His family is able to sleep on the stone roof, where a constant breeze keeps them cool.
The leaking stone roof needs to be replaced, fireplaces are falling apart, and pieces of the house — copper pipes and handmade tiles — have been stolen by vandals.
After it bought the property three years ago, crews began uncovering the buildings' original brickwork and a vaulted stone roof that was once part of a water tower.
Just in time, for as we nursed the nascent fire heavy rain began to fall in large, insistent drops on the stone roof.
The first urgent challenge is to stop leaks in the stone roof above, through which water has been seeping for 150 years.
They live under the stone roof slabs that are a feature of older houses in this area, and we can hear their scrabbling, flapping noises at dawn as they come back to roost.
The fan-vaulted ceiling feels nothing like a solid stone roof, while the walls supporting it seem mostly to be made of stained glass (external buttresses carry the weight of the roof discreetly).
"You wouldn't be able to get away with this in England," says Amanda Levete, walking up the steep stone roof of her new building, which projects out over the sparkling waters of the Tagus like the prow of a ship.
