The dream retirement home of a £725,000 rural couple is being demolished – just five years after it was built.
Madeline and Alastair Price, aged 70 and 69, can’t even open the front door of their shaky five-bedroom home, which they bought in 2018.
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Overlooking open fields in Cambridgeshire, the couple’s detached house is riddled with yards of cracks as it is ‘lifted’ by swelling soil.
Insurers blame poorly constructed foundations and have ordered the house to be torn down and rebuilt because the damage is too severe to repair.
Madeline, a retired banker turned gardener, said: “It really is a nightmare.
“The cracks are pretty much everywhere. None of the floors or work surfaces are level.
“Doors won’t close – I can’t even open the front door because it’s stuck.”
“The insurance company said they couldn’t make it. It’s not just a building, it’s our house.”
Located in the rural village of Wicken, near the historic cathedral city of Ely, the couple’s home has five bedrooms and three bathrooms.
Madeline showed cracks breaking through her and her husband Alastair’s home, which has underfloor heating, a wine cooler and a wood-burning stove.
The couple’s double garage has a two-metre-long gap about an inch wide, while the kitchen and sitting room are also affected.
Madeline said the problem was that the house’s foundation — about five to six feet deep — was displaced by the clay soil below, which expands due to the swell of the ground.
Ground swell is associated with the swelling of clay soils that expand when wet.
The couple argue that builders should have taken this into account when building the house, which came with a 10-year warranty under the Municipal Building Regulations.
Madeline said: “The ground is bone dry and there are indications that there are still small tree roots. It lifts the house.
“They should have known what the land looked like when they built the house.
“After a few years we first noticed small cracks, but we attribute it to normal new house stuff.
“It started in the hallway, on the stairs and in the back bedroom.
“A structural engineer came by and said it was clay swell, which is where the soil has expanded under the house.”
Madeline and Alastair, also a retired banker, are forced to leave the house they share with their golden retriever when the demolition notice is given.
They receive compensation to rent a home for six months, but say they don’t know if they’ll return or sell their home once it’s rebuilt.
Madeline said, “They’re going to tear everything down and redo the foundation.
“It could be away from home for at least two years.
“We wanted to live in the countryside, we thought this would be our home for a few years and then we would move into our last house.
“We don’t know at the moment if we’ll be back. Maybe we’ll put it on the market as soon as it’s built again.”
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