Grand Designs host makes emotional return to first ever house 25 years later with special update

Kevin McCloud has made a poignant return to the first ever house featured on Grand Designs.

The popular show has been running for 25 years, with its inaugural episode airing in 1999. To commemorate the conclusion of the 25th series, Kevin revisited the coastal town of Newhaven in East Sussex, where he met up with Tim and Jules.

The couple, who owned a paragliding school and were parents to four daughters, were eager to complete their clifftop home within three months as Jules was expecting their child.

However, the construction process was fraught with difficulties, including unforeseen costs of materials and groundwork complications. The assembly of their timber frame kit also posed challenges.

Kevin last visited the house in 1999 when their child Tiger had arrived, but the house was still far from finished. He returned 25 years later to find that while some things had changed significantly, others remained remarkably similar, reports .

Upon his recent visit, Kevin was surprised to discover that the house was almost exactly as it was all those years ago. While there were major changes to the outdoor space - with maturing trees almost forming a forest around the property - the house itself had seen minimal alterations, with only a few additional roof tiles added to combat the elements.

Tim and Jules had expanded their living space by attaching a conservatory for growing plants and basking in the sunlight during summer. Kevin caught up with Tiger, now an adventurous 25 year old paraglider like his parents.

In a heartfelt segment, Kevin spoke with Tiger, who excitedly shared that he purchased a plot of land to realise his own Grand Designs vision while also teaching paragliding.

When quizzed about the most significant transformation the show has undergone over 25 years, Kevin pinpointed a notable shift saying, "I think what's happened is - the numbers have changed. The dynamic of the market has changed, partly because of Covid and partly because of ," Kevin noted the impact on project timelines and budgets: "Projects we get in are often very very slow to get off the ground, much slower than they used to be. Prices have gone up; that doesn't help. The big hurdle - the success of projects now - is how long they take to build. It's tricky for us to follow. There's been a really big sticky patch, coming out of Covid where projects were thin on the ground. But now we've got a backlog of stuff that was going to be three years ago but still isn't finished."