Our self-build story: ‘Living there showed us what we didn’t want. We wanted light, space and views. We wanted to look out at fields, not parked cars’

Our self-build story: ‘Living there showed us what we didn’t want. We wanted light, space and views. We wanted to look out at fields, not parked cars’

When Jessica and Derek Browne first encountered the site that would become their home, it was winter and the landscape was under a light fall of snow. The land sits on a sharp bend on a rural Meath road, a place you arrive at suddenly, where the view opens and then settles. It was anchored by an old cottage, long abandoned and overtaken by ivy.