm used to keep the working horses.

As if it was meant to be…

The Lotus Spa Hot Tub

The Lotus Spa was added over lockdown 2020.

The original idea was to put a hot tub into a horse box (but as always, the ideas grew and evolved.)

The vehicles you can put a hot tub into are limited to aluminium or fibreglass to avoid them rusting away.

• Land Rovers are aluminium (☑ done it)
• As are aeroplanes (☐ work in progress)

…and Lotus cars were previously made of fibreglass.

Lotus are a British-built luxury car manufacturer and our Lotus, the Lotus Elan Plus 2, would have been built in their factory in Norfolk. It’s a four seater with two small back seats making it just large enough to squeeze a hot tub in.

The Lotus I bought had been abandoned and nature had almost hidden her completely!

I purchased the Lotus from this one picture! As we were in lockdown I could not go and see it in person, so I took a chance.

Once she was pulled out of the bushes!

The arrival of the Lotus at the farm - the first time I had seen it free from its cloak of brambles.

It was black when it arrived but its original coloration was electric blue with a silver glitter top section — as wild you would expect for a 1972 sports car!

The sunroof would have been a later addition and was removed so you can get in and out easily.

Testing the hot tub on the decking.

Then measuring, measuring again, head scratching and lots of wondering, “How do I get these two to fit together…?”

It was very close and at times I wondered if it was ever going to work as I cut more and more bits off the hot tub and Lotus.

Was I going to have spent our house deposit on a Lotus and a hot tub? Just to keep cutting bits off until they were both useless? I was not going to explain that one to Lucy… it had to fit!

And eventually it did!!

It took several paint jobs to get it right. The first yellow was too orange; first blue, too bright!

Finally I got to add some fun bits, with a respectful nod to its new farm-life: a vintage tractor steering wheel.

Mission accomplished!

And, yes, she has been thoroughly road tested by Lucy and myself. You’re welcome to come take her for a bubbly spin sometime soon.