Inside Suffolk's £1m 'sliding home' where the roof and walls shift with the seasons

A "sliding home" which is encased in a moving wooden shell has stunned house hunters in a rural village.

Clover Forge Farm, in Huntingfield near Halesworth in Suffolk, was built to adapt to the changing seasons.

It has a battery-operated wooden roof and casing, which slides to expose the glass-fronted structure underneath in summer and shelter it in winter.

But now the owner of the moving house is... moving house - and the dream property he built in 2009 is on the market for £1m.

The house is covered by moving wooden casing which can expose the glass structure underneath. Credit: ITV News Anglia

Ross Russell said: "You only build one house in your life. There's no point in building something dull and boring. You've got to build something interesting.

"I don't mind that people think I'm a bit odd - it just comes with the territory."

It's more than 15 years since Ross enlisted the help of an old school friend, award-winning architect Professor Alex de Rijke, to design him something "a bit adventurous".

Prof de Rijke has since gone on to win the prestigious Stirling Prize for architecture in 2017.

"Houses are so often static objects with no real differences," he said. "Not even seasonal differences."

"This house is so full of variety and change. It's like owning a really wonderful Italian car or motorbike. It will give you astonishing pleasure as long as you look after it."

The home comes with more than three acres of land and has its own wind turbine, heat pump and solar panels.

An aerial view of the 'sliding house' in Suffolk - where the bathroom can become open-air. Credit: ITV News Anglia

The wooden structure can be moved into various positions to control the temperature. The bathroom can even become "open air".

Mr Russell said: "When people come to visit we say 'what do you want to do when you're visiting us in Suffolk?'

"We're expecting they're going to say Southwold or Aldeburgh or something but, almost invariably, the answer is 'can we have a bath?'

"Pulling back the roof, having a bath in the open air looking up at the sky - you just can't beat it."

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