An \u00a38 million castle near Alcester is almost finished and will appear on TV again, later this year.<\/p>\n
Piers and Emma Daniell have spent nine years battling setbacks ranging from asbestos discovery to running out of cash, to construct their dream family home on the site of Oversley Castle’s ruins.<\/p>\n
When the couple featured on Channel 4\u2019s Grand Designs TV series in October last year, presenter Kevin McCloud was almost speechless after they revealed they\u2019d burned through \u00a32.2 million and were almost \u00a35 million over budget.<\/p>\n
Oversley Castle captured during the filming of Channel 4’s Grand Designs.<\/p>\n
Piers admitted people might think he was \u201ca lunatic\u201d, while a bemused McCloud described the project as \u201cbonkers\u201d.<\/p>\n
Last week, Piers was reunited with McCloud at the Grand Designs Live exhibition in London, when the architect interviewed him on stage.<\/p>\n
They discussed the new 12,000 square foot castle, which has 360 views for almost 40 miles and is designed to be as close to zero bills as possible with high-level insulation, triple glazing, solar glass, solar roof slates, air source heat pumps, a wind turbine and storage batteries.<\/p>\n
It took more than 25,000 \u2018Lego-style\u2019 woodcrete blocks made from recycled shredded timber mixed with cement and filled with reinforced concrete<\/p>\n
Former county councillor, Piers, who represented Alcester from 2021 to 2025, also spoke about the project last month as a guest on property developer podcast Ground Up.<\/p>\n
He explained he\u2019d never intended to build a castle but soon after buying a converted barn on an estate of 10 homes, including the original 19th-century folly, the developer ran into difficulties.<\/p>\n
Worried they\u2019d end up with no access to water, sewage or the internet, Piers bought the rest of the estate.<\/p>\n
His original plan was to turn the old folly into apartments, but this was scuppered when they discovered it was \u201cin a really terrible state\u201d.<\/p>\n
The main white tower was only one-brick thick, and when they pulled up the floorboards, they could see earth underneath.<\/p>\n
Despite initial fierce local opposition, the couple won planning permission from Stratford District Council to demolish the original castle to make way for a new 50-metre high five-storey tower and castle with its indoor moat.<\/p>\n
But given its vast scale, the couple found themselves having to shell out a staggering \u00a3100,000 to \u00a3250k a month to fund the project.<\/p>\n
To raise enough cash, they sold a house on the south coast, a flat in London, a commercial building, a car and a \u2018test\u2019 house built on the site, for \u00a32.5 million.<\/p>\n
Piers even borrowed a six-figure sum from his mum who raided her pension pot to help him out.<\/p>\n
He also used funds from the sale of a company and borrowed \u00a32m from private lenders.<\/p>\n
Viewers marvelled how the 44-year-old seemed so calm about these massive levels of debt.<\/p>\n
He told the podcast host last month that he\u2019d \u201cput on a brave face\u201d during the filming, and revealed that from a young age he\u2019s thought about death every day but sees it \u201ca superpower\u201d because it motivates him to get things done and leave his mark on the world.<\/p>\n
Describing himself as \u201ca little bit dyslexic\u201d, Piers said he struggled at school.<\/p>\n
At 15 he started his first business, helping stay-at-home mums learn how to use their computers.<\/p>\n
He then worked for a software sales company before leaving to start his own venture building and shipping microcomputers around the world.<\/p>\n
In 2003, aged 22, he set up a telecoms company Fluidata, delivering high-speed internet access to businesses.<\/p>\n
Operating from his bedroom, he ran up \u00a340,000 on credit cards but built the enterprise into a \u00a330 million company employing 150, with 18 data centres and O2 as his biggest customer.<\/p>\n
He was awarded a Queen\u2019s Award for Innovation in 2014, and a few years later sold his share, making him a millionaire many times over.<\/p>\n
Before he was with Emma, a former police officer with West Mercia and now deputy police and crime commissioner for Warwickshire, Piers described how he\u2019d spend 19 hours a day working.<\/p>\n
And he credited her for being his rock, saying: \u201cEmma\u2019s been amazing\u2026we just get each other and we support each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the build, Piers has also become involved in a clothing business, a health supplement company, and even built Bright Stars children\u2019s nursery in Bidford, which opened in 2019.<\/p>\n
Piers constructed two other houses on the site before tackling the castle and while exploring smart tech was inspired to start his smart grid company Tewke, named after Emma\u2019s home town of Tewkesbury.<\/p>\n
The Grand Designs programme sparked a huge amount of news coverage, with critics commenting that the build looked like \u201ca 1960s concrete car park\u201d, a fire station, \u201ca monstrosity\u201d, a \u201cMcMansion\u201d, \u201cthe definition of a folly\u201d and \u201cprobably the ugliest building ever on Grand Designs\u201d.<\/p>\n
But ultimately, that publicity has turned out to be a good thing.<\/p>\n
Piers reckons the coverage is worth about \u00a35 million in advertising, and says he has people contacting him from all over the world, having seen him on telly.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also looking forward to Kevin McCloud\u2019s return visit and follow-up programme later this year.<\/p>\n
The architect had been sceptical that the couple were demolishing and starting again, which is \u201call the stuff he hates\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Piers said: \u201cI think he saw through that, and we got quite a good rapport going because he saw I was doing it genuinely for the right reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he believes the follow up visit will \u201chelp give a bit more clarity as to where all the money’s gone and what we’ve actually built\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An \u00a38 million castle near Alcester is almost finished and will appear on TV again, later this year.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[205931,6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-603968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-alcester","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}