Get far from the madding crowd in a shepherds' hut all of your own

If Thomas Hardy was alive today, he would no doubt be delighted that such an intrinsic part of Dorset’s rural past is still in demand, albeit in slightly different guise.

Plankbridge (Plankbridge.com) is the realisation of a dream for Jane Dennison and Richard Lee, who design and make traditional wheeled shepherd huts identical to the one owned by Hardy’s Oak.

Sitting securely on wrought iron wheels and built by local craftsmen mainly using local products, Plankbridge huts can now be found all over the UK and Europe, transformed into everything from writers’ retreats to Alpine spas and Lake District holiday homes.

It all started when Jane and Richard fell for the charms of a ramshackle shepherd’s hut close to Thomas Hardy’s Cottage near Dorchester.

Richard decided to make one and then, after a few years, sold it and started on another.

These days there are more than 170 Plankbridge huts in existence, each costing around £14,000, with several more under construction and a healthy pile of orders waiting to go.

Jane still struggles to comprehend their success.

“We initially thought we would be making them for the steam fair crowd, we had no idea they would turn into these high-spec homes and even saunas,” she said.

“They make lovely garden retreats, somewhere where you can get away from the world, but people use them for all sorts of different things.

“There are a couple that have ended up in the French Alps as spa huts, some people use them as holiday lets or somewhere where their teenagers can go.

“We are currently making a library van which will look lovely when it is finished – imagine sitting in there, the wood burner going, the walls lined with beautiful books.”

It’s not just readers who adore these bijou huts. Dorset-based author Tracy Chevalier wrote notes for her latest novel The Last Runaway and was interviewed live for Radio 4’s Today programme sitting in a scaled-down Plankbridge hut in an award-winning garden at the 2012 Chelsea Flower Show. The same hut now lives on the Monmouthshire farm owned by Kate Humble and is used as an author’s retreat while the bubbly TV presenter writes her book on farming life.

Having started Plankbridge ‘painting by hand under a tarpaulin’ at their home in the hamlet of Waterston, near to where Bathsheba Everdene and Squire Boldwood lived in far From the Madding Crowd, Jane and Richard’s business has mushroomed. Plankbridge is now based in a farm unit near Piddlehinton with a work force of nine full-time craftsmen plus a couple of part-time workers.

Each hut is based on the same traditional specifications and size – they have to be no wider than a cart and between 12 and 14ft long – but the owners can design the interior as they choose.

Making the huts is an ambition fulfilled for Richard, who designed and fitted kitchens in a previous life.

“I always knew I needed a product to make and design.

“Before now, I was working in people’s kitchens where it was very hot and I knew it was not what I wanted to do. I wanted my own product and a workshop and to be able to deliver something fully done.

“When we started in 2000 I didn’t think we would be where we are now.

“We had a workshop at home with just two bays and I thought that would be it, that it would do.”

It isn’t always easy combining the artisan romanticism of creating a shepherd’s hut with a need for hard-edged commercial sense, but Jane and Richard have benefited from the experience and advice handed down by Tony Garvey from Dormen, Dorset’s business mentoring service.

Much of Jane’s delight in the business stems from the fact that they are continuing a tradition that is steeped in Dorset’s heritage.

“When we saw that very first hut I would think ‘maybe Thomas Hardy saw this when he walked past’,” she said.

“In Far From The Madding Crowd, the shepherd Gabriel Oak lived in one of these huts and I think it is wonderful to be living in the middle of this and a part of it too.”