House On Scolt Head Island

The House on Scolt Head Island is a summer warden's house built around 1926 by architect Edward Boardman. It features weatherboarding, Norfolk oak, a hipped shingle roof with a gablet, and a round chimney made of shore pebbles and brick. The building has a single-storey, square plan with a porch at the front (south) and later outshuts at the back.

The exterior includes a porch supported by turned wooden columns and fretwork balustrading, with an apron of beach pebbles and brickwork at the front. The house is raised on low stilts, although the foundations were not inspected due to a gap filled with corrugated iron to deter rabbits. All the wooden casement windows are original. The tall circular chimney at the west end, made of beach pebbles with brick string courses, was struck by lightning and rebuilt, likely in the 1960s.

Inside, the house is entirely wood-lined, with wooden floors and ceilings. There is a single living room to the east featuring a chimney piece from the chimney rebuild, along with two small bunkrooms leading off to the east. The original doors and door fittings remain, although one brass knob has been replaced with a plastic one. A later small bunkroom in the outshut at the rear is also built of wood and lined like the rest of the building.

Historically, the building was financed by public subscription, with both the architect and a local timber merchant covering their own costs for the Norfolk Naturalist Trust, which had just acquired Scolt Head Island as a nature reserve. The National Trust later took over the site and leases it to English Nature. The house has seen very little alteration since its construction, and aside from solar-powered lighting, no modern facilities have been added. It faces south towards the coast, with its back set into the dunes for protection.

This squat, dark building with its distinctive chimney is an important feature in the landscape. It is an unusually small architect-designed building, constructed for a specific purpose in a unique setting, and its survival with virtually no modern alterations makes it both historically and architecturally significant.