For decades, Bedford Loft, a tiny 200-year-old building, at 7 Clarence Street in the town of St George, sat locked up, its only occupants a family of cats in the roof.In 2010, what wasn’t about to be gobbled down by a ficus tree, was in danger of collapse.Bedford Loft sat on a piece of property owned by the Jennings family, and accompanied a larger nearby house, Bedford Cottage.One night, co-owner Ralph Jennings’ son-in-law, Philip Seaman, an architect at Cooper Gardner architectural firm, woke up with a plan for restoration in his head.A year later, the house-eating ficus tree is gone, the cats have been evicted and Bedford Loft is now a beautifully restored tourist accommodation.This month, Mr Seaman won the architectural award from the Bermuda National Trust for his work on the building.The Royal Gazette recently met with Mr Seaman to talk about the restoration process.“At one point the building was a shop for selling linen and knitting supplies,” said Mr Seaman. “It is owned by my wife Raphaela’s family. Raphaela’s great grandmother, Caroline Jennings, owned the house. She was married to a Joshua Jennings who came to Bermuda from England. It is a grade three listed building. It was derelict and had been vacant and locked up for close to 30 years.”The building was further damaged in 2003 during Hurricane Fabian. Last year it looked on the verge of collapsing entirely, before Mr Seaman came up with his renovation plan. He met with Richard Lowry, heritage officer at the Department of Planning, to talk about it.“I thought I would test the waters to see if they would consider approving it,” said Mr Seaman. “He secured approval from the St George’s Historical Society, (Bedford Loft’s neighbours), and the Historic Buildings Advisory Committee. The application was submitted and approved.”Mr Seaman said the project was not inexpensive to undertake. One expense included using wooden windows and doors during the renovation process to keep it near its historical character. These doors and windows will continuously require a high level of maintenance to keep them from deteriorating, but Mr Seaman said, “it is a labour of love”.“Some of the challenges we found with this building was that half of it was sitting on soil,” said Mr Seaman.“There was no foundation. Also, part of the building had been overtaken by a ficus tree. Getting rid of the ficus tree was quite a stage.”The renovation process actually allowed historians to learn a little more about Clarence Street. The old building appeared to have been constructed on top of a right of way, directly across from White Hall which underwent a formal archaeological excavation last year.“Archeologists came in and found only modern pottery,” said Mr Seaman. “They did find that the basement was full of sheep bones. We took away at least a truckload of sheep bones.”This seemed to tie in with discoveries of cow bones found last summer on the White Hall property.“I had a wood floor,” said Mr Seaman. “There was about six inches of soil under it. We removed that and found two inches of concrete covering what was below the soil. We broke through the concrete, and the first shovelful we had sheep bones. At one point we jokingly referred to it as the ‘sheep crypt’.”Mr Seaman was abroad when the sheep bones were first found. He got a frantic telephone call from the contractor to call police because “human remains” had been found in the basement. Frightened, he telephoned the Bermuda police, the coroner, the Planning Department and everyone else he could think of. He was later quite “sheepish” when he learned the bones were of the mutton variety.“Even today we still find sheep bones around the property,” said Mr Seaman. “The original site plan shows a strange wall structure where there were two walls close together. It was almost like a corral. The other big find was a church buried in the yard. That was the biggest discovery. We were excavating to install new cesspits, when we cut through some steps and discovered a church had been there in the front yard.”He consulted National Museum of Bermuda executive director Edward Harris, and learned that the property was sold to a group to build a church in 1820. The church was called The Independent Chapel of St George and was built by a group of “Protestant dissenters” led by a Rev H Cross. A famous Baptist priest called Rev Duncan Dunbar was at the dedication in 1821. The pastor died in 1824 and the congregation split.“Doing an archeological examination of the church will be the next stage,” said Mr Seaman.In order to make the space in Bedford Loft into a habital living area, they first had to figure out how to enlarge it. The square footage was less than what was required for a studio apartment. It was 10.5ft by 18ft inside. The minimum size for a studio is 275sq ft.“I lifted the floor 2.5ft and removed the tie beams,” said Mr Seaman. “We excavated down 4.5ft. We converted an existing single-storey building into a two-storey by going halfway up and also down.”There was no water tank, gutters or wiring of any kind in the building, and there were strange openings in the gables that had been bricked over. It appeared that straw had once been kept in the rafters and raised up using a winch system. Mr Seaman put in an above-ground tank to look authentic, and also provide extra water to the nearby cottage. Doing excavation work for the water tank was tricky because there was only a 5ft opening so they couldn’t get a large excavator behind the building. They hired Bells Excavating Service owned by Victor Bell. He drove his little machines right through the building and came up the other side and excavated the water tank.“One of the requirements by the Planning Department was that the front facade remain unaltered,” said Mr Seaman. “So I blocked in the opening and created a false door. The door has all the hardware such as a brass doorknob. The wooden windows and doors were constructed by Jose Almeida of Fine Woodworking. They were constructed of Spanish cedar, because Bermuda cedar was difficult to obtain, and Virginia cedar is too soft.“The initial intent was to paint the exterior of the wood work and varnish the inside, but once the windows arrived and they looked so nice, we decided to leave everything varnished,” he said.Inside, everything looks modern, fresh and clean. Bedford Loft now has a lower level with a kitchen, dining and living room. On the midway landing there is a bathroom and laundry. On the upper level is a sleeping loft. Mr Seaman also created a private patio out back and a more public patio in front. He believes that the renovations have probably doubled the value of the property.“I have worked on several buildings, but this was my first 200-year-old building,” said Mr Seaman. “I would absolutely love to work on more. I think I am addicted now. I love the history. These old buildings seem to talk to you.”