Brave new world in Cheshire
Catherine Coley
IF you happen to have made a large pile of cash. and, like a 19th-century industrialist, want to set yourself up in style by creating a vast country house in a nice piece of parkland. what exactly would you choose to build? If the Royal Institute of British Architect's New Modern Country House competition is anything to go by, gloomy gothic piles and faux-classical hulks are out of the running. We've all gone organic now, and the winning design, it was announced with a great fanfare last week, 'breaks with the tradition of dominating the landscape' and 'reflects and positively embraces nature'. The creation of architects Ushida Findlay — responsible for such gems as the deliciously named Soft and Hairy House in Japan — it will eventually consist of 25,000 square feet of eco-friendly modernity, moulded into the undulating fields.
The huge new house will be built on the site of Grafton Hall in Cheshire, which was demolished in the 1950s, in 114 acres next to the Duke of Westminster's Eaton Hall estate. It will be only the third house — and the first modern house — to have been built under the exception John Gummer introduced to the strict rural planning laws when he was environment secretary. This allows country houses of outstanding architectural merit to be built in settings where they would not otherwise have been permitted. The two new houses that have already qualified under Gummer's exception were designed by the classical architects Robert Adam and Quinlan Terry; just one has been built, by Terry in Essex. Most places of this scale are historic or reproductions of historic buildings,' says Kathryn Findlay of Ushicla Findlay. But people travel and have modern tastes, so maybe a more modern solution should be available to them.'
According to the estate agents JacksonStops Sz Staff, who are already seeking a buyer for the new Grafton Hall, it is exactly the sort of bolthole a 21st-century industrialist or media magnate would want. JacksonStops claim that a renewal of interest in country houses has been led by wealth generated by the creative industries, though presumably not dotcoms. The trendy new buyers loathe pastiche and want the best in contemporary design, allied with plenty of powerpoints and bathrooms. Some things never change, though: one thing the buyer of Grafton Hall will have is plenty of staff accommodation, for the army of gardeners, housekeepers, cooks and nannies it will need.
The finer points of its design are still shrouded in secrecy. partly because a buyer would be encouraged to adapt it, but it will be an important contribution to the history of the English country house', says a spokesperson for Riba. And yours for £10 million or so, adds Crispin Harris of Jackson-Stops. 'It's architecture as art. and I can think of plenty of people who would pay that amount for beauty and amenity in a troubled world.'
If you had that sort of money, is it what you would want? Not a town house in Eaton Square or 2,000 acres in Hampshire with a Queen Anne house in the middle? Until now, there has been little enthusiasm in Britain for contemporary houses, with their expansive windows and open-plan living spaces, even though the best are designed to blend into and enhance the surrounding landscape. They look fine in Scandinavia or California, so their detractors claim, but not in green and damp Britain.
It's not just the rich who are architectural conservatives. House-buyers with modest means also blanch at the prospect of buying a modern house, and certainly at the prospect of constructing one from scratch. Yet building your own masterpiece could be within the budget of many homeowners in the Southeast: anything from about £150,000 for a modestly sized house on a small site within 100 miles of London, according to Ken Shuttleworth of the architects Foster and Partners. But it's almost impossible to buy an offthe-peg contemporary house. None of the major housebuilders — Barratt, Bovis, et al. — specialises in contemporary designs: their stock-in-trade is two-storey brick houses with casement windows and quoins, with names such as the Goldsworth and the Elmstead. Sometimes they build complete replicas of olde villages, with shops, duckponds and schools, such as at Countryside Properties' Great Notley in Essex.
The housebuilders are responding both to public demand and to the strictures of planners, who often insist on designs that ape local traditions, much to the annoyance of Graham Phillips, a partner at Norman Foster's practice, who has built his own ultramodern house (not under the Gummer exception) at Denham in Buckinghamshire. 'Things that are well designed tend to be resisted. It's far easier to get planning permission for pastiche that matches some vernacular architecture of the area — tiled roofs, leaded windows and so on. But when architects do persist and do something really modern, it's often acclaimed.'
John Gummer's clause in Policy and Planning Guidelines 7 gives only the very rich 'the opportunity to add to the tradition of the country house which has done so much to enhance the English countryside'; to build a smaller contemporary country house that isn't a pastiche takes bloodymindedness and dedication. Often, the only way to build one in a rural setting is to buy an existing house of little architectural merit and demolish it — having gained all the necessary consents — a tactic used by both Phillips and Ken Shuttleworth, who created an award-winning house on an unpromising site next to a rubbish tip in Wiltshire.
The new Grafton Hall could have been neo-classical rather than contemporary; the Riba competition entries were a mixture of traditional and modern. Cheshire planners suggested to the developers Ferrario Burns Hood, which owns the Grafton Hall site, that the best way to get planning permission was to run a competition through Riba. Even now, they haven't granted full planning permission for the house, although as Mel Hood of Ferrario Burns Hood explains, 'they have put themselves in a position where they can't refuse'. Fortunately, their reaction to the planned palazzo has been 'unbelievably positive', and Hood expects to get full planning permission by February.
Perhaps when the designs are revealed in their entirety and the brave new work has been completed, luxuriously sunk into the Cheshire hills, our attitudes to modern architecture will begin to change. Until then, even though we're enjoying all the other benefits of progress over the past three centuries — everything from anaesthesia to Lycra — we'll still be buying new houses that are little brick boxes derived from 17th-century designs. Doesn't it seem odd to you?
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