Speckled Wood is a roundwood timber-frame eco building. It was built in 2012, at Swan Barn Farm in Haslemere, on the borders of West Sussex and Surrey, by the National Trust’s Black Down countryside team and volunteers, led by Head Ranger David Elliott.
The building was designed and put up in association with Ben Law, who featured in one of Channel 4’s most popular episodes of Grand Designs.
Nearly all of the materials used to build the house were sourced from the National Trust’s sustainable woodland, within a two mile radius from the site of the building.
It uses local stone foundations, a sweet chestnut and oak frame, straw bale walls, sheep wool insulation and a roof made of over 14,000 hand-made wooden shingles.
The building is heated using a log fired biomass boiler, using local products from the woodland management process, and generates its own electricity using solar panels.