Ben   
Born in London – 09.04.46 
1957 – 1965 Brentwood School, Brentwood, Essex.
1965 – 1969 University of Salford, obtained a degree in civil engineering
1969 – year out travelling overland to India and the far east
1970 – 1974 training and working as a soils engineer for Wimpey Laboratoiries Ltd in London, involved in site investigations for big engineering projects.
1972 got married to Pamela.
1974 – 1975 working for the Co-op delivering milk in the villages around Colchester.  
 

“This was a huge turning point in my life, my wife Pam had our first child, Sam, and I quit my profession as a soils engineer.

The last job I had as an engineer was a feasibility study for an armaments factory in Isfahan, for the Iranien government in the time of the Shah. I was actually so disgusted to be participating in a project, which had it been built, would have annihilated several ancient villages, that on arriving back in London, I gave in my notice. On the same day, I was offered the job of supervising the site work for a site investigation for a section of the main oil Pipeline for BP in Alaska. I refused on principle; we quit London, bought a house in Colchester, and I got a job delivering milk.”
1975 – until now bought land in the Languedoc region of the south of France and became smallholders. 
 

“This was again a huge turning point; things didn’t work out in Colchester, and we decided we wanted to ‘go back to the land’ and try to be ‘self sufficient’, We wanted to bring up our children in a healthy, clean environment and produce our own food. We didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t hope to buy a farm in England. The Languedoc was much cheaper, but even there we couldn’t afford a farm, so we just bought land.

We found a beautiful land of several hectares, south facing, with a spring of pure water, an oak forest and abandoned terraces, sheltered from the north wind by the plateau of Larzac.

We were very naïve, had hardly any money left but a lot of courage, so we just bought a few gardening and building tools, and just started.

We are still here 35 years later, and here is a brief sequence of events during this time.”
1975 – 1990 running a smallholding, producing and selling fruit, vegetables and goats cheese. Everything was organically grown, but the various controlling organizations like Ecocert didn’t exist at the time. 
1975 – 1995 at the same time, building the house , animal houses and workshop. 
1978 – 2000 parallel to this, working as an artisan, renovating and building houses and extensions, specializing in stone construction. 
2000 – co-founding, with my three sons, a natural building company named “sarl Nénuphar”. 
2000 – 2010 working as co-director of sarl Nénuphar, renovating and building new structures using eco-friendly materials and methods, and designing and building natural swimming pools. 
2004 starting to make sculptures in wood. 
2009 starting to make sculptures in stone. 
  “I went to see a sculpture exhibition of a friend of mine, Guy Taplin, in Cork street, London. I was so inspired by his work that when I got back to France, I just started, it was as though I couldn’t help myself.

It seemed that sculpture was a natural progression from building work. I’d always tried to bring ‘art’ into building, it was not just a job; I had always thought that if you are going to build something that’s going to last a long time, it should meld in, or compliment the environment. My training in sculpture came from years of cutting stone in the building trade.”