Maltings Chase

Private house and carport/store, 1967-8 by Edward Cullinan for the Knox family, friends of the architect.

The building is constructed with load-bearing buff brick walls and exposed hemlock spruce joists resting on concrete beams. The windows have wooden frames with opening components set in aluminium frames. They are now double or secondary glazed but remain within the original frames. The pivoting front door and large sliding door to the external garden room/playroom are diagonally boarded. Floors are reinforced concrete: an in-situ slab in the link block and suspended planks in the wings. The flat roofs are felted and gravelled. The roof of the link was originally grassed, like the ramp, but is now covered with felt and gravel. Two small brick chimneys are concealed on the roof. The courtyard is paved with second-hand Suffolk bricks.

The single-storey detached house has an elongated U-shaped plan, open on the north side and partially enclosing a courtyard. The parents' and children's wings are to the east and west respectively, joined by a communal link block along the south side containing the dining room, kitchen, cloakroom and utility. The house is entered through this link, with principal and kitchen entrances to the left and right of a grassed asymmetrically splayed ramp in the courtyard, which leads to the roof of the link and contains storage. The south ends of both wings—the adults' living room and playroom—have projections of differing lengths beyond the link block. Each wing is broken by a passage, providing additional access from the garden to the entrance courtyard and separating the carport/store and a second garden room/playroom to the east and west respectively from the main body of the house. The roof is continuous over the west wing but interrupted on the east wing, so the carport/store forms a separate building.

In the parents' wing, the living room has a gallery/studio reached directly from the master bedroom or via stairs from the living room. A narrow corridor along the west side leads to three bedrooms and a bathroom. In the children's wing, beyond the playroom, a corridor along the east side leads to three bedrooms (originally four) and a bathroom. The corridor has direct access to the external covered passage at its north end and the garden room/playroom beyond. The site slopes from north to south, with steps connecting the various levels between the link block and wings and from the entrance lobby down to the living room.

The wings have deeply overhanging eaves on all sides; the lower link block is more simply finished with a continuous concrete lintel. The brickwork is bevelled at the window sills and wall tops. The principal and tallest façade faces south. The double-height living room and playroom projections have tall windows on all three sides, bisected with concrete beams. The lower link block lies between, with a narrow strip of windows. The link and playroom both have glazed doors onto the garden. From the rear the house lies low due to the slope. The blank north end walls have high-level windows. In the courtyard, the grass ramp over the link block creates a sense of the house emerging from the ground. The walls of the wings convey privacy, with narrow strips of windows.

Interior walls are rendered and painted white; the concrete structure is painted grey. Ceilings in the wings are largely wooden boarding with prominent hemlock joists, and are rendered in the link. Floors are carpeted in the wings, wooden in the living room, cork in the playroom, and white clay tiles in the link. Living areas are open plan; bedrooms are more private. The principal space is the double-height living room, with a suspended wooden gallery/study above an open fireplace.

This is one of a series of important domestic commissions early in Cullinan's professional practice, reflecting his modernist and arts and crafts influences and his buildings' dynamic relationship with the landscape. He had already built one house for the Knox family in 1963-4 (now much altered and extended) and designed this house for their expanding family on an adjacent site. It is a bold and innovative house in a more formal, classical style than Cullinan's own house at 62 Camden Mews. It was planned around a particular family brief requiring independence for adults and children. It is an excellent, intact survival.