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PANNED DESIGN
My Grand Designs nightmare was dubbed ‘saddest ever’ – it cost me & my family millions in debt…now there’s final twist
GAZING out at spectacular sea views from the panoramic “storm room”, Edward Short shows off his lighthouse-inspired mansion, Chesil Cliff House.
But the dream home — which featured in a Grand Designs episode described as “the saddest ever” — has cost him much more than the £6million price of the mammoth self-build.
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As costs spiralled out of control, Edward suffered sleepless nights, crippling debts and, finally, the collapse of his marriage to Hazel, 56, who appeared with him in the 2018 programme along with daughters Nicole, now 22, and Lauren, 21.
Now completed after a decade of blood, sweat and tears, the six- bedroom mansion, which sits majestically on a clifftop between Saunton Sands and Croyde Beach in North Devon and comes with its own private cove, is on the market for £10million.
Tragically, the family, who dreamed of idyllic days by the infinity pool watching spectacular sunsets over Hartland Point, have never lived in this stunning property.
But the 54-year-old music producer, who invited The Sun down to view the house, is ready to let that dream go in order to pay back his debts — currently around £7million and rising every day.
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“It’s going to hurt but I want out,” he says simply. “It’s got to go because it’s beyond me now.
“I’m quite excited about that final moment when the deal closes. I’ve worked so long to get to that point and now, hopefully, that’s around the corner.
“It will be nice to get some sort of payback, even if it’s only a pint and packet of crisps at the very end.”
While he says the breakdown of his 20-year marriage was not entirely due to the stress caused by the build, he regrets the pressure his “messed-up dreams” put on Hazel and the girls.
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“There’s no doubt what I put Hazel through was horrendous,” says Edward, who has now found love again with fiancee Jalia Nambasa.
“There’s a lot of guilt about that. But there was no way out, once we started. If we didn’t finish we’d have been in big trouble.”
Edward, who grew up in Plymouth, had a successful career in the music industry and made a mint from Euphoria, a series of compilation CDs which sold six million copies after launching in 1999.
Missing the crashing waves of his childhood, he moved the family to Devon in 2004 and bought a house on the cliff near Braunton four years later, for £1.4million.
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But, while the family home was spacious, Edward says it was ugly and “too close to the cliff” — and he had grander things in mind.
Inspired by the luxury villas of Ibiza, where he promoted club nights in the 1990s, Edward hired Brighton architect Alan Phillips, who was fresh off a project for U2 frontman Bono in France, to design his vision.
But, when costs started to soar, Edward’s refusal to compromise on the original design left Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud gasping with disbelief in the now infamous episode of the Channel 4 show.
Viewers were shocked as the couple’s original £1.8million loan spiralled to £2.5million, then £4million as the build became beset with problems.
Nestling on crumbling cliffs, the brilliant engineering required drilling into blue bedrock slate, which is almost as hard as granite, to install 25 supports which will leave part of the house hanging in the air when the sandstone below eventually erodes.
“I had spent a lot of money going into geology and engineering but we never tested how hard the rock was,” says Edward.
“We had to bring in specialist mining equipment, which also broke, and it took six months to dig instead of a month. The numbers just started to go through the roof.”
Add a drive that needed to be built as a floating bridge, a four-storey rotunda, 100 tons of steel and coastal winds that often made the use of a crane impossible, and the original £3.2million estimate soon went out the window.
In a bid to claw some cash back, a separate three-bed, one-story house dubbed The Eye, originally designed as a recording studio, was built with a £500,000 loan from a hedge fund.
Edward planned to raise £2.5million from its sale to fund the main build — but discovered it was too close to the site to sell separately.
At the same time, much of Edward’s income dried up as streaming services hit CD sales and a banking crisis caused his lender to pull out.
Grand Designs first visited the project in 2016 and by the time cameras returned to the site in 2018, work had stopped on the house — then a grey shell which neighbours complained was a blot on the landscape.
Edward refused to be beaten and, despite the huge debt, he learned to face the stress head on.
“Every pound that was being spent, the value was going up but at the same time, the chance of living in the house was going down,” he says.
“It was awful for the family because I pulled the stability rug from under them, without being able to give answers of how we were going to get out of it, other than that I had to carry on.
“I was so stressed about leaving that stain of failure on my wife and children that I was worrying a lot, I was losing sleep, but that effectively made me unable to function.
“So I turned that into the enemy in my mind — and I stopped. I blocked it out and focussed on clearing all the obstacles out of the way. It made me stronger and much more resilient.”
After a two-year hiatus, work resumed in 2019 when a new lender, MPS, who wanted to focus on prime properties, came into play.
By then, however, Edward had split with Hazel.
“It would be simple to say it was because of the house but there were a mixture of reasons,” he says.
‘I’m on cloud nine’
“But we are still the best of friends and I would never say a bad word about Hazel.
“She supported me and did amazing things to try to keep things going here, learning accountancy and doing holiday-let cleaning.
“But what the family went through was difficult. If you knock down a family house, you put people under a lot of pressure and moving from one rented accommodation to another was a strain.
“I will always carry a sense of guilt for what I’ve put her through and the fact I’ve taken away her stability.”
As Edward shows us around the incredible house — which will feature in a follow-up show this summer — his pride is palpable.
Walking from the front door, past a guest bedroom, spa and steam room and cinema room, you enter a huge open-plan kitchen diner, entirely glass on one side, overlooking the beautiful infinity pool that melds seamlessly with the aquamarine sea view.
On the first floor, a huge master bedroom boasts an ensuite with space for a large bath and double shower and every room has a balcony with a sea view — including the bathroom.
But the piece-de-resistance is the signature four-storey rotunda, featuring a ground-floor living room, bedrooms and Edward’s favourite — the storm room.
Boasting a 270-degree view of the bay, the stunning space is a great “thinking space”.
Also offering a helicopter landing spot, the main house comes with The Eye, which has a jacuzzi plus removable walls so it can be transformed into a gym or recording studio.
Having been unable to give Hazel any money in his divorce, Edward is keen to make amends with the sale of the house.
“I really want to give Hazel security again. That’s gone from her life, because of my exploits,” he says.
'To have nothing is hard'
“She was very successful, working as a fashion buyer for Harrods, Selfridges and Simpsons, so to get to this age and have nothing is hard.”
He also plans to buy a family hub near the Devon house for his new extended family to enjoy — and he has a wedding to pay for.
Edward and Jalia, 38 — mum to Sebo, one, and Holly, 10 — are currently living at her house in Bath and plan to marry next summer.
The pair met through online dating and the nurse tells how one of the reasons she fell for him was the way he spoke highly of his ex-wife, saying it’s “rare” to find such a gentleman.
“I’m completely in love,” Edward says.
“I found a partner that has instilled feelings in me I didn’t know existed. I’m on cloud nine on that front.
“Hazel’s with a new partner, and I get on very well with him. We’re both in better places emotionally.
“Hazel was the first person to swim in the pool and the girls are now proud of us and proud of the house.
“So there’s a happy ending to the story in that, in my opinion, we managed to get through a divorce and ended up with a bigger family and better relationship.”
There’s still the small matter of the £7millon debt but Edward is characteristically cheerful.
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The Eye has been valued at £2million and the main house at £8million.
He is understandably proud that he never gave up on the house. “I’ll carry this place in my heart,” he says.
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