THE BIDE, DORSET

The idea for the Bide was conceived when its makers, Caroline Jenkinson and Scott Lewis, saw an exhibition of architecturally reimagined trailers at the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin. “They’d managed to build some cool, functional little buildings for very little cash, and we thought we could probably do this,” recalls Caroline.

The couple, an architect and a furniture buyer, had been considering moving out of the city for some time. “We struggled to see how we could really sustain a future in London, financially, without living in a houseshare,” says Scott, who missed the countryside of his native Dorset.

As a way of forging a new life for themselves, they decided to pool their skills and build the cabin of their dreams – “something crafted, quite high-end but small-scale, with the luxuries of a good hotel but in a small space”, says Scott – and hoped they would be able to convince someone to lend them a field to house it. “We knew we’d never have the money to buy land,” he adds.

The rust-red Bide – an old Dorset word meaning “to dwell” – is a contemporary masterpiece in miniature: clean, spare, environmentally friendly. Together they hand-built the cabin using low-carbon materials, selected sustainable products, designed furniture, dug and planted, steamrolled and plumbed.

Now the farmer who accommodates the Bide is chivvying them to build another. What will that look like? “Some sort of cabin on stilts in the trees,” says Scott.

The Bide, sleeps two (and a baby), from £200 for two nights; thebide.com