From London to Bohemia: Benjamin Souček on restoring stately homes, and family roots
London-born Benjamin Souček renovates stately homes in Czechia, the country of his forefathers. Indeed, Souček – who is also active in Prague cricket circles – has even received an award at the Czech Senate for his contribution to the country’s cultural heritage.
Your father is Czech – what’s his story?
“Yes, my dad’s Czech. He left Czechoslovakia when he was 17 with his parents and his younger brother, who was 14, for Switzerland.
“I think the intention was to emigrate to Canada – that was their destination – via some friends that they had in Geneva.
“But they stopped in Bern. There was some help, I think, from a Rotary Club, and an uncle – my grandmother’s brother, who was already in Argentina.
“The Rotary Club helped them find accommodation and get some furniture and so on. And they lived in a tiny flat, which they ended up living in all their lives.
“And one way or another, with my dad’s fondness for British culture and ‘60s music, he ended up in England, in London, and I was born there.”
Did you hear Czech growing up in the household?
“Through my grandparents, yes. We’d all flock to my grandparents.
“My dad had a lot of cousins who emigrated as well, who were very young and didn’t have their parents, so my grandfather was this kind of fatherly figure for a wider group of youngsters.”
Does your dad come here today?
“Yes. He still comes. Unfortunately, he’s rather unwell at the moment, but he started a business here in the ‘90s.
“My grandfather was trained as a lawyer – although he was never able to work as one, because of his political views – but having legal experience always came in handy.
“And he was very keen to try to get my grandmother’s family’s property back.
“He managed to get some of it back in the ‘90s and was very keen, as a Czech patriot, to renovate it, and my father was involved in that.”
When did you start coming here? Or when did you first come here?
“Again in the ‘90s, I suppose, following my father.
“We had a family reunion in 1991.
“We met relations that we’d never met before, because they couldn’t cross the Iron Curtain.
“And those that had left had refused to come back. There was a way of coming back and you could make some apologies and bow down to the regime, as things began to unfreeze in the late ‘80s. But mostly my family refused to do that.
“I did go on one trip with my grandparents, which I remember, when I was very, very young. We met two great-aunties – Blažena and Jarmilka – at Lake Balaton in Hungary.
“We had a massive argument, because those that had remained under the Communist regime and those that had left didn’t see eye to eye.”
“And my grandparents were pointing out, Over there is Czechoslovakia, that’s where we’re from, but we can’t go there!
“That was quite exciting [laughs]. You could see all the Trabants and everything.
“So yes, I came back in 1991, and we all met in Pec pod Sněžkou, where a relation had booked out a whole ČKD hotel. It was a vast place and it was just for our family, about 20 of us.
“And we all had a massive argument, because of course those that had remained under the Communist regime and those that had left didn’t see eye to eye [laughs].”
What led you to move here? Or when did you move here?
“I went to university here for a bit, at Masaryk University, via the School of Slavonic and East European Studies [at University College London].
“Then I was kicking my heels in London, having finished my studies. I was keen to come here, so I came here.
“Things were more affordable. I managed to find a flat in Vinohrady so I had a roof over my head, which gave me the confidence to propose to my wife, and then I persuaded her to come over here as well.”
Your wife is Czech?
“Yes.”
And she’s an architect?
“She’s an architect. But we met in London.”
You renovate chateaux or old buildings. Had you some background in construction or renovation in the UK? How did you get into this field?
“I suppose my father led me into it. He had always worked on renovating old buildings as a sort of side project.
“For my first job I remember taking the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe and working on barns in Brittany, when I was about 15, just as I finished my GCSEs. So that stayed with me.
“I was invited to the Senate and given special praise for my services to Czech cultural heritage.”
“And I was very lucky recently to finish the renovation of an 18th-century rectory in the Plzeň Region, near Chudenice, for which I received an award; I was invited to the Senate and given special praise for my services to Czech cultural heritage.”
Were people open to a “foreigner” coming here and offering to do this kind of work?
“A lot of Czech companies weren’t interested in doing that kind of work – it’s very difficult to calculate the costs and estimate how long it’s going to take.”
“Yes, I think so. A lot of Czech companies weren’t interested in doing that kind of work, because it’s very difficult to calculate the costs and estimate how long it’s going to take.
“But Prague’s on the UNESCO World Heritage list. It’s beautiful.
“And I remember just walking and gazing up at these buildings and just thinking, My God, all this needs to be repaired [laughs] – there’s an opportunity here.”
What are the biggest challenges, typically, when you are renovating a very old – I guess often protected – building?
“Well one of the largest challenges [laughs] is finding the investment and having quite deep pockets. That’s a huge challenge.”
Will clients typically commission you to do a job? Or will you buy a property, do it up and sell it on?
“A little bit of both, luckily enough.
“You have to have a special relationship with the client, especially if you don’t know how much the project’s going to cost.
