Adshead Park

This impressive Lutyens style home is designed to have the feel of a real family home and provide a welcoming base for family weekends and entertaining guests.

Sited on a former conifer plantation on the crest of a chalk hill overlooking the Thames Valley, the house is not intended to dominate the landscape but rather to blend in with beech and yew woodland in the vicinity.  In the planning stages, the future positions of the windows and the wings of the buildings were adjusted to provide the best views.

Although Basildon Park, a grand 18th Century Palladian mansion designed by John Carr is close by, the design of Adshead Park is more influenced by the local verncular houses in nearby Streatley which are characterised by orange bricks with steeply pitched red plain tiled roofs.  A century ago and ten miles further down the Thames in Sonning, Edward Lutyens took this Berkshire vernacular and built Deanery Garden in the style of the Arts and Craft Movement.  Many of the details of Adshead Parki are taken from this house and reassembled in a sort of architectural collage.

Although with a traditional exterior, this is very much a 21st Century home.  It has ground source heating to provide a comfortable 'base temperature', a heat recovery ventilation system and LED lighting to minimise power requirements.  The house has been designed to provide access to all floors for the rest of the present incumbent's life and is therefore wheelchair accessible throughout and incorporates a lift in a feature circular tower designed to look like a stair tower with slit windows.  The extensive basement houses a swimming pool, changing facilities and a cinema.

The four wings of the building; their angles set by the views, are connected by a central hallway such that the building has a 'butterfly shape'on plan.  The hall contains a marble circular staircase topped by a plaster dome so designed that natural light is directed into the hallway.

Externally the brickwork facades are built using a blend of Hampshire Red and Windsor Red Multi facing bricks in a Flemish Bond pattern supplied by Charnwood Forest Brick.  Over 70 different types of special shaped brick were also supplied in the same blend of colours to create the highly individual detailing on this home.  The facing bricks were laid in a lime mortar to negate the requirement for the inclusion of movement joints in the construction.

The traditional detailing on the building is further enhanced by the extensive use of oak framing both externally and internally and bronze window frames with leaded lights.

Around the house there is a mixture of formal and informal garden areas using a range of surfacing materials including natural stone, clay paving and gravel.  The brick paved areas have used Blockleys Cadmium Red Brindle Flecked facing bricks laid on edge in a 45 degree herringbone pattern.

Overall, this building is a triumph of the designers art and showcase not only the aesthetic benefits of using traditional building materials but also the skills of those involved in it construction.