House & Helicopter

Georgina Hunter-Jones

Jeremy Paxton, designer and builder, with his Hughes 500 helicopter G-ORRR sitting on his helipad above the pool at his house Ballihoo. Since the photograph was taken, Jeremy has sold the helicopter (which once also belonged to Barry Sheene, his brother-in-law) and bought G-MRRR, and the helipad has been appropriated by his children as a sundeck!

Jeremy designed and built Ballihoo himself. He says: "I design and build funky houses that offer great lifestyle - Ballihoo I built five years ago and it has won three RIBA awards and Urban house of the year. It is a modernist interpretation of the Thames boathouse and the Thames 'runs through it' - living is 10 metres above the river and the house strides out over the Thames by 4 metres - the only one to do so. I can, and do, dive from my bedroom into the Thames. The house has six beds, six baths, a spa, pool, yoga deck, three sun decks and the biggest sunbed in Europe at 6m x 5m - big enough to sleep ten!"

His new helicopter is a 'spanking' MD500E G-MRRR (named after his children Max, Red, Ruby and Rory) with an Alison C20R, fully...