Building on a flood plain: how to go with the flow

Rather than hold back the river, this Oxfordshire home allows water to flow under the house and drain back out again

Joanna and Martin O'Callaghan, 58-year-old chartered surveyors, married for 30 years and parents of two, are showing strong signs of being middle-aged hipsters. The living room wall of their newly built larch-clad house in the south Oxfordshire village of Sutton Courtenay is lined with original 1980s singles by Prince, the Jam, the Smiths, the Specials and Grace Jones. A woodburner roars away in the centre of a vogueishly "zoned" rather than fully open-plan living space. Taking pride of place in the garden are neat stacks of copper beech logs - the result of a new wood-chopping hobby.

The biggest problem was that it was a zone-three flood plain - but that is also what makes the site so alluring

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