ENGLISH oak re-placed Norwegian Wood when a Herefordshire company shipped a house to a resort once favoured by John Lennon.

Border Oak Design & Construction Ltd has exported a timber-framed cottage to Karuizawa in Japan as a self-build home for a doctor.

Managing director John Greene said the client asked for Help after he read about the company's work in a magazine.

Border Oak designers were given the Ticket to Ride when they struck the deal with the Tokyo physician.

"After a meeting with Border Oak in a Tokyo wine bar - which we designed and built in 1998 - our client decided to commission one of our homes for the Karuizawa resort in Nagano, about 200km north east of Tokyo," said Mr Greene.

He said the resort had been a favourite haunt of ex-Beatle John Lennon and Yoko Ono after they had Come Together in the 1970s.

The Japanese imperial family had Let it Be seen they were regular summer guests for three generations.

And Japanese Day Trippers regularly Get Back to the resort for tennis, hiking and leisure breaks.

Work on the new, two-storey cottage for the Matabo family is expected to be completed next month.

"Border Oak is shipping out the oak frame, oak joinery, flagstones and bricks for the two-storey cottage," added Mr Greene.

"It will have a sitting room, breakfast room, kitchen, five bedrooms, three bathrooms, an inglenook fireplace and verandah."

Border Oak has already shipped several large commercial developments to Japan, including a 16th Century village as a university campus.

It has also exported an Elizabethan manor house as a garden centre for Bonsai trees and replica Stratford-upon-Avon buildings for a Shakespearean theme park.