Parkham Wood House

Parkham Wood House

A house built in 1960 to a design by architect Mervyn Seal, this modernist dwelling is situated on a steep cliff in Brixham, with views over the harbour and sea.

The house is supported on five brick cross walls set on concrete slab foundations bedded on natural rock. These carry projecting cantilever beams in concrete that support the front part of the building. The floor is laid in pre-cast hollow beams accommodating the reinforcement of the cantilever. The roof has timber joists running from the rear solid wall to the front fascia, supported by beams over the glazed windows and by five slender steel columns concealed within the large window frames. The roof is covered with 2-inch thick panels of compressed straw, covered and sealed with cardboard, and includes a circular rooflight above the living room.

The house has an open elongated plan with an entrance hall to the rear and a kitchen at its far north end, which sits above a garage with study. The central part contains an open dining area and a living room and snug with a full-length balcony. Three bedrooms are situated on a mezzanine level at the far south end.

The distinctive butterfly-shaped, asymmetrical west front is fully glazed with coloured vitroslabs at its north end, below the kitchen windows. The bedroom wing to the south projects slightly forward, with the building's form framed by deep projecting soffits continuing down the side walls and articulated by a broad white vitreous-enamelled asbestos fascia. The central facade features a rectangular balcony with glass panels below the guard rail, leading to an external two-flight stair with a custom-made metal spine (made by metalworkers in Brixham harbour) supporting utile mahogany treads.

The rear elevation, facing the cliff, is almost entirely blank save for a narrow rear entrance to the south bedroom wing and a small flat-roofed extension added later in the 20th century. The cantilevered south end has a square window, set off-centre, lighting the master bedroom.

The interior has survived remarkably well with many original features intact. These include a V-jointed parana pine ceiling hung with a bespoke coloured glass chandelier, a snug at the end of the sunken living room with a local blue and red limestone wall terminating the vista from the open dining area, glazed sliding doors with utile mahogany frames and original door handles opening onto the balcony, a glazed bedroom on mezzanine level overlooking the living room, a custom-made stair with metal spine supporting utile mahogany treads matching the external stair design (later railings added and not of special interest), fixed metal and utile mahogany shelving units separating the dining area from the living room and entrance hall, timber-framed walls covered in strip V-jointed solid Agba boarding, and utile mahogany pelmets. Floors are in concrete lined with polystyrene insulation and screed providing underfloor heating.

The house was built against a steep cliff with natural rock formations integrated into the design, further emphasised by a dramatic zig-zag drive cut through the rock. The fully glazed front with its balcony offers wide panoramic views of Brixham, its harbour and the sea.

Parkham Wood House was built in 1960 for John Brady, owner of an adjacent hotel. The contractors MP Kent Ltd completed the house within six months. Mervyn Seal studied architecture at the Royal West of England Academy, School of Architecture in Bristol from 1949 to 1954, then worked briefly at Gerrard Taylor and Partners in Bath before joining the City of Bath Planning and Architects Department, where he designed Bath Haycombe Crematorium in 1957. His early domestic designs include Lyncombe Coach House near Bath (1956-57), a conversion of a derelict coach house and stables, for which he won an award in the RIBA and Ideal Home Small House Design Competition for a patio bungalow design. In 1959 he completed Bridge House in Condover, Shropshire, for his own young family, but moved out that same year when he opened his own architectural practice in Brixham, which he ran from Parkham Wood House until 1996.

Parkham Wood House was the first in Seal's series of four houses featuring a butterfly roof, all situated in the Torbay area. The others are Kaywana Hall (1962, for his family), Elbury Hall (1962, for friends) and Corridon House (1963), now altered and extended. All four featured extensively in the Christmas 1963 edition of Ideal Home magazine. At Parkham Wood House, beyond the client's request for a three-bedroom house, Seal was given complete freedom of design. The elongated open plan was first used by Seal in earlier domestic work such as Bridge House (1958). Seal's architectural style is strongly influenced by Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.