Byline: Tim Dawson

Tim Dawson reports on a house that has taken shape out of one woman's ecological dream

The likely condition of a house 2,000 years hence is not one of the selling points cited by most builders. If it were, it would probably be backed by a promise that their handiwork would still be as good as it is today. Not so Danielle Grunberg.

"It will be completely gone in 2,000 years time," she says of the house she has built on the hill above Ullapool. "Nothing will be left. No ugly mess. No timbers defying biodegradation because of the way they were treated. Everything about the house has been thought about on a cradle-to-grave basis."

Grunberg rigidly applied her ecological ethics to her house design - and that meant buying building materials that would rot.

A veteran anti-nuclear campaigner and ecological activist, Grunberg fell in love with the plot of land first. High above the town, her patch of turf was occupied long before Ullapool was developed by the British Fisheries Society in 1788.

Originally the site of a tiny smallholding, known as Annabel's croft, it was farmed until the late 1940s when its last inhabitants left. "I don't know what kept making me want to go and look at this plot of land," says Grunberg. "But, eventually, I realised I would have to build a house there."

Over the past 20 years, the hill that rises behind Ullapool has been steadily plotted and developed. Almost...