Details
EAST PRESTON
231/0/10074 TAMARISK WAY
31-JUL-06 Angmering on Sea
(South side)
21
Vista Point, including garages and att
ached walls
II
Private house, garages, and garden walls, 1969-70 by Patrick Gwynne, for Kenneth Monk, his Quantity Surveyor.
Walls are cavity brickwork, rendered externally in sparkling 'Mineralite', with corrugated white plastic fascia and garden screen. The sloping roof is of dark green 'Wessex' tiles. The balcony floor has been retiled. Garages, plinth and garden walls are dark blue/grey brick. Flat garage roof. Windows are plastic-coated steel with wooden sills and have been subsequently double-glazed within the original frames.
A two-storey detached holiday house on a coastal site. It is approached from the north and has an 'hourglass' plan, broader at its south end, with a linked garage for three cars fanning to the west. The house is entered on its northwest corner, a small lobby leading to a central hall containing a spiral staircase enclosed in a circular well, with a back door on the west side. The rooms are arranged around the stair: two bedrooms at the front, three at the back, with three bathrooms in the 'waisted' middle. Main living accommodation is on the first floor. There is a large living room on the south side, with dining room and balcony with steps down to the garden. On the north side is the kitchen.
The street (north) façade is reticent, with steps up to recessed front door, the undulating roof sloping down towards the front of the house, punctuated by the kitchen dormer with projecting hood. Ground floor windows are screened by a fence. To the right, garages curve round beneath a plastic fascia; originally a double carport and single garage, but now with additional doors added to the carport. East and west facades express the line of the undulating roof, with minimal fenestration. The house addresses the garden to the south, substantially fenestrated at first floor level, including glazed doors to the balcony. A nautical theme is expressed in the generous first floor covered balcony with recessed eating area and plastic-coated metal balustrade running along the façade, and a staircase down to the garden. To the left, the curved rear wall of the garages expresses the bays for three cars inside, with plastic garden screen beyond. In front of the house is a terrace with steps down to the garden.
Inside, walls are white-painted render, timber or lined with Gwynne's favourite plastic grass paper, floors largely carpeted. The decorative features and fitted furniture are concentrated on the first floor. Frosted glass doors lead from the landing. The walls dividing the living and dining rooms from the kitchen are wood-lined with fitted cupboards, and there is a hatch between dining room and kitchen. he central spiral staircase, lined with ribbed timber with an ash handrail, is particularly fine. The ground floor rooms are more simply finished, but the bathrooms retain original fittings and bedrooms have fitted bed-heads, dressing tables and cupboards.
Patrick Gwynne (1913-2003) produced a series of important and extremely original houses during the post-war period, developing themes first explored in 'The Homewood', built in 1937-9 and now the property of the National Trust. His playful style, with its fondness for unusual materials and increasing interest in curves, was well suited to the design of a holiday home, but this is his only example. This is a very successful small house, with interior fittings of excellent quality. It is a good example of Gwynne's favourite centralised plan, given added interest by placing the principal rooms on the piano nobile and separating the ground floor into distinctive areas for owners and guests. It is one of Gwynne's least altered surviving works, and important as an example of his later, more anthropomorphic style.
Sources:
Neil Bingham, 'The Houses of Patrick Gwynne', Twentieth Century Architecture, 4, 2000, pp. 29-44.
