A Self-built Four Bedroom Georgian Villa

When your house can be seen from 25 miles away and looks straight over the magnificent setting of Chichester Cathedral, it had better be good. It needs to take full advantage of its aspect but at the same time be stylish, elegant and true to its aim.

When Helen and David Watson first saw the burned out, roofless remains of Seven Points House, high on the Sussex downs near Goodwood racecourse, they knew they were up to the challenge. "We fell in love with the sensational site," recalls Helen. "And there wasn't even a good view that day."

They spotted the one hectare plot advertised in Country Life in spring 1994. That summer they clinched the plot at auction for £137,000. "We had been expecting to pay nearer £200,000, so considered ourselves fortunate," says David.

"Although there was a lot of interest in the house, only three people bid at auction. I think the others were put off by the fact that the house was a ruin and there were no services."

David and Helen hired Arundel based architect Neil Holland to help them decide on the best scheme. He knew the site, as he had previously been retained by its owners, the Goodwood Estate, to produce a design for the refurbishment of the ruin. When the owners decided this was impractical, the site was put up for auction.

The Watsons also concluded that a rebuild was a more sensible solution than a restoration. There was no objection in principle to this from the local authority, as the building was unlisted. However, gaining detailed planning permission took 18 months mainly because the couple were keen to position the new house well back from the original building line. This would provide space between the house and a track across the downs which is heavily used by walkers throughout the year. Eventually they were allowed to place the new building 3m back from the boundary with the pathway and extend the house by up to 50%.

Neil Holland managed to unearth a photograph of the building before the 1992 fire that had nearly destroyed it. It showed that the house, believed to have been built at the beginning of the 19th century, had a distinctly Georgian feel to it - a roof pitch of 30° and a frontage with three large, almost square, windows above five tall, curved, recessed arches.

A little research by Neil's assistant, Ian Smalley, revealed that the property used to be known as The Rubbin House. It was the place where horses carrying cartloads of wool from Chichester were rubbed down, fed and watered, before continuing to Midhurst on the important route across the South Downs.

The Watsons, who describe themselves as mad about the Georgians were enthusiastic about rebuilding in that style, using the original outer facing of local flint. They also decided to revert to the original name of the house, changing it to its more grammatical form of The Rubbing House.

They chose to retain the exact original shape of the building but to add to the rear. This squared it up and gave it a more classically Georgian look than the original, while making use of the rebuild to enable them to take full advantage of the views.

From the outside, the most striking feature of the house, apart from the prominent curved glazed arches and five sash windows above them, is the flintwork which continues right round the house. Stonemason and flint specialist Dave Faggetter used all the flint from the original house and supplemented it with reclaimed local flint.

He stuck to a galleted style throughout, using tiny shards of flint created on site by an assistant to fill in between the other large flints. This acts protects the aggregate and lime putty mortar, throwing water away from the wall.

"Being in such an exposed position, the wind really buffets the house," David explains. "So it is good to have the galleting to give it extra protection. We also felt that galleted flint fits in with the local vernacular. It produces a really wonderful effect of light reflecting off the flintwork."

"However, we do not recommend flintwork for people who are building to a budget or a tight schedule. When we considered saving money by cutting down on the number of windows at the rear (there are 30 windows altogether and Helen made all the interlined curtains herself), we discovered that filling a complete section of window sized wall actually cost more than filling that space with a window!"

Dave Faggetter, who also did the rubbed brickwork above the curved front windows, took more than a year to complete the outer skin of flintwork, which is set against two layers of thermal blockwork with a cavity between. The high level of insulation in the walls and ceilings meant that the building achieved adequate U-values without the need for double glazing.

"We were enormously grateful for this. We have managed to achieve what we think is a very authentic Georgian look thanks in part to the fact that we have 16mm glazing bars," David says. "To install double glazing would have required glazing bars of at least 34mm. This would have altered the appearance of the house completely."

Likewise, the Watsons did not warm to the idea of secondary double glazing. "It would have added about £12,000 to the total cost of the build and would not have looked very good," explains David.

