Welsh woodland hobbit house built for a song

Simon and Jasmine Dale with their children.

An eco-conscious family has built a "hobbit home" with unwanted materials for less than $8000 in the hills and woodland of Wales.

Simon Dale, a photographer, said he had finally given into the description of his house, which has a turf roof that blends into its forest environment.

"There's some relevance in what hobbits were representative of for Tolkien," Dale said.

"I'm no literary expert, but they seem to be a representation of humans living in a sustainable sort of way. I'm happy with that."

Mr Dale said he knew from his teens that he wanted to build a home in the countryside. But it did not take hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of work.

In three months, and for no more than £3000 ($7560), Mr Dale, his wife Jasmine, and his father-in-law (with a baby and toddler in tow) constructed a cosy, ecologically sound home in the woods.

They did it themselves, relying on serendipity and the generosity of others.

The owner of the woods was keen to have someone living there, taking care of the forest, so they didn't have to pay for the land.

Next, the forest needed thinning and the type of wood that needed to be thinned couldn't be sold for anything other than firewood.

"It usually requires a subsidy to get it out," Mr Dale said. "People are paid to remove it because it's part of an old woodland management plan that doesn't have a place in modern commercial production." It was, however, ideal for the woodland home that Mr Dale was building, not least because it was pliable. "It gave us fantastic building opportunities, as well as creative ones because it made such interesting shapes," he said.

The roof has a layer of straw bales for insulation, plastic over that to render it waterproof, and earth on top. "A turf roof is a really simple way of making a roof," said Mr Dale. "It's low-tech, cheap, and it's got minimal visual impact.

"The round design wasn't just for looks: it makes structural sense to build like this - practically, it's a stable shape, and the minimum amount of wall means little heat loss."

Straw was one of the main expenses, many other materials were free. "We went to lots of skips," Mr Dale said, "but also people gave us things. Nearby there were power pylons being refitted, and the timber packing crates for the components would have been burnt - we used them as floorboards."

There was also the big row of windows someone had removed from their home to have them replaced with plastic versions. "I think because everything wasn't decided in advance, we were able to incorporate whatever happened as we went along," Mr Dale said. "We weren't tied to a hard-and-fast plan at the beginning, or using materials like cement .

"Everything is functional primarily, and then aesthetic within the limits of what is functional as well as expedient."

Their next project - to build nine similar homes in a settlement in Pembrokeshire - is well under way.

Nine families are ready to move in and try living off the land, going back to a way of life before fossil fuels - but with the modern knowledge of ecology.

"What was initially for me a love of the countryside has turned into a complex understanding of how we relate to the land," Mr Dale said. It's a quiet revolution but we probably haven't heard the last of this family.

- INDEPENDENT