“We had blacked out the windows on the road, and we had film crews coming in and out,” she says. “The neighbours were convinced we were making blue movies.”
The truth is almost as unlikely, for within the stone shell of their old mill, Heleine, and her husband Chris, 46, have created a brave modernist home of such uncompromising minimalism that they even have a portable steel splashback to place behind the hob when they cook.
“I couldn’t bear to spoil the lines of the kitchen with anything stuck on the wall,” says Heleine, who has managed to do away with the need for a kettle altogether: she has a magic tap that spouts either iced, filtered water or ready-boiled water at the touch of a button.
The entire house is full of miraculous gadgetry and almost devoid of light switches — instead, there’s a small screen on the wall with icons to press. For instance, if you are having a glass of wine in the kitchen, you press the wine-glass icon and the area is lit accordingly. Have a coffee, press the mug, and hey, you can relax in a coffee-drinking ambient glow.
It’s not just the lighting, though. This is a particularly well thought-out house, and it won the Riba award for design excellence in 2001. It also featured on Channel 4’s Grand Designs. Presenter Kevin McCloud called it “a wonderful space: you feel a cleaner, better, healthier human being just sitting there, but it is going to take an awful lot of keeping perfect”.
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That was five years ago, and it’s still immaculate, despite the fact they live there with their cocker spaniel Joe. The oven — stainless-steel inside as well as out — looks unused, and you could eat off the garage floor. It’s partly because the couple, who have been together for 25 years, are proud of their house and want to keep it perfect; it’s partly because it has been designed that way. There are few places for dust to settle: cupboards have no handles, just neat metal push-plates; there are no skirting boards, just shadow gaps.
It’s a very different place from when they first saw it, in 1994. Then, it was virtually derelict and divided into industrial units. They paid £55,000 without even stepping inside. “We didn’t need to,” says Chris. “We could see it was sound.”
For five years they let it be, unsure whether to convert it into two flats, four flats, or one house. They owned a specialist joinery manufacturing business at the time, “working for every pub chain you can think of”, says Chris. One day, they were installing a television unit into an open-plan house and they looked at each other and said, “Netherton”. That house was all the inspiration they needed: they employed an architect and they were away, acting as main contractors and project managers.
The exterior of the mill was restored so that from the outside it looks like any other Yorkshire building — apart from the blacked-out windows on the street side and palm trees peeping over the tops of the garden walls. Inside, it was stripped out and a giant steel framework fixed within the shell. The ground floor is given over to one vast living area, with a separate gym, loo and utility room; above, a central atrium lights the whole house, with bedrooms built around the edge, opening on to a galleried landing. They budgeted to spend £150,000; it ended up costing £350,000, and that’s without the expense of the landscaped garden.
At the same time as rebuilding their four-bed, 2,500sq ft mill, they built a house on land bought on a whim in Minorca. They also had a business to run. It all got too much. Two years ago, they sold the business. “It was a hard decision, because you are making yourself redundant,” says Heleine. “But we realised we couldn’t move forward unless we sold it.”
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Now they are selling the mill, too, and making Minorca their base. But they are not retiring: they will travel Europe, looking for projects. “I’ve already got my eye on a nice property in Minorca,” says Chris.
They are in no hurry; the fact that they don’t have children has given them freedom. It wasn’t planned that way. “At 28, when I found I couldn’t have children, I was devastated,” says Heleine. “I had seven attempts at IVF, and I’m glad we went down that route, but I want other women in the same situation to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Now I am so pleased to have the benefits of not having children: we couldn’t be doing what we are doing now if we did.”
The Old Mill is for sale for £700,000 with Simon Blythe, 01484 689 689, www.rightmove.co.uk