"What I want is to see that view at its best - and I want to see it through fire and water"


The briefing for the ‘Merlin House’ set high in the Surrey Hills looking down over the South Coast started with this comment.

It has lead to a complicated series of spaces which intertwine to allow public and private spaces which adapt to the mood of the owners and their modern lifestyles.

The house has to perform faultlessly as a modern working environment and public office, as a place for intimate meetings and treatments and as a group space all the while fulfilling the needs of a busy family home.

The view is unparalleled and the site comes with an idiosyncratic garden designed and built by a maverick retiree who allowed within the garden design for his passion and included a 1 Km. banked bob sleigh run. In summer this is over run with crocuses and forms part of a journey marked with events; a hermits cottage, a rope bridge and vistas cut into the mature foliage revealing lily ponds and the story tellers fire.

The design makes full use of the site’s steep section and to the public bridleway behind reveals a simple two storey structure clad in local stone and topped in frameless glass. This serves to amplify the effect on passing through the glass and stone entrance lobby when you are presented with a 7 metre high double height fully glazed room which frames the view beyond over England’s finest countryside.

Mezzanine floors to either side of the main reception provide more intimate proportions for the offices and family rooms which gallery the kitchen and dining areas.

The Client’s obsession with health and spiritual matters is reflected on the East side with a 20 metre swimming pool surrounded by massage beds and water/steam therapies whilst a gymnasium galleries the entire length of the swimming pool.

On the second floor the bedrooms are arranged as a series of identical units with top lit bathrooms placed at the rear and the beds facing the glazed wall which looks onto the infinity edge full length roof top lap pool.

In the master bedroom an extra half bay allows the Client’s brief to be fulfilled – a free-standing fire is placed at the edge of the over size bath next to the pool.

Lying in their bed or bath they view the landscape through the fire, over the water to the coast beyond - the dream fulfilled.


© COPYRIGHT RHE AD 2001