Bentley Wood

Bentley Wood is a house built in 1938 to the designs of Serge Chermayeff for himself and his family. The engineer was Felix Samuely and the job architect was Whitfield Lewis.

Materials

The house has a timber frame, part softwood and part Jarrah wood (the latter used for the exposed framing on the south front), clad with horizontal boards of Western Red Cedar fixed with copper nails. Later extensions have been clad with vertical cedar boards to distinguish them from the original parts of the house. The windows are a mixture of timber and uPVC; all but two are later replacements of the originals. One original window survives in the house itself, and the other is in the garage, now a workshop.

Plan and Approach

The house is approached from the east, largely screened by a long brick wall in yellow stocks, laid in offset courses to create a horizontal banding effect. A carriageway under the wall leads into an entrance court, framed to the east by a single-storey range running north to south against the screen wall (originally garaging and plant, latterly office and workshop), and to the south by the two-storey flat-roofed house. An L-shaped covered way runs along the north-facing entrance front of the house, linking it across the carriageway with the garage range.

The house is based on a unit of 2 feet 9 inches. Each bay is four units wide, making 11 feet, with the whole 6-bay frontage being 66 feet long. At 33 feet deep (excluding a small projection to the north-west) the house is a double square. The plan is divided longitudinally by a spine wall, separating the stair hall and kitchen to the north from the main living areas, three steps lower, to the south. At the lower level, overlooking the garden, are the drawing room and dining room, separated from one another by a brick chimney stack. At the far west of the plan is a study, spanning both floor levels. Behind the study to the north is a large cloakroom, and to the west is a single-storey, single-volume extension accessed through the study. Beyond the kitchen to the east, built against the screen wall, is what were single-storey servants' quarters and stores. This space has been partially remodelled and a first floor added to create a small self-contained flat. On the first floor of the main house the bedrooms are to the south of the spine wall, overlooking the garden, and the bathrooms and stair landing to the north.

Beneath the house is a small basement.

Exterior

The horizontality of the entrance front composition is emphasised by the orientation of the windows, particularly a long strip window on the first floor, and the boards of soft grey cedar cladding. The front door is tucked into the inside return of the north-west projection, sheltered by the elegant rectilinear timber frame of the covered walkway. A single original window remains on this front, lighting the entrance vestibule. This is a large, square plate glass window in a deep subframe standing proud of the wall face; its size and detailing indicate it was always intended as something of a feature. The other windows, though not original, appear to follow broadly the original pattern of vertical casements grouped into horizontal bands. The most obvious change to the elevation is the second storey over the servants' accommodation, impacting on the subtle massing of the house.

It is the unmistakable south-facing garden front for which Bentley Wood is best known. The house was widely published and it was the exterior shots of this elevation which created the enduring image of the house, even though it was altered soon after its completion. The exposed white-painted timber frame breaks the elevation vertically into six bays and horizontally into two floors. The ground floor is fully glazed, with sliding windows set just behind the structural frame. The glazing in the second bay to the left is fixed, broken by glazing bars into multiple horizontal panes. The first floor has continuous but not full-height glazing, set further back from the frame to create a balcony running (originally) the full width of the building. The effect is a strongly expressed grid, the solidity of the building dissolving to expose structure, breaking down the distinction between form and space, interior and exterior. While this is still very much legible in the building's fabric, alterations have had an impact. Most obvious is the infilling of the first floor balcony in the two central bays, bringing the elevation in line with the structural frame at this point. Other alterations include the extension of the roof covering over the balcony, where previously the roof joists here were fully exposed, giving a greater sense of structural transparency, and the renewal of the ground floor windows to a similar glazing pattern but with heavier frames and without the ability of the drawing room windows to slide right back across two bays. The massing has been altered by the addition of the single-storey extension to the west and the second storey to the east. These additions are clad in vertical cedar boards with a small number of conventional window and door openings.

Interior

Chermayeff's interior is well documented; luxurious but restrained, walls were lined in exotic hardwood veneers, floors laid predominantly in cork. The spine wall was lined with cupboards, providing both storage and acoustic protection. The circulation, plan and spatial character of the interior survive relatively little altered, or have been restored after previous interventions. Fittings, built-in furniture and wall finishes (specifically the veneered walls) however have been more widely lost.

The principal living spaces on the ground floor are connected through floor-to-ceiling openings, with the drawing room and study having full-height sliding doors for privacy when required. The original flooring was cork, with a strip of tiles matching those on the terrace laid inside along the glazed garden front, so that when the windows were pulled back, the room and the outside terrace became one. The original flooring has been over-laid but a contrast of flooring materials remains and though the windows have been replaced, the architectural intention of linking interior with exterior is legible. The simple brick chimney breast and fireplace opening survive in something close to their original character. The immaculately laid soft yellow bricks are exposed, now with panels of oxidised cor-ten steel used to screen damage done by previous interventions. The back of the fireplace opening has been taken out to link it with the dining room on the other side and the hearth has been laid in blue engineering bricks. As well as the full-height glazing to the south, the dining room has a multi-pane boxed-out window facing east, originally overlooking a small pool on the terrace (since infilled).

The stair is a straight flight, running parallel with and alongside the entrance front. It has an elegant Georgian character, with simple hardwood stick balusters and wreathed handrail. Whitfield Lewis discouraged Chermayeff from his original intention to design 'something much more fruity'. The risers and treads are cork, inlaid into hardwood (the cork currently covered by carpet). On the first floor landing a bank of cupboards lines the spine wall; the cupboards are original but the sliding doors have been replaced with hinged ones. Built-in cupboards remain on the opposing side of the spine wall, providing storage for the bedrooms. The cupboards survive to varying degrees, but again the doors have been altered. In the master bedroom at the far west end, two banks of original cupboards with sliding doors survive. These have unpainted wooden carcasses and white-painted doors with recessed circular metal handles. Despite some reconfiguration of the bathrooms, and the enlargement of the two central rooms through the absorption of the balcony, the overall layout and spatial planning of the first floor is little altered. An elliptical veneered timber column, where recessed doorways to the two central bedrooms break through the spine wall, marks the centre point of the house.

The bathrooms and service rooms of the house, including the kitchen, have all been refitted. Neither of the two extensions have interiors worthy of note.

Subsidiary Features

The garden terrace serves as a plinth on which the house stands in its landscape. Running along the garden front, it extends southwards at the east end to form an L, terminating originally with the Moore sculpture and the timber and glass screen, both now gone. When the house was extended to the west the terrace was extended too. Originally laid with concrete paving, it is now natural stone. The low retaining walls are of yellow brick laid in offset bands to match the screen wall which encloses the house to the east.

Beyond the terrace to the south is an open-air swimming pool in a walled enclosure and to the east of this is a sunken tennis court. The walls surrounding these features are built with the offset banding found in the original screen and retaining walls but are later additions of uncertain date.