“So I want to do the work, but I can’t do the work if we don’t get paid.”
Why is it so hard to estimate the cost?
“Well, because you won’t know what’s wrong with the building.
“You take off all the tiles on the roof and you’ll find that the main ring beam has turned to dust, the whole weight of the roof is pushing the main structural walls out, so you might find that you have to tie the whole building together, and then you’ve got to replace all the beams.
“You want to retain as much of the original structure as you can, so you will chase in reclaimed beams with existing ones, and so on.”
I’m always hearing that Czech tradesmen are so skilled in so many areas. Is that also the case when it comes to your line of work?
“[Laughs] That’s a little bit of an old wives’ tale.
“It’s true that when I first came here everyone said that Czechs were particularly skilled. They had to be. They needed to be able to renovate their own property, because there was nobody available to do it.
“But no. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer young people are interested in going into the trades. I think it’s the same problem across Europe.
“I was very fortunate to meet a couple of young Ukrainians, who came over just as they had finished school 15 years ago – and have been with me ever since.
“We’ve worked together and grown together. They’ve learnt off me and I’ve learnt off them.”
Is your dad also involved in your business here? I was reading some articles about you and I saw his name, Ondřej Souček, listed there as well.
“Together we discovered that the Czech Bishopric was putting a lot of its property up for sale in the České Budějovice Region and the Plzeň Region.
“I originally bid on a place, but luckily I didn’t win it, because I wouldn’t have wanted to be wedded to this place.
“And then a year or two later he followed in my footsteps and bid on this rectory, which he bought for not very much money.
“Of course the investment that was then required turned out to be enormous.
“So yes, he was the client in that project. We worked together.
“And it was a little bit of a golden circle, because the money he received from his rent, which he was getting thanks to my grandfather’s restitution, he was reinvesting [laughs] in the Czech cultural heritage.”
Are there a lot of properties crying out to be renovated? If you drive around the country, do you see lots of places that you think you could do something with?
“Yes. I do think that.
“I mean, you need to have quite thick skin. It’s not easy.
“But more and more people seem to be doing renovations in the countryside.
“As Prague gets more expensive, people are looking to go further away.”
“More and more when I go around the countryside and up into the former Sudetenland I can see new roofs.
“As Prague gets more expensive, people are looking to go further away.”
If you do up an old chateau, will that afterwards be a great place to live? I’m guessing the rooms are huge and hard to heat.
“If the house has been properly insulated and you heat with traditional methods: stoves. If you have a supply of wood – hopefully a little forest nearby [laughs] – then yeah, why not?”
Do your clients prefer to keep the original look of the place? Or do some of the buildings have a super modern interior that you have installed?
“You could do that, but the house would have had to have been derelict.
“Otherwise the Heritage Office wants to be involved and they would like you to retain as many of the original features as possible.
“It just depends on how dilapidated a place is to begin with.”
What’s the process of getting permits to do all this kind of work?
“It’s hard. And to involve the Heritage Office…
“Put it this way, we’ve been involved with the Heritage Office because grants were available.
“But the grants in the end turned out to be so minimal that perhaps [laughs] not involving the Heritage Office would have been better, with the benefit of hindsight.”
And they make you jump through hoops, I guess?
“Yes. Exactly.”
You’re also a cricket man. Are you a member of a club? I presume you are?
“Yes. Vinohrady.”
Do you actually play games, or it is only training? If you play games, who against?
“We play a lot of games.
“The founding cricket club in Prague was the Prague Cricket Club, and we were one of the first to morph out of them, because there were too many of us interested in playing at the time.
“I think we were the third club to be formed, after Bohemians.
“We created a domestic league, and then a national side, and now we have lots of people playing cricket.”
“There are clubs in Brno, Plzeň, Olomouc and so on.”
Where does the Vinohrady Cricket Club play, or train?
“We have training at Olšanské náměstí, where we have three bowling lanes and nets. That’s available to all the other clubs as well, although we have largely built it.
“And then we have a cricket ground at Vinoř, owned by Captain Hugo Banks, who served in Kosovo and then, through his wife, discovered that they had some agricultural land, which eventually we turned into two cricket fields.”
Are all the players Brits?
“No, not by any means – a small fraction nowadays.
“By far the biggest number of players are Indian, but we have players from all over: Australia, Ireland, Canada, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Pakistan. You name it.”
Now in the UK there is one famous Souček, Tomáš Souček, who is Czech football international. Does that make a difference if you’re there now? Do people have less trouble pronouncing your name?
“I always had to spell out my name. And it was Su-ček, Suchet…”
“I have noticed a little bit more awareness.
“I always had to spell out my name. And it was Su-ček, Suchet…
“And people do seem to be a little more conscious about how to pronounce it.
“At Calais especially, whenever I’m driving there, the French border guards ask me, You’re not related to the footballer are you [laughs]?
“And I laugh and say I’m not, but it’s a beginning to a conversation.”