The Devon Lighthouse goes on sale for £10 million

It was billed the ‘saddest ever’ Grand Designs episode, but all is far from lost with Edward Short’s Lighthouse home in North Devon – Chesil Cliff House is now complete and up for sale.

The disaster-laden property, known as the Lighthouse, first featured on Grand Designs in 2019. It suffered delays and setbacks, forcing self-builders Edward and Hazel Short to take out loans of £3 million to fund the project. But even that wasn’t enough, and Edward was forced to put the breaks on the project after running out of money.

Located on a crumbling clifftop in Croyde, the colossal build took Edward almost a decade to complete as he struggled to get the financing in place to meet spiralling costs.

Chesil Cliff House

Chesil Cliff House is positioned on a three-acre site between Saunton Sands, the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of Braunton Burrows and Croyde cove. It’s also near the National Trust’s Baggy Point.

Part of the reason for the huge build cost was that, due to its unique clifftop position, the property had to be anchored into the bed rock of the cliff and painstakingly engineered to ensure erosion wouldn’t cause any structural problems.

Engineered by HOP Consulting, the firm behind marine developments such as Brighton Marina, it has a very high design and build quality. Both this, and Edward’s uncompromising vision, mean that the Lighthouse is one of the most impressive waterfront homes on the North Devon coast.

‘There is nothing else to compare [Chesil Cliff House] to on the market right now,’ said Christopher Bailey, Head of National Waterfront, Knight Frank. ‘It certainly sits at the very top of the national coastal waterfront market and I have no doubt it will attract keen interest globally.’

Up for sale

The south-facing Chesil Cliff House, which has access to the water and a private beach, has five bedrooms and bathrooms, four reception rooms, a sauna and a cellar. The Lighthouse also comes with a three-bedroom annexe known as The Eye – originally built by Edward to help secure financing for the rest of the project – and a double garage.

‘The architectural concept had to be bold and elegant,’ said the architect, professor Alan Phillips. ‘That was achieved through the use of contrasting geometries – rectangles and circles – culminating in a poolside, four-storey, glass-topped rotunda. There’s also a guest house cut out of the rock face with sea views framed by a single arch.’

Finally, despite the ending of Edward’s marriage, it looks like this self-build journey has a happy ending of sorts: ‘I’ll always be proud to have finished this,’ he says. ‘I owe it to my family to have a real end result, but the time has come to move on.

‘I will have achieved what I set out to do, never deviating from the plans, and for that I’ll always be proud.’

Chesil Cliff House, which includes the Lighthouse and The Eye, is for sale with a guide price of £10 million. See knightfrank.co.uk

Watch the original Grand Designs Lighthouse episode from 2019 on All4 here