If you don’t look carefully, you might not even see the home that Jonathan Ridley - Jones and Shanon Ridd built at all! That’s because the house is a converted underground water tank. The only thing that can be seen from the surface is a door leading into the hillside. “We’ve never wanted to live in an ordinary house,” Shanon says. “Living below ground that our home is quiet and very cosy – none of the usual draughts. It doesn’t damage the local surroundings and has very low fuel bills. Some of our friends find it dark and feel shut in when they first visit, but they soon gut used to it!”
If an underground home doesn’t appeal to you. how about living in the tree tops? Dan Garner, a tree surgeon from Gloucestershire, certainly thinks that is the way to go up in the world.
“When our family became short of space at home our solution was to build a luxury tree house in the garden. The tree house is built into a spruce tree six metres above the ground. Lt has one main room. A bedroom and a balcony running around two sides.” Garner is so happy with this practical extension to his home that he thinks he can convince more people of the benefits of living in the trees. He wants to set up his own enterprise making more of the deluxe tree dwelling, saying, “Tree houses are airy, secure and comfortable and the only disadvantage is that they might not be suitable for people who suffer from hay fever or a fear of heights?
Even people who live in more ordinary settings sometimes can’t resist doing something to make them stand out from the crowd. One extreme example of this is Bill Heines’ house in Headington, oxfordshire. Until one morning in 1986, his house looked much like all the others in his street, when suddenly overnight a 7.5 m long fiberglass shark appeared to have crashed through the roof. The shark was a sculpture by local artist john Buckley. At first if spoilt the look of the neighbourhood,but engineers checked that the sculpture was safe and the Headington shark has become a well-known and popular landmark. It seems that no matter where you live, you can always do something to make sure your house says something about who you are.