COAST DREAM HOME
The Ellis family’s passion for wine and design have collided to create their dream family home just a few miles from the East Sussex coast, writes REBECCA PITCAIRN
Ashared passion for Champagne and sustainable design led husband and wife, Ben and Sam Ellis, to build their dream home on the outskirts of the picturesque East Sussex village of Ditchling.
The couple moved from London, where they had met working as town planners for a city consultancy, to Lewes when their three children, Georgia, Ollie and Eva, were small. With a wealth of property planning experience between them, they soon felt it was time to start looking for the ideal spot to build their perfect home.
But for the Ellis’, that vision wasn’t just one of an idyllic residence in the country in which to raise their children, it was also one that would allow them to realise another dream – making their own sparkling wine.
It all started in 2010, after the family found themselves stranded in Asia due to the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull.
“We were stuck in Thailand, unable to get home for six weeks, so Sam had the idea to cash in our flight tickets and travel the other way on the map and
we ended up in Perth,” explains Ben. “We found ourselves sitting in this idyllic vineyard in the Swan Valley and I had the idea that ‘we could do this – make wine – at home in England’.”
Sam adds: “I was drinking sparkling wine, because I love fizz, and it was the first time that it really dawned on me that you can get sparkling wine outside the Champagne region – the French don’t have the monopoly.
“When we came back to Lewes, it clicked that in fact we lived in what is the epicentre of English sparkling wine region and so we started exploring the local wines and were so impressed with the quality, we decided to give it a go ourselves.”
Fortunately for them, an old farm on a 13-acre plot in the middle of The South Downs National Park in Ditchling – just a few miles from the couple’s home in Lewes and not far from Brighton’s bustling coast – became available. The land had the exact soil types required for growing the three traditional Champagne grape varieties of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier and in 2015, Sam and Ben bought the site and set about building their dream.
They worked with Lap Chan of Brighton-based Morgan Carn Architects to ensure their vision for the site was something that would sit well with the South Downs’ Design Review Panel, which oversees every element of planning within the national park. But while the pair have years of construction experience between them, transforming what was a collection of
