An Arts & Crafts Style Self-Build in Cambridgeshire

Johnnie and Anne Sam – with the help of celebrated local architect James Snell – have built a new Arts & Crafts-style home that blends perfect exterior design with a floorplan that is over 450m2 but feels cosy and manageable rather than grand.

"The thing about Arts & Crafts houses is that they fail if they’re not really good and chunky,” says architect James Snell. And when it comes to robust solidity, it would be hard to outdo the chimney stack, almost buttress-like in its proportions, that punctuates the gable end of the house he has created in a village south of Cambridge, for clients Johnnie and Anne Sam.

There’s something extremely satisfying about the Arts & Crafts style: the houses speak of comfort rather than opulence; discreet success rather than ‘in-yer-face’ status; and they are still relatively rare. “I suppose we could have put some neo-Georgian pile here,” mutters James. “But it has all been done to death.”

But should it have been a period house at all? James Snell, after all, would be happiest describing himself as a contemporary architect and, unusually, approached the owners rather than vice versa. “I felt that I didn’t want anyone else doing it because it was in my village. It’s my patch.” Even the local authority would have been pleased to have seen a building more modern in its outlook on the site. But, says James, his clients, a married couple with two young children, were determined that their new home should be an ‘old’ one.

 “It’s safe and comfortable. Anne and Johnnie are quite traditional. Although it is quite large, they didn’t want it to be ostentatious. It had to be as informal as possible — we didn’t want it to be too massy.”

And it’s true, despite the size of the house – it is almost 450m2 and there is permission to build a granny cottage on the eastern end – its clever configuration of a large roof with bedrooms partially buried within this, and its traditional farmhouse/cottage detailing such as wooden casement windows and pegged roof tiles, means that it does not overwhelm. Aside from the sheer craftsmanship that has gone into it, there is nothing showy about it and, if a large but unassuming family home is what you want, then it would be hard to get the same effect with a contemporary design where, with the best will in the world, architects can’t resist adding a bit of design statement.

In fact, the house is reserved to the point of reclusiveness. It has no name – just a simple street number – and is completely hidden from the road: a long drive through the gardens which lay mainly to the front of it means that you get only sidelong glimpses, even on arrival. The only people who will ever be able to enjoy a stark, full-frontal view are those favoured few with a good enough reason to be standing on the owners’ lawn.

“It wasn’t important to anyone that the house can be seen — it was much more important to Johnnie and Anne that we created the oblique views which make it feel ‘less big’,” says James.

He was in part helped along by the siting of the house – a “poorly built” 1950s chalet that this one replaced – which was also set well back on the plot. But the original house’s long, narrow footprint caused some constraints — namely how to provide the number of rooms required by the clients without creating dreary corridors on each floor. The solution was to build a substantial reception hall and first floor landing that would each have their own function – the hall houses a grand piano and the landing has the most charming reading area built into the bay above the porch – which would give good functional circulation and communication space. The principal rooms – the living room, kitchen/breakfast room, master bedroom and guest bedroom – would all fall at the front, southern side of the house, while other less important areas – the children’s bedrooms, family bathroom, Anne’s office, the playroom and rarely used dining room, would be smaller and sit at the rear overlooking the relatively little north-facing garden. Although a small length of corridor was unavoidable upstairs, on the ground floor, many of the rooms are interconnected to avoid this: Anne’s office, for example, is reached through the drawing/living room or the ‘adult snug’.

It sounds like a contradiction but it seems that one of the things about the house of which James is most proud is his ability to have shrunk it to a human scale. Whereas the rest of us spend our time hanging mirrors and playing furiously with colour charts to give the impression of extra space, James has built a very large house but managed to make all the rooms a usable size and, while none of them is exactly poky, they feel much more restrained and cosy than one would expect. It is entirely deliberate and in keeping with the house’s modesty and lack of bling: it is the very essence of a family home rather than a show house.

All the money has gone into its exceptional design detailing — the joinery is quite breathtaking: acres of panelling, handmade doors, a beautifully turned staircase and sweet, historical references such as the carved, wooden canopy built over the couple’s daughter’s bed. Was it difficult to find workers able to execute these finishes? “We drew everything and that’s the only way you can do it,” says James who, with the owners, visited several Baillie Scott houses in Cambridge and read up on Voysey for the project in order to ‘interpret’ the era.

Despite the care that James has lavished on the house, however, it is true that part of the charm is down to its quite magical gardens, full of mature trees and dense shrubberies. “We were looking for another home and when we found this site, we knew it was somewhere we wanted to be,” says Johnnie.

A gigantic walnut tree sits close to the back of the house and it was essential that this magnificent specimen was preserved but, despite the scale of the build, James claims that only one yew tree and some straggly box hedging were removed completely. Away from the house, the thick planting hides fantastic ‘garden rooms’ and a redundant vegetable patch awaiting replanting, summerhouses and a sort of lean-to Wendy house from which Johnnie runs his business. At the very front of the garden, the River Granta babbles past, separating the property from the village cricket field — it is hard to imagine a more idyllic position.

“I did feel territorial about the house,” sighs James, “I didn’t want to hand it over.” And his success with it has led to several more commissions for similar builds — something of a mixed blessing, you imagine, for a modern architect. “Johnnie did say that I would get more work on the back of this and, at the time, I wondered if that was what I really wanted; but any project of good quality has to be worth taking on.”