Graham Wildin built his luxury man cave in his back garden in Cinderford - without planning permission
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00:00I'm Graham Wheldon. I live in Cinderford in the Forest of Dean.
00:03I've lived in the same house here for 32 years and I've lived in Forestry all my life.
00:07Forestry is a great place to live.
00:09Unfortunately, there aren't many things to do in the Forest of Dean.
00:12What we're trying to do here is develop something for myself and my family and generations to come
00:17that provides sports and activity for the family and for friends and people like that.
00:22So it's got things for the children. It's got a giant doll's house on three floors, like 25 foot by 22 foot.
00:28It's got garages for the children's electric cars underneath.
00:31It's got a play area on the first floor.
00:33And on the next floor, it's got a train set, 15 foot by 9 foot train set.
00:37And all that can be viewed from the viewing galleries,
00:40so that us as parents and grandparents can keep an eye on what the children are doing.
00:43We also have a large soft play area that again is about 25 foot square, I guess, and 18 foot high.
00:49And just general play areas for the children.
00:52For the adults and the children, we've got the two tent and bowling alleys.
00:56We've got the sports hall that triples up for badminton, small tennis, table tennis, indoor football, basketball, disco, whatever.
01:07We have the squash court. I'm a national squash referee, a qualified coach.
01:11And what I hope to do, as I've coached my children, is to coach my grandchildren.
01:15And hopefully they'll become better players than us as the years go by.
01:20Upstairs on the one area, we have also a general area, which is like a leisure area,
01:25where from there you can oversee the sports hall and the children's play areas, and also look down to the squash court.
01:30There's a kitchen there, and also Xbox games to play, chess, Monopoly games, that sort of thing.
01:37Above the tent and bowling alley, we also have two rooms.
01:41The one is set out like a small casino with three tables and a bar, etc.
01:45And then we have the theatre room that's set out for a cinema, for a theatre as well, so the children can do their own little plays.
01:53And also as an indoor golf playing area as well.
01:57There's 16 nice leather seats, so it's nice to watch the films.
02:02And overall, it's just a great place to be. It's a fun area. It's just a fun house, really.
02:06I spend lots of time with my children and my grandchildren, and they're over every weekend.
02:10Outside already, we've got lots of things for them to do with trampolines, slides, big Wendy houses, a theatre, sorry, an amusement arcade, etc.
02:19So there's lots of things for them to do outside, but obviously during the winter when the weather's bad, we need to do something inside.
02:24And I've also tried to develop something that as the children get older, they needn't stop coming here.
02:29Whatever age they are, they can come and play, and they can bring their friends to play as well.
02:33It's all part of the enjoyment of the house, in fact.
02:36And with the house, obviously we've lived here for 32 years, and it's evolved over that period.
02:41So I've got a car showroom, I've got an oriental eating house and garden.
02:46We've got a hot tub room, etc. All those things are to enjoy the house, basically.
02:51We very rarely go out to different places because we don't need to. We've got everything here, really.
02:55People come to see us rather than us go out.
02:58People say, like, are there any good restaurants around? We say we don't go to many because people come to us.
03:02So it's great fun, yeah.
03:04I do have a favourite room. The favourite thing is going to be seeing the children enjoy themselves.
03:08Every weekend, virtually, my five grandchildren get together here at the house.
03:13Whether it's playing in the house, if it's wet, we play hide-and-seek or whatever we do.
03:17Or we play outside, but it's just watching their enjoyment. It's great.
03:20And this is going to add to their enjoyment.
03:22That's what you want to do for your children and grandchildren if you can, isn't it?
03:25People do that in different ways. I'm lucky enough that I can do it this way.
03:28Where other people, unfortunately, aren't quite as fortunate, maybe.