ANGELO MASTROPIETRO: My life before I became a cave man was really quite

different.

00:11

COMM: The pressures of modern life mean that most of us have probably dreamt at

one time or another of fleeing to the hills.

00:20

COMM: But Angelo Mastropietro has made his hermit dream a reality by spending

over £160,000 making a house out of the cave.

00:35

ANGELO MASTROPIETRO: I am 38 years old and I’m a caveman.

00:41

ANGELO MASTROPIETRO: You know, I love a challenge. I mean, I guess

coincidentally my surname actually means Master of the Stone. So you know, maybe

it’s kind of in my blood.

00:51

COMM: He did most of the work himself, even more incredible when you consider the

only a few years ago, the businessman was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

01:01

ANGELO MASTROPIETRO: I had a lapse that left me paralysed essentially which

was really the catalyst to make a review where I was at, where I was going and

obviously my lifestyle. The rock house kinda came along, you know without a shadow

of a doubt. I was as passionate about that as I was about setting up my company.

01:25

COMM: The 250­million­year­old sandstone cliffs near the Wyre Forest are said to

have inspired Tolkien when he was writing Lord of the Rings. It was here that Angelo

spent £62,000 on this 700­year­old abandoned cave which he would turn into his very

own hobbit hole. With a renovation budget of £100,000, Angelo set about doing most

of the physically demanding work himself.

01:52

ANGELO MASTROPIETRO: In the end, I had spent somewhere round about 1000

hours basically breaking rock, cutting rock, burrowing rock. You know, total

somewhere around about 70 or 80 tons of rubble that I excavated out of this rock

house by hand, and really proof of that is the whole of the terrace outside, is literally

100 square meters of terrace out there. None of that was there when I started. So that

is all of the rubble that I have excavated.

02:21

COMM: The completed rock house’s impressive features are anything but Stone Age.

It even has Wi­Fi.

02:28

ANGELO MASTROPIETRO: One of the things that’s kind of impressive about the

restoration is really what you don’t see. We’ve put ventilation channels in the floor.

One of the things that I was quite passionate about doing was trying to retain the

integrity of the rock house by not cutting the many casings into the hard wires. This

could originally have been the bedroom. These little nooks either side which I have lit

up to give the illusion of kind of light channels kind of casting light down.

03:04

ANGELO MASTROPIETRO: Coming through into the shower room. So we have got

under floor heating in here. One of the biggest kind of engineering feat. This is where I

have excavated this kind of shelf and then subsequently I dug down and created this

shower.

03:21

COMM: All of the fresh running water, comes from Angelo’s own borehole which he

sank 18 metres into the ground.

03:28

ANGELO MASTROPIETRO: This was originally two separate spaces. So the first task

was that I’ve excavated this doorway. Start off at the top and literally cut down, repeat

the process so that the whole of the area that you are looking to remove was set into

stripes, and then remove the sections of rock, and just literally repeat, repeat, repeat.

11 days later, it kind of made my way through.

04:05

COMM: Although the cave house, was originally built as a holiday let, Angelo still

harbours the ambition of one day living full time in his unusual property.

04:18

ANGELO MASTROPIETRO: When you’re actually here, when you see it in person,

you get a feel for the place. Literally had people in tears. You know, I feel incredibly

happy, very proud, very honoured. Yeah, it’s been a very inspiring chapter I think.