The Oxford graduate who's lived for 13 years in a mud hut - and she really is away with the fairies

People don't come a great deal grander than Emma Orbach. The daughter of a wealthy musician, she grew up in what she describes as 'a rundown castle'.
Her parents sent her to one of the most expensive boarding schools in the country, where she was taught alongside the daughters of two foreign presidents.
Then it was off to Oxford to finish her education with a degree in Chinese. After such an auspicious start, Emma could have done virtually anything she'd wanted with her life.
So why choose this? For the past 13 years, Emma, a 58-year-old mother of three, has lived in a round mud hut at the bottom of a scrappy field in rural west Wales, a 15-minute walk from the nearest road. 

On the day I visit, the drizzle is utterly depressing and my wellington boots and trousers are caked in mud. Though it's 10.30 am, it's horribly gloomy inside because Emma does not have electricity. More brutally still, she does not have running water.
It's 13ft from one side to the other, with no lamp, no TV or radio, no basin and no loo. As the rest of us worry about mortgages and buy expensive gadgets that promise to make our lives easier, on the lower slopes of Mount Carningli in Pembrokeshire, Emma has turned the clock back to an almost medieval existence.
Though her former husband, Julian, and their adult children live in proper houses - in cities, believe it or not - Emma is happy taking water from a stream, chopping wood, tending her vegetables and looking after her seven chickens, three goats, two horses and two cats … and then coming back to this extraordinary place she calls home. 

Emma's toilet

 

Indeed, her mud hut is even registered for council tax. I say 'mud' hut, but that's being polite.
'It's basically mud with horse**** mixed in,' says Emma, as she boils a kettle on the open fire that serves as her cooker.
'The walls are made of straw, then covered over with my secret recipe plaster. The horse**** makes the mixture really smooth. I enjoyed putting it on with my bare hands - though it smells very strongly until it dries out.'
However, she'd far rather suffer a blast of horse manure than a lungful of aftershave, she says. 'The things people cover themselves in are ghastly, while "natural" doesn't bother me.'
So what has driven her to make such an extreme life choice? And how does she cope without the two basic necessities of modern life: electricity and running water? I wonder if it's an act of rebellion against a strict upbringing?
But no. Emma admits to having had 'quite an eccentric' childhood, with music taking precedence over academic study.
'After breakfast, there'd be a race to see who could get to the piano first.
'My parents were quite unusual. My father was a conscientious objector in the war. After he died, my mother worked as a librarian at the art college in the village at the top of this field. She's 82 and still lives in the village.

'As children, we weren't encouraged to focus on material things. I was usually out in the fields - I always loved flowers and nature. My brother and I would sometimes eat our meals up trees. It was idyllic. I had real freedom.
'I am very grateful that there was never a sense that you did something just because everyone else did it. I've carried on that principle.
'Today, everything about my life makes me happy. Waking up in a wood and looking at the beautiful trees; seeing the stars and the moon; having a really close relationship with the natural world.'
Emma lives like this because she wants a 'low-impact' life that does as little damage to the planet as possible.
Her loo is an outside affair, in a small clearing in the woods: a seat attached to a large wooden box into which go grass cuttings, sawdust and any human waste. It all turns to compost. 
'A sewer system is just a way of not taking responsibility for your waste,' she tells me. 'It flushes away and then it just ends up polluting a watercourse.'
Her bath, too, is out in the open: a small tin tub that's been adapted to allow a fire to be lit underneath. Emma simply fills it with water from the stream, lights the fire and waits two hours for the water to heat up.
How often does she have a bath? 'Maybe once a month,' she says, though she might also wash in the river once or twice a month if she's feeling a bit smelly.
In truth - and I hope I'm not ungallant here - she has an almost pleasant smokey smell, picked up from the fire that burns in her hut. But it has to be said that she does look a bit grubby. And her hair could use a bit of conditioner. (The last time she went to a hairdresser, Harold Wilson was PM.) Emma's rejection of the modern world and her move to her Hobbit-style hut came in stages.
She met her husband Julian, an architectural historian, at Oxford. For five years they lived in a cottage in Bradford-on-Avon, then moved to a derelict farmhouse near Bath, where their children - two girls (now aged 31 and 25) and a boy (now 29) - were born.
Then one morning, while in bed, Emma had an epiphany. 'I remember saying to my husband: "Wake up, wake up! We've got to move to Wales. We've got to start a community."'
The couple took their children out of school to educate them at home and settled in a hippie community with other like-minded parents.
Rather than rely on supermarkets for food, they worked the land. They bought a few acres near Cardigan, before selling up and starting a similar project in Pembrokeshire in the Nineties, buying derelict farm buildings and 175 acres of land for £150,000.

Emma, Julian and the children moved into a former granary building on the farm, where they had running water, but no mains electricity (they used a generator). But something was nagging away at Emma, because she wanted a life even closer to nature.
'I felt this massive pull: my vocation was to totally immerse myself in nature and get away from all modern interferences,' she says.
'I built my first mud hut in 1999 and moved in there in January 2000. My husband never moved in with me, and we split up.
'I realised that this was my calling and I couldn't ask the rest of my family to do the same. It was unreasonable to expect teenagers to suddenly live without electricity.'
So the rest of the family remained in a farmhouse in the top field. Grown up now, the children live in Brighton, London and Bristol, though they still see their mother.
The marriage break-up, says Emma, was 'very painful - very hard for me'.
She jokes it may have been a relief for her husband: 'Maybe it was a case of: "Phew! Now I can live a normal life" - which he proceeded to do, living in a house with electricity and central heating, and all of those things which for years he'd supported my choice not to have.'
Despite all her best efforts, the truth is that Emma cannot escape the 21st century totally. She needs some money - perhaps £50 a week - not least because she has to pay council tax.
Really? For a mud hut in a field? Emma quarrelled with the local authority about this, but eventually agreed to pay.
Her dwelling is, of course, in the lowest tax band. Emma covers her outgoings by running what is, in effect, a small business: a 'healing and retreat centre'.
She is very big on crystal therapy and Celtic legends, and all things supernatural. Indeed, with a totally straight face she tells me that there are fairies living with her in the hut.
It's hard to know what to make of Emma. She is charming and well-meaning, certainly. But she's also, occasionally, a little disingenuous.
When I asked her which Oxford college she attended, she affected not to remember, before hesitantly telling me it was St Hilda's.
She also seemed not to know that the school she attended (St Mary's, Ascot) was, and still is, very posh. But no matter.
The world is a better place for having people like Emma who challenge the views of the majority - even if she is also, quite literally, away with the fairies.

 

When celebrated crossword setter the Rev John Graham discovered he was dying of cancer, there seemed only one way to tell his loyal following.
The 91-year-old used clues in one of his puzzles to announce he was terminally ill.
The crossword, which appeared in a national newspaper on Friday, has prompted a wave of support for Mr Graham after he said Araucaria [his pseudonym] had 18 down of the 19, which is being treated with 13-15 — ie, cancer, oesophagus and palliative care.
‘It seemed the natural thing to do somehow,’ he said.