Patrick Grant: ‘Half of my house was about to collapse’

H ome, for me, is where I disconnect from work and digital life. Whether it’s archaeologically excavating cobbles or making fences from old bits of blown-off tree branches, I love returning to a simple, quiet, old-fashioned way of living. In Edinburgh, next to a place called the Hermitage of Braid, which is now a nature reserve.

I’d spend days with my friends there, building gang huts and damming the river. Near Settle on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. The house [a 1690s five-bedroom grade II listed gentry property] was a complete wreck when I bought it seven years ago, and unoccupied for about 30 years.

Half of it was about to collapse and had to be dismantled. It’s been rebuilt pretty much exactly as it.