The Beach House

The Beach House is a private residence built in 1959-60 by architect Michael Pattrick as a beach house and holiday home for Richard and Phoebe Merricks at Pett Level.

The building is a three-storey structure with a neat, compact rectangular plan, oriented towards the south to take advantage of excellent sea views. The ground floor employs an exposed concrete structure, with the floor slab resting on pilotis (concrete columns) set on concrete pads three feet below ground level. This undercroft houses a carport on the east side and provides space for a timber entrance pod on the west side, accessed via the carport. The entrance pod contains a small lobby, storage, toilet and stairs, and was sympathetically extended in the late 1990s on the south side to provide a small galley kitchen while remaining within the footprint marked out by the pilotis. The first and second floors are constructed with a pre-stressed timber frame, designed to enable the building to withstand high winds, and are clad with dark-stained timber boarding, painted wooden panels and plate glass windows with painted wooden frames. The building was constructed higher than neighbouring earlier properties to respond to the raising of the sea wall prior to building.

The principal accommodation occupies the first and second floors. The first floor contains four bedrooms, two with direct access to an external staircase on the south facade, along with a bathroom and toilet arranged around a central stairwell. The second floor consists of a main open-plan living space with a small kitchen area, occupying the entire floor, with access to a balcony on the south side.

A dominant external staircase provides direct access from the living room balcony and bedrooms to the beach, evoking the visual vocabulary of an ocean liner on the south facade. The second floor living room retains full-height casement windows opening onto the balcony, which replaced the original sliding doors shortly after building due to water ingress. The first floor bedroom windows remain minimal for privacy, but the weather boarding is lightened by white-painted wooden panels and glazed doors opening onto an external landing. The street and side facades are more reticent, dominated by dark-stained timber boarding, with a continuous string of windows at second floor level echoed by a narrow band of high-level first floor windows along the street facade. The timber entrance pod is painted blue on all sides, providing the building's single bold flash of colour and in line with the original colour scheme. The building has a flat roof.

The interior remains almost entirely intact and echoes the nautical theme throughout, with streamlined design, clever planning and walls lined with natural sanded wooden V-pointed boarding. A timber staircase runs through the core of the house. The living room is a light, airy space with varnished timber floors, fibre-board ceiling and retains original light fittings. A small kitchen is partly screened off by fitted wooden cabinets and the timber-clad head of the internal stairs. The cabin bedrooms feature stacked single or raised double wooden bunks fitted with original wooden bookshelves and light fittings. Windows are positioned at a high level so that all beds have views of the sea. The house was originally heated by electric space heaters only, as it was intended for summer use only; small radiators have since been added throughout.

This is an excellent example of a compact, streamlined holiday home in the modern idiom, representing a lifestyle not often found on the British coast. It survives as an excellent example complete with all original fixtures and fittings and a high quality of finish. The architect was a close friend of the Merricks, a prominent local family with an interest in modern design.