The Watsons admit that the sash windows rattle when the wind gets up and they are not completely draughtproof but this does not concern them unduly. "We pay quite heavily for our heating and electricity, which we produce ourselves using a diesel generator located in the garage. We realised that this would be one of the added costs of living up here," David says. Water is piped from the Goodwood Estate and installing it proved straightforward.

Apart from the flintwork, Neil Holland was very keen that the building should conform with what he calls the Goodwood aesthetic. The quoins are yellow brick, to fit in with the style generally used on the Goodwood estate. This differs from that of the adjoining West Dean estate, which has red brick quoins on its buildings. This attention to detail has recently been recognised by West Sussex County Council, who have awarded the house a 1999 Building Design Award to add to the Daily Telegraph/ Homebuilding & Renovating Best Traditional House award.

It is only in the internal layout that the prominent position of the house began to influence David and Helens design plans significantly. The internal plans differ substantially from an historic Georgian style. "The interior plan was really dictated by the front arches, which we believe were planned for the horses to go through as they entered the downstairs originally designed as stabling," David says.

"Having decided to retain the style of the original frontage, complete with recessed arches, we realised that everyone would want to look out through those windows, which face south towards the coast. It was not a difficult decision to devote three of those to our lovely big drawing room and two to the dining room."

This decision, endorsed by Neil Holland, set the tone for the rest of the house. Once space had been allowed for a suitably grand Georgian style half turned staircase with landings, it was clear that the kitchen, WC and coat storage would have to be placed at the rear of the building, in the 15ft of extra space granted by the planners.

"The only sad thing about this design was that it allows us no den to retreat to on cold winter evenings," says David." We redesigned the upstairs to have en suite bathrooms in two of the four bedrooms, rather than the five bedrooms we had envisaged. Apart from that and a slight change to the staircase at the end, we stuck to the original design and are extremely pleased with it."

The staircase itself takes up a lot of space and is built from Canadian oak with white painted balusters. It descends to a raised platform and the space beneath the first landing is occupied by furniture.

"When we moved in, the staircase was not complete but we had sold our house in London and the lease had expired on our rented property," David recalls. "We had to go to bed via two ladders."

Despite working in London three days a week, David spent hundreds of hours building the kitchen units and many of the doors, with their moulded architraves, using the spindle moulder in his workshop at the rear. He also undertook the plumbing and electrics in the kitchen and created most of the storage and fascias in their bathroom using mdf.

Helen chose the colour schemes and did much of the internal decorating herself, including painting many of the dry lined walls in plain emulsion colours. They act as backgrounds to the couples collection of paintings.

The roof is of new Welsh slate. Neil managed to avoid the problem of leaking valleys, that so often occurs with Georgian houses, by an ingenious roof arrangement. The 30° pitch ends abruptly, then drops 700mm to an asphalted flat area, which is drained by pipes concealed in the roof space that eventually lead to the main gutters. You can ascend to this flat roof via a skylight that leads up to the attic space.

Originally, the house was to have a tall glazed lantern to light the deep stairwell but for ease of maintenance David chose a clear plastic light. It remained below the roof line out of sight something they were keen to ensure.

"We also insisted on a glass fibre cornice. I was familiar with the material because I built my own aeroplane with it," David says. "Neil was rather reluctant to use it it turned out to be a rather fraught affair. The manufacturers were late, which held up the entire project by two months. It looks very effective, however, and we believe we made the right decision. It incorporates the gutter and requires no maintenance."

The porch was commissioned from Chilstone and, despite the fact that a casting joint shows on the left hand side - something that did not please Neil Holland - the Watsons feel that on economic grounds they made the correct decision.

They decided that flint would be too much of a luxury for the tall wall that encloses the small rear garden on one side. Economies like this enabled them to afford sandstone rather than reconstituted stone flagstones on the paved area and plaster covings in all the main rooms upstairs and downstairs.

Nevertheless, with the garage and extras, the total build cost came to £320,000 way over the original figure the Watsons had in mind. "Despite this, after more than two years living here we are delighted," David says. The Watsons have managed to combine an authentic Georgian style with a home that does full justice to its site a remarkable dual achievement.

Further reading:

• A Georgian-style Self-build
• A Georgian Country House
• A Three Storey Georgian Self-build

Read more about Georgian design and style in The Georgian-Style Homes Book from Homebuilding & Renovating