I spent £1.5MILLION constructing a Grand Designs fashion dwelling on the sting of a cliff… however I do not dwell in it

A family GP built her dream house teetering on the edge of a cliff but after 10 years of ‘blood sweat and tears’ she can’t afford to live there.

Dr Jane Ramsay, 44, has put the impressive glass and concrete property on Air B&B and the price of a week over New Year was an eye-watering £4,200.

But guests are queuing up to stay at the appropriately named Edge House which looks out over Cardigan Bay from its position perched on a clifftop in the windswept village of Aberporth.

One recent visitor was an architect from Seattle and Jane has bookings from Londoners happy to drive 250 miles to live life on the edge.

Some passers-by have voiced their concerns that the four-bedroomed glass-wrapped home could drop into the Atlantic Ocean 200ft below.

But Edge House is anchored into the cliff several metres down and is as steady as a rock, which it needs to be in the face of 80mph winter gales.

It survived a battering of Storm Darragh but left Jane with a £500 window cleaning bill – the reinforced glass was left encrusted with sand, salt and even seaweed blown up from the 20ft waves crashing below.

Jane said: ‘We weren’t here at the time but the guests who had booked it filmed the waves crashing over the cliffs and the BBC used the film to show the effects of Storm Darragh.

‘On the day of the storm the waves were breaking and the spray was coming over the house.

‘People say you’re going to end up in the sea next year but I’m not worried. All the experts we consulted said there was no chance of that.

‘I feel very safe here, there has been no erosion here for years, we’re not going to get washed away.’

Jane, a GP in Cardiff, spent £1.5m building the upside down house on the site of a former ice cream parlour in Aberporth. The glass alone was £100,000 and when one pane shattered during construction it cost another £15,000 which wasn’t in the budget.

As a child Jane and her family spent their summer holidays in a six-berth caravan half a mile up the coast.

She and her five brothers would often buy a raspberry ripple cone from the ice cream shop she’s converted into an award-winning Grand Designs style home.

Jane bought the site by chance. In 2012 she mentioned to a friend that she was hoping to buy property in Cardiganshire.

She said: ‘My friend said she knew someone who might be selling a place, I couldn’t believe it when I discovered it used to be the ice cream parlour where I went as a child.’

She was single at the time and her idea was to build a house that could be used as an escape for her father, retired teacher Peter Ramsay, and her five brothers.

But Jane’s circumstances changed dramatically, she met her partner, log burner retailer Neil Manfield, 45, and the couple now have three children aged seven, five and three.

Planning permission was granted because the house sits on the footprint of the original house.

The company who constructed the concrete frame of the building dropped out of the project then Jane ran out of funds.

Jane said: ‘It happened a few times. We had to stop but we learned to accept it. You set your next target and you work towards that.

‘We would do something. Stop, build the money back up and go again.’

It meant Edge House was put on hold while she built up a new pot of cash to complete the next stage of her ideal home.

Jane said: ‘There was blood sweat and tears, lots of tears. It was a very stressful time but I always knew we’d get the job done.

‘I was lucky to meet Neil who is very hands-on and he did a lot of the interior work, breaking his wrist in the process.’

The couple lost count of the number of times they made the 200-mile trip from their home in Cardiff to oversee workmen and carry out the jobs they could do themselves.

Jane praised the design work and encouragement she received from architects Hyde + Hyde who meticulously followed her brief of making the most of the beach and ocean views.

She was stunned when the architects suggested painting the entire interior black – floors, walls and ceiling, the lot.

Jane said: ‘I wasn’t sure about that but it was such a clever idea – it means there is nothing on the interior to distract you from the views.

‘When you go upstairs to the living areas you are hit by this incredible view of the sea and cliffs.

‘The black interior works wonderfully well even if it shows all the dust and is a bit of a nightmare to keep clean.’

There were times when Jane was so cash-strapped she told the architects she was thinking of using MDF in one of the three bathrooms instead of a corrugated metal wall as laid down in the original plans.

Jane said: ‘The architect said the first thing people would do when they go into the bathroom is touch the wall expecting it to be metal. Anything other than metal would not be authentic, it wouldn’t feel right.

‘So we didn’t compromise, instead we paused until we had the money to do the job properly. It took us almost 10 years but that was the right thing to do.’

Jane and Neil slept on mattresses on the floor alongside their three children as the project was coming to an end.

When it was finished in November 2023 the family was able to stay without having any jobs to do.

Jane said: ‘The main thing was coming and not having jobs to do. The first time we came and did nothing it was bliss. We sat and played board games, we gave in and got a hot tub so the kids were beside themselves.

‘It gave us chance to reflect on how hard we had worked on it. To be here and do nothing was a real treat. We were able to appreciate how lucky we are.’

The couple and their family can see dolphins and seals in Cardigan Bay, nesting sparrowhawks on the nearby cliffs and on a clear day they can see the North Wales coastline.

The house which won a Royal Institute of British Architects award has been valued at £1.5m – roughly the same as the couple put into it.

Jane’s only regret is that, for now, she and her family won’t be able to spend as much time in it as they hoped.

She said: ‘We have to recoup some of the money we spent – we will only be able to come when it’s not booked.

‘But I’m proud of what we have achieved here. I don’t think the little girl who used to come here to buy an ice cream all those years ago would ever dream she would be sitting in somewhere like this.’