The picturesque Somerset hamlet of Batheaston lies close to the elegant Roman town of Bath in the shadow of Solsbury Hill, made famous by Peter Gabriel’s 1980s hit record.

But that glamour didn’t extend to a disused old garage sitting on a pair of underground petrol tanks that had blighted the village since it closed.

Developer Nick Mallaburn saw potential and put in plans for a cluster of sympathetically designed new homes.

Project description

Despite the clear improvement to the local aspect, the site’s location in a conservation area and a change of guard at the council meant the planning process took two years, but now the redevelopment is fully underway.

Due for completion in summer 2025, the former Avondale Garage in High Street, Batheaston, is being turned into four houses with a £4.2 million GDV, partly financed by a mezzanine facility from Davon.

This is the first deal between Nick’s company, NSM Properties, and Davon. Nick was introduced by a broker Suleman Rafiq with whom he has a long relationship, who also made the introduction to the first-tier lender for the project, Shawbrook.

Client testimonial

“I haven’t used mezzanine in the past but it worked well for this project, for cashflow and making the deal stack up,” says Nick. “My construction cost is £1.5 million so it’s easy to spend £100,000 in a month. It’s good to have the liquidity there. I would far rather have that than be up against it. It’s much more manageable.”

Davon’s David Norman and Chris Hector visited the site before signing the deal, and Nick got on well with them.

That relationship was strengthened when he joined Davon’s summer cruise along the Solent with fellow developers and colleagues from Davon’s contact base. The outing is an important part of Davon’s commitment to building relationships with clients and partners.

“Davon are very straight talking. They are straightforward guys, and really good to work with,” says Nick.

Project details

The Batheaston development is made up of a four-bed, three-bathroom, 2,500 sq ft house at the rear of the site with a barn-like, upside-down design –  bedrooms on the ground floor and open plan living space upstairs featuring a vaulted ceiling.

“Thanks to the elevation of the site, the view from upstairs is absolutely amazing,” says Nick. The house looks across a valley over the hamlets of Bathford and Box and the rolling countryside around.

The other homes in the development are three large terraces, each 1,600 sq ft with four bedrooms and three bathrooms, which are designed in traditional local Bath style with sash windows.

Modern building method

They are being constructed from ICF (insulated concrete form), a relatively modern building method in which Lego-like polystyrene bricks are filled with concrete. The system delivers high thermal insulation values capable of achieving Passivhaus-type numbers.

The rest of the site is made up of the petrol station’s former two-storey office. The 400 sq ft building is currently being used as a site office with the upper floor as a meeting space. Although the site’s planning permission allows for renovation of the offices, Nick has yet to decide what he will do with them long-term.

The former petrol station has thrown up challenges with making the site ready for redevelopment. The underground petrol tanks were decommissioned in 2003 and filled with foam but the ground around them had to be retested for contamination. A specialist company carried out more tests to confirm that spoil from the site was fit to go to landfill.

The construction team has shifted 2,000 tonnes of soil as part of a major groundwork project getting the site ready for change of use. Around £100,000 worth of piling was coming out of the ground in November 2024.

What’s next?

The structure of the large house at the rear of the site should be in place by Christmas 2024 with the rest by the end of February 2025 followed by fitout until completion in the summer.

Nick is focusing on bringing the project to a successful conclusion while looking at other opportunities and options for the future.

Over more than two decades in property development, he has had periods with two or even three projects under construction at the same time but that can be difficult to manage so these days, he prefers to keep things simple.

Looking back on his early projects, Nick confesses he cringes at the mistakes he made back then but even after 23 years, he reckons he’s still learning. Importantly, after all the ups and downs plus a lot of hard slog, he’s still enjoying it.