Sphinx Hill, its surrounding hard landscaping, terraces and water feature

Sphinx Hill is a house built in 1998-9 by John Outram Associates, with Anthony Charnley as project architect. The building stands on the west bank of the Thames as it flows through the village of Moulsford, with its entrance facing west and garden front facing east toward the river. This orientation, aligned with the rising and setting sun, is fundamental to the architectural design.

Construction and Materials

The house is constructed of blockwork faced in through-coloured render. The roof and gutters are copper, and windows are a combination of aluminium and timber.

Planning and Layout

The building has two storeys, with the main accommodation contained within a rectangular footprint arranged on a tartan grid with a 1.5-metre module. In Outram's iconography this recalls ancient hypostyle halls, and while the columns are largely absent, the grid is marked within the house through various devices. Outside, it extends to the paving pattern to front and rear and beyond into the garden landscape.

The floor plan shows the influence of Palladian planning in its tripartite arrangement, strong axes and stair position. There is a short, central axis running front to back, and a long cross-axis connecting the three bays north to south. The central bay is occupied by the entrance hall and stair, opening through double doors to a reception room on the garden front. The north bay contains a garage and kitchen, the latter extending out into a single-storey flat-roofed wing to the north. The south bay contains two studies. Adjoining to the south is a single-storey swimming pool wing set back from the front elevation.

A U-plan stair rises from the entrance hall in a partially enclosed, top-lit well. The stair lands within the first-floor drawing room which, with the stair, occupies the full depth of the middle bay. To the north are bedrooms and a bathroom, and to the south the master bedroom, bathroom, dressing room and doors to a first-floor terrace on the roof of the swimming pool.

Exterior Appearance

The exterior is characterised by a bold formal arrangement of segmental roofs with elevations enriched by flat planes of through-coloured render, blue engineering brickwork and patterned tiles, separated by shadow gaps. A key view of the house is from the river and the Thames path which runs alongside it, from where the integrated theme of house and garden can be appreciated.

The architecture uses a coded, symbolic language to express its iconographic narrative. The entrance front is a symmetrical arrangement of three bays, articulated by four broad pilasters carrying three overlapping, segmentally curved roofs with cyma recta modillions and oversize cyma recta gutters. The shafts of the pilasters are of sand-coloured render, the bases tiled in a tartan pattern reflecting the grid on which the house is planned. The tiles are of black, burgundy, ochre and turquoise, based on a detail from the vividly painted coffin of Djehutynakht at the Deir el-Bersha necropolis. The capitals are of black render, with a deep central V which clasps a terracotta-coloured circle. The capitals represent akhet, the hieroglyph symbolising the sun emerging over the horizon, but can also be read as beams clasped by posts. The circles are set against a blue segmental frieze which follows the curve of the eaves and suggests the arc that the sun traces through the sky.

Between the pilasters are single ground- and first-floor openings with full-width segmental transom lights. Windows with dark green frames and dark stained timber side panels are framed by chunky half-round mouldings in light ochre. The contrast of the light mouldings against the dark openings suggests the presence of large voids behind simple post and rail screens. Spandrel panels of willow green render bear terracotta-coloured winged sun motifs.

The central entrance is recessed, with a pair of painted, planked outer doors which open inwards to reveal a second flush panel door. The entrance is framed by engaged drum-like columns of blue engineering brick and bands of black and red render. To the left is the garage door, a coloured tartan pattern of vertically and horizontally planked timber.

The garden front is wider, taking in the single-storey bays of the swimming pool and kitchen wings to either side of the principal arrangement. The glazing is more extensive, but the language of colour, form and detail continues from the entrance front. In the tradition of grand riverside houses of the past, this elevation is designed to be viewed from the thoroughfare of the river and the Thames path; the eye is drawn to the house through the formalised landscape approach.

Interior Design and Features

The aesthetic themes and architectural devices of the exterior continue within, including a rich colour palette which references Owen Jones's studies of Egyptian design in his seminal design source book, The Grammar of Ornament, 1856. There are bespoke details throughout, including cyma-recta profiled wall lamps, designed by Outram, and bronze scarab beetle doorknobs by Jean Murphy. Doors are flush-panelled timber. Built-in furniture continues the gridded aesthetic found elsewhere. Half-round mouldings frame the window openings and house roller blinds. The palette of materials includes wood, stone and painted plaster. Paint is applied using various methods and tonal layering to create patination and other surface effects.

The hypostyle is expressed through the spatial organisation of rooms, and more literally through the pattern of floor coverings, wall panels separated by shadow gaps, and the manifestation of square columns and pilasters with palm leaf capitals. The design of the capitals is taken from Jones's study of those found on the Portico of Edfu. They are cast in plaster and silvered or gilded with metal paint and lacquered.

The building's theme extends to almost every part of its interior. However, there is a hierarchy of interest, with the greatest decorative elaboration focussed in the principal spaces. Built-in furniture is divided between timber construction, as found in the ground-floor studies, for example, and more modest fibreboard construction.

A key space is the first-floor drawing room. Here the colour scheme is at its most vibrant, bringing together deep blue, red, verdigris and yellow. The room is dual aspect with a barrel-vaulted ceiling between screens of paired columns and pilasters to east and west. Above each screen is an oculus in the segmental gable end. Two free-standing columns with integrated uplighters take their position on the grid of the hypostyle, mapped in the polished parquet floor. These columns are a manifestation of Outram's 'columnae lucis', or columns of light. Towards the centre of the room is a free-standing hearth in the form of an open-sided pyramid; smoke is drawn underneath the floor to a hidden flue.

Beneath the drawing room is a second, groin-vaulted, reception room with built-in display shelves. The pool house is also groin-vaulted: two bays of vaulting are supported on parallel arcades of blue marbled columns. The vaults are formed of a taut, shiny, blue plastic membrane, known as Barrisol.

Stained glass featuring Egyptian themed imagery in some of the east and south-facing segmental transom lights are by Joseph Nuttgens and date to 2012.

Landscaping and Water Features

The tartan grid of the hypostyle is marked in the brick, concrete and tarmac paving which surrounds the house. To the rear this provides a garden terrace which connects out into the formal hard landscape of the garden, visually linking the house to the river.

Iconographically, the landscape design relates to what Outram termed the 'republic of the valley': the course of a river system from its source in the mountains to its delta and mouth. On the main axis of the house, water rises up into a square infinity fountain, from where it fills a concrete rill and cascades through three pools, representing the cataracts of the Nile, each fall guarded by pairs of sphinxes. The feature terminates in a square pool surrounded by another gridded terrace towards the end of the garden. Beneath the terrace is a retaining wall of blue engineering bricks. The land below, adjacent to the river, acts as a flood plain. The retaining wall has central arched drainage outlet, corner piers and semi-circular recesses cut back to either end; the overall effect from the river is suggestive of a city wall.