Berkhamsted is small English village where William became the Conqueror, Geoffrey Chaucer worked and Graham Greene was born. Today it’s a London commuter town. Lawyer Nicolas Oldham and his wife moved here for the good schools for their children, but their jobs are still in London.

To avoid a daily commute, a few years ago Oldham began working from home a couple of days a week. At first he used the edge of the sofa as his office, but after too many times stepping on his kids toys and not being able to find a pen, he decided he needed a room of his own.

A longtime fan of tiny shelters (in his backyard he has a shed, a greenhouse and a life-sized dollhouse), Oldham decided to add an office pod. Though unlike his other humble shacks, he bought a ready-made Archipod that Treehugger’s Lloyd Alter calls “a beautiful shed in a dome” and “more of a land yacht than a shed”.

Like his shedworking compatriots Roald Dahl, George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Wolff, Oldham uses his small shelter to find the isolation he needs to work. Though when pressed Oldham wonders if perhaps the shedworking tradition is related to a British childhood desire “to hide at the bottom of the garden”.