Some of Malcolm Iredale’s earliest memories are of helping renovate houses.


Growing up near Penrith, he began learning the family trade aged nine alongside his father Keith. “We would work on doing up family dwellings and I remember helping my father with the joinery and block and brick work,” he said.
He continued to pursue construction as an adult, qualifying as an architect and working for a practice in Bradford before setting up his own business 25 years ago.

Today, Carrock Homes - which is named after the fell which can be seen from its offices in Mungrisdale - carries out high-end refurbishments and restoration of many heritage buildings, as well as its own small developments in north Cumbria.
Keith still takes an active interest and Malcolm’s wife Gillian is also a director of the business, which employs 12 people.

“In the beginning we found that a lot of our architectural clients were requiring good builders to do their work,” said Malcolm.

“We employed one or two to do small projects which got bigger and bigger and now we almost exclusively deal with our own architectural clients. We offer a full design and build service dealing with high quality renovations and refurbishments in North Cumbria. We’re working with the type of people who are focused on the quality of service that you give them. They trust us implicitly to do the work and manage it and communicate with them and do a good job and we try to give them the highest quality work that we can.”

(Image: Carrock Homes)
Its projects include barn conversions, characterful extensions and new builds across the region, requiring skills such as heritage stonework or hand crafting original oak beams.
The company’s high-quality work earned it the award for the best example of sustainable development at the Federation of Master Builders National Master Builder Awards in 2021.
However, finding those with the skills required to carry out such careful work is not easy.
“We’ve changed the employment package considerably to try to attract people from elsewhere to come into the county, things like working towards a four-day a week,” said Malcolm.

The business also offers health and wellbeing packages and covers some of the fuel costs of its employees.