Salvage Hunter Drew Pritchard's English 'gamble' and how disaster took him back to North Wales

Drew is excited by the project - but finds it daunting too
-Credit:Rory Lindsay/Quest TV


Reclamation guru Drew Pritchard had only owned his new property for a day when disaster struck. The Salvage Hunter star had sold almost everything he had to buy his dream home but it needed massive amounts of work to restore its period look.

Having closed his antiques store in Conwy in May 2022, and sold his nearby cottage, he could just about afford to buy a Grade I listed Georgian townhouse in the historic Somerset city of Bath. But as the property was in a bad way, having been converted into “botched” flats, it was a major roll of the dice.

“It’s a big, daunting prospect, the whole thing, it really is,” he says at the start of a special Salvage Hunter series called Georgian House Restoration on Quest. “I must be mad. I’m gambling the lot.”

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His worst fears were realised almost as soon as he’d got the keys to the 232-year-old property. Having paid more than £1.5m for the five-storey building, he walked in to find the place flooded. It was a setback that would cost him more money and take him back to his native North Wales.

Pointing to a collapsed ceiling, he tells the programme: “This happened the day after I bought the place. I came back the next morning all excited to look at the place again. There was water pouring through the ceiling and this whole floor was flooded.”

It meant he would have to scaffold the entire building, from front to back, and take off the roof. “How on earth am I going to be able to afford to do this?” he wonders.

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More bad news came with the discovery of a bowing and cracking wall hidden behind panelling in the basement. It left Drew needing emergency consent from the local council to bolt huge steel struts to the floor to support the failing wall. Sign up now for the latest news on the North Wales Live Whatsapp community

Drew's 'dream' home is on historic St James' Square in Bath
Drew's 'dream' home is on historic St James' Square in Bath -Credit:Google

“This is bad,” he says of the failing wall. “There’s no way of buttering this up and making it look good. Look (pointing to the struts), there’s metal holding up the house – this wall has come loose from its fixings from the wall behind it.

“This is a big, expensive problem I didn’t expect. Basically the walls got to come down piece by piece and be rebuilt from the bottom up to exactly how it was. Then we’ve got the roof to come off. These are big, big jobs that need doing and it’s where the bulk of the money is going to go.”

Drew bought the house in the summer of 2022 after going to an open viewing and making an offer on the spot. To fund the move, he sold all his North Wales assets. But it left him with little spare for the remedial works – he indicates how much by pinching two fingers together.

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“I’m all in, you know, this is, this is everything,” he says. "I had to sell my shop and two or three derelict buildings I bought to restore. I sold the shop. I had a little rental cottage in Conwy, that’s gone. I had a derelict chapel, that’s gone. I had a piece of land, I sold that off. I’ve sold my lovely old car collection. That’s all gone.

“I’m very, very fortunate to be able to do what I’m doing. But it’s not a never ending supply of money.”

The plan is to strip away partitions erected in the early 1970s. Modern bathroom and kitchen fittings will be removed. All new doorways built for the flats will be bricked up to restore the original floorplan.

A dining room and kitchen will be on the ground floor. On the first floor there will be a reception room and a study, from which Drew will run his antiques business. Above this will be his bedroom room and dressing room with an “enormous” bathroom, plus a shower room. Three more guest bedrooms will be on the top floor, with an additional bathroom.

He also needs to replace 22 windows. After decades of neglect, Drew is acutely aware his new home has the potential to be a disaster – but he’s relishing the challenge.

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“It’s a start of a very long, expensive journey,” he sighs. It’s every penny, it’s everything I’ve got is all going into this building. So yeah, it’s a big roll of the dice, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it now.

“This is the house I always dreamed of. It’s mine! It is genuinely exciting. I am, and have been for as long as I can remember, completely obsessed with the Georgian (period) - the most beautiful houses ever built.”

Drew Pritchard and his Georgian House Restoration team. Joining him on the project are master builder Kieran Dixon Squire (second right) and architectural historian Rhys Brooks (far right). Also helping were stone masons Alec Pearce and Jonathan Frost
Drew Pritchard and his Georgian House Restoration team. Joining him on the project are master builder Kieran Dixon Squire (second right) and architectural historian Rhys Brooks (far right). Also helping were stone masons Alec Pearce and Jonathan Frost -Credit:Rory Lindsay/Quest TV

Specialist stone masons were brought in to rebuild the basement wall, costing £5,000. Meanwhile, Drew headed to Gwynedd to find the “best in the world” material he would need for his new roof.

Originally it was laid with Welsh slate. Several decades ago these were replaced with period-incorrect terracotta tiles and Drew was determined to put this right. “So what slate do you put on?” he says. “The best in the world, from North Wales, the Blaenau blue slate.

“I’ve got to do the right thing by the house and for myself, which is to put back what was there. I’m a very proud Welshman and I have to have something to come from Wales, that’s the very best of something – and the slate is – so we’re going to put that back on.”

To renew his roof, Drew needed 1,018 slates. If he’d imported them, he could have brought the cost down to £1,500. Instead he travelled to Blaenau Ffestiniog, buying them for £3.73 each, coming to around £3,950 delivered.

Overseas slate has “nowhere near the quality”, says Drew. “This is the thing with this house, I can’t scrimp. When we do do something, we’ll absolutely make sure we do it the very, very best it can be.”

While in Blaenau, he met Michael Halley of Welsh Slate and was shown the skilled job of slate-splitting. One of Drew's own cut slates is now tacked to his Georgian house.

Six months after getting planning permission, the roof’s £60,000 restoration was completed. Taking a look, Drew was bowled over by the results. “I don’t know if a roof can be beautiful, but that, that is beautiful,” he says.

“It’s a thing of beauty. They’ve just done such a great job. We’ve sourced it really ethically – we’ve got it from North Wales, it’s handmade, it’s employing loads of guys and it’s keeping a tradition and a skill base in that area that will continue. This is a milestone. It’s as good as it gets. It could not be better one iota. Brilliant.”

Although a trained expert in glass windows, Drew knew he would need to lean on the expertise of others for his “mammoth” restoration project. So he teamed up with master builder Kieran Dixon Squire and architectural historian Rhys Brooks.

Between them, they discovered some fascinating surprises while emergency structural repairs were underway in the basement. One, behind a modern stud wall, was a small storage room under the staircase. More exciting was the tiny shaft of light coming from a brick wall – when this came down, a room leading under the garden was revealed.

Drew believes it to be an old cold room – a Georgian fridge for meats and cheeses. “The house is giving up some secrets,” he says. “We’re finding rooms, not massive ballrooms, but we’re finding rooms here.

“I mean, what’s more exciting than finding rooms in a house you bought? Brilliant! It’s like Scooby-doo. It’s great.” Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox

The new series of Salvage Hunter: Georgian House Restoration is being shown on Wednesdays at 10pm, starting February 5, on Quest TV (Channel 12 on Freeview).

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