Saturday 13 August 2022 02:01 AM The dark secret that lies behind my £10m Grand Design nightmare trends now

Chesil Cliff House sits on a precipice, its floor to ceiling windows offering panoramic views of the stunning North Devon coastline.

At the front is a glass-fronted infinity pool, to one side a modernist, four-storey ‘lighthouse’.

The six-bed home, between beauty spots Saunton Sands and Croyde Bay, is supported by 25 steel beams drilled into the rock below, making the building, recently put on sale for £10 million, impervious to coastal erosion.

It is astonishing — all the more so given the story behind it, one of resilience and optimism in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

It was once described as the saddest project ever shown on Channel 4’s Grand Designs.

The house saw its music producer owner Edward Short, 54, who had budgeted £2.5 million on the build, which he started in 2011, sink £7 million in debt after a litany of setbacks and divorce from his long-suffering wife, Hazel.

Those setbacks included the 2011 financial crisis which prompted funds to be withdrawn, granite bedrock that took 18 months to drill into, not the expected six, and then Covid halting progress. When one lender pulled out in 2018, the house was left derelict, looking more abandoned multi-storey car park than millionaire’s paradise. Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud, visiting in 2019, described it as a ‘desolate carcass’ — on which one irritated local graffitied ‘please finish’.

Nobody really thought Edward would and he was mocked for insisting he could. But three years later, finish it he has. ‘There’s no way I’d sell it if it weren’t for the money,’ says debt-ridden Edward. ‘The house is a part of me.’

This is abundantly clear as he takes me on a tour, showing me every detail, from the composite floor next to the pool to the cliff face exposed under the £300,000, partially suspended ‘floating’ driveway.

The bedroom he had earmarked for himself and Hazel is up a spiral galvanised steel staircase in the lighthouse, with views of the breaking waves on Croyde beach. ‘I’m obsessed with the beauty of the weather,’ says Edward, who says ‘two-thirds of the value’ of the property — which includes The Eye, an adjacent, 1,500 sqft annexe to house potential (very lucky) staff — lies in the landscape. Below the house is a private cove with rocks to sunbathe on. ‘Huge parties down there,’ he points. ‘You can jump off into the water. It’s great fun.’

He finally finished the project with money from lender MSP, who are paying off his monthly interest in what is called ‘rolled up interest borrowing’.

Edward explains: ‘I don’t have to worry about paying the interest, but it’s still accumulating. I’ve spent a few hundred quid sitting next to you for an hour.’ Luckily, he has learned only to look at the positive. 

‘When Covid came along I thought I was going to lose everything,’ he says, but adds: ‘You learn not to lose energy worrying. It will stop you functioning.’

Given the effort and emotion that has gone into the house, it will inevitably be a bittersweet moment when he hands over the keys to the new owners, especially when Edward reveals the real reason he poured his soul into it.

Because this house — which has cost him so much, financially and in his relationship — symbolises not just a triumph against the odds, but Edward’s determination turn a harrowing experience into something positive.

For he reveals that Chesil Cliff House’s renowned architect, Professor Alan Phillips, was paid out of £75,000 compensation Edward received from Buckinghamshire County Council after he was abused by more than one teacher for three years while a pupil at Dr Challoner’s Grammar School in Amersham, Bucks.

‘I said he had to make it good because of where the money was coming from,’ says Edward, wryly. ‘I wanted to turn the money into something meaningful.’ It quickly becomes clear that Edward has faced rock bottom before and a few hitches with a house build were never going to break him.

Aged 15, and filled with self-loathing about what he had experienced, he became convinced he’d be better off dead and jumped off a bridge over a railway line, suffering extensive injuries that included breaking both wrists, 12 ribs and fracturing his spine.

‘I was disgusted with myself,’ says Edward. ‘I wanted out. I should be dead. However, I was given a second chance and was determined to have a good life.’

Now engaged to Jalia Nambasca, 38, a nurse he met online, Edward has decided to speak out after his family lost a male friend to suicide this year. The friend had been unaware of Edward’s own attempt.

‘I kicked myself for not spotting the signs, given what I’d been through,’ says Edward, who has daughters Nicole, 23, and Lauren, 21, with Hazel. ‘I hope my story of not giving up will help people.’ 

He was 12 when he joined Dr Challoner’s, a single-sex grammar, in 1980 — his excitement diminished on his first day, when one of his teachers touched him under his desk.

‘He crouched beside my chair and rubbed his hand up and down my leg,’ he recalls.

The groping became both more overtly sexual and a weekly occurrence in lessons. Once, he was accosted by a teacher on his way to the school bus on a dark path towards the end of the day. On other occasions he was grabbed in between his lessons and groped on the pretence of a play fight.

In an era in which issues of consent and child safety were rarely discussed, he didn’t know where to turn and began skipping classes.

‘I’d dread going to school. I’d sign the register and bunk off,’ says Edward, one of three siblings whose father worked as a money lender at the time.

The longer the abuse went on, the harder he found it to confide in anyone, even though he says he saw other boys being touched inappropriately. ‘I felt too

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