Stephen has previously built \u2018the world\u2019s smallest canal lock\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe eccentric hotelier said: \u201cI looked at cupcakes and thought that was the epitome of people going to afternoon teas.<\/p>\n
“For some reason I started thinking about the architectural structure of a cupcake.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I thought it would be a good idea to be able to have a cake in a cupcake. And I thought: ‘I can do this!’<\/p>\n
“Also, my partner Gill said I can’t do it, so I wanted to prove that I could – but it certainly wasn’t a piece of cake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Cupcakes can be architecturally beautiful but the difficulty was getting it to stay up right without any vertical upright.<\/p>\n
“All the pressure is on the external walls but if you engineer it correctly, then it works out fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m not comparing it to St Paul Cathedral but in theory it’s the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Art comes in many different packages and I wanted to do something a bit different. I like to come up with bizarre and wonderful things.<\/p>\n
“People seem to enjoy it and if it makes people happy then I’m happy. People come here and are just fascinated.”<\/p>\n
The timber-framed building featured on the Channel 4 show George Clarke\u2019s Amazing Spaces last week.<\/p>\n
Stephen said: “I think he (George) believed the cupcake\u2019s roof would collapse with no vertical support.<\/p>\n
“The production team were worried it might not be structurally safe at one point but I knew what I was doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cupcake has three ring beams and triangular cantilevers. Everything fell into place and interlocked with each other as I planned, which was a relief.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I taught George a lesson not to underestimate anyone.<\/p>\n
“It has an interchangeable interior so it’s multipurpose, we’re going to run a competition to be the first to have afternoon tea there – so you can have a cupcake, within a cupcake.<\/p>\n
“It really is quite a magical place.”<\/p>\n
The cupcake\u2019s roof is built from ring beams and supported by a steel band pulled taught to take the weight.<\/p>\n
It also boasts colourful \u00a0\u2018Paul Smith-inspired\u2019 panels around the exterior.<\/p>\n
On the episode, George said: “It’s like a Japanese pavilion, like a piece of origami.<\/p>\n
“I never thought cupcake architecture could be so beautiful.<\/p>\n
“Absolutely unbelievable, what a piece of terrific architecture, an extraordinary piece of design<\/p>\n
“\u00a325,000 for two cupcakes – it’s probably the most expensive cupcakes in the world.<\/p>\n
“Steve never ceases to amaze me – a mix of engineering genius and architectural eccentricity.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
He had earlier described it on social media as: “Genuinely one of my favourite Amazing Spaces builds of all time!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hotel owner spent \u00a325,000 building a wedding venue in the shape of a giant cupcake – hailed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,77,4884,10235,388,12,16,15,359],"class_list":{"0":"post-113225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-latest-videos","14":"tag-lifestyle","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-video"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114532139072202320","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Hotel](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/95fa56de-a2bb-4838-85d8-413cd71b772c.jpg\")
Hotel owner Steve Cuddy inside his cupcake-shaped wedding venue he built in his garden in Coleshill, Warwickshire.<\/p>\n