Richard Hammond: ‘My ridiculous house has bits of castle nailed to it’

I’ve ended up travelling the world with my television work, but I always feel like there’s a piece of elastic attached to me as I leave home. After 25 years of living out of a suitcase, I’ve come home and that’s where my head is. I’ve sat in rainforests, on glaciers, in deserts, and I don’t ever fully go where I’m going. Part of me is always still at home.
Our house, which is ridiculous, is sort of a castle in Herefordshire and dates from 1490. I’ll never forget taking the girls, who were eight and five at the time, to look at it, 15 years ago. We drove past the little moat outside with the turrets round and we said, “Would you like to live in it?” They went berserk at the idea of living in a little castle.
It’s not grand and it isn’t really a castle. It’s just a house, with some bits of castle nailed to it. It’s not a particularly massive house.
Thirty acres. We grow hay on it for the horses and there’s an area we call the Dingle, a lovely woodland area, which we’ve extensively reworked. We planted it with trees about 12 years ago. We’ve got three dogs and two cats. At one point, we were up to seven dogs and six cats. We also have three horses, a miniature donkey and three goats.
I grew up in Birmingham, in suburban Shirley. I drove past my childhood home a few years ago and thought, “If the girls are being spoilt brats — which they never are — I’ll show them.” When I got there, the place was absolutely lovely — charming suburbia — with cherry trees and tarmac drives flecked with white bits. It wasn’t what I’d built it up to be in my head.
My family home in Palace Road, in Ripon, North Yorkshire, which is where we moved up from Birmingham. It was a grand, old, terraced townhouse. Mum would be cooking the Sunday roast, for the five or sometimes nine of us, and we’d have mates around. My grandmother lived there with us. We loved that place.
I grew up as the eldest of three sons, so I lived in a very male-dominated household. Now I have my wife, Mindy, and two daughters, who are 23 and 21. Sometimes I think they’re quite glad when I’m out of the way with my motorbikes.
I think there are about 27 motorcycles, dating from the 1920s to today. And cars? I genuinely don’t know, but I’m guessing around 20, including a Jaguar XK 120, a Jensen Interceptor, a ’62 E-type roadster coupe, which are all awaiting restoration.
There’s a picture of us [Hammond, with Jeremy Clarkson and James May] doing a live show in front of 60,000 people in the Polish National Stadium in Warsaw. I’ve got the pair of gloves in a frame that I had when we did the polar trip.
I’ve got a poster featuring the dragster that I crashed in, and a Lego model of the dragster that Lego gave me. I’ve got the original crash helmet I wore. Over the table upstairs, where I build Airfix models, I’ve got the tattered shirt that I was wearing. It’s on a hanger on a nail on the wall. It’s not blood-soaked but it is ripped to bits because the emergency services cut it off me. I do look at it sometimes and think, “Phew, that was lucky.”
He’s actually a very good guest. Eee’s well brung up, ain’t he? I do have some colourful friends staying if we have some big gathering here. It was my youngest daughter’s 21st last weekend so the whole place took some recovering from that.
When the girls were younger, they could swear with us and we could with them. I realised early on that if I want them to be themselves with me, and to be honest with me and to stay connected with us, they need to see the real us. As a result, I’ve never seen them inappropriately dropping the F-bomb, because the sting was taken out of it.
Me, but I just remembered I forgot. They should have been put out last night, so I’m off to check if Mindy put them out instead.
Richard Hammond’s Workshop streams from Monday, August 26 on Discovery+