Returning home after three decades in the St ates, actor Harry Van Gorkum built an energy-efficient timber frame house in a picturesque spot near the Norfolk Broads

WORDS LOUISE PARKIN

Built by Polandbased package home company Dan-Wood, the one-and-a-halfstorey timber frame house is highly energy efficient

PHOTOS HAR RY VAN GORKUM

When British actor Harry Van Gorkum moved back to the UK after 28 years living in Los Angeles, he knew that he wanted to build his own house in Norfolk. Having spent lots of time there as a child on the Norfolk Broads, he loved the idea of a secluded spot where he could raise his daughters, 12 and 10, in peaceful surroundings in a home built to his own specification.

“I grew up in London and Surrey, and then we moved to Birmingham where my dad bought a boat, and we would spend time on the inland waterways. We would go on holiday in Norfolk and hire a boat on the Broads, and I always loved coming here,” says Harry. “Norfolk is like an island – there are no motorways and nobody really passes through on the way to somewhere else, so it’s a quiet, sleepy and very picturesque location.”

The planning stages

Living with his daughters in a rented house in a Norfolk village, Harry’s extensive search to find the perfect plot of land started with scouring PlotBrowser (www.plotbrowser.com), visiting local estate agents and eventually finding a 0.16-acre site on Rightmove. Owned by a local farmer, the field had been partitioned into six plots, each with services already installed. ADan-Wood home was being built on an adjacent site, and Harry chose to employ the same company and groundworker for his own project. “The house is built on a slab foundation, which requires a precise and uniform level across the site, which is pretty tricky to achieve, so I decided to wait until the groundworkers were available. That did delay things slightly, as they had about five jobs still to do before getting to mine, but I used the time carefully, doing lots of research, choosing the spec, and getting everything in place,” Harry says.