Middle Turn The Turn Turn End, And Retaining Walls And Pool

A group of three houses with open-fronted covered parking, designed in 1963 and built between 1964 and 1967 by architect Peter Aldington, who built Turn End as his own residence. Aldington and his wife Margaret undertook much of the construction themselves. The buildings represent an exceptional synthesis of traditional and modern approaches to village housing.

The houses are constructed from roughly rendered nine-inch foamed Durox concrete block walls, with small sections of local wychert (a mixture of natural soft chalk, clay and straw) incorporated into Turn End. Shallow monopitch roofs are finished with concrete and terracotta delta tiles, with short stacks rendered and tile-capped. The design was inspired by New Brutalism and represents a reworking of local vernacular traditions.

The entrance front forms a two-sided courtyard with garden walls that conceal windows from the street. Turn End is the largest of the three houses. All three follow the same open-plan design based around a central kitchen, with single-storey layouts and partly subdivided spaces. Windows are positioned strategically: clerestorey windows sit at the junction of roof pitches, while principal windows face enclosed courtyards. Outward-facing walls to the entrance court feature mainly high-level windows with narrow panes between thick mullions and low bedroom windows. Turn End includes garden doors from the kitchen and principal bedroom.

Interior spaces feature white-painted blockwork walls with cast concrete shelves and Stanley Brothers quarry tile floors. Exposed, lacquered purlins and rafters are paired with pine-boarded soffits. Fireplaces have deep concrete hoods with built-in solid concrete benches. Turn End contains a built-in concrete bed platform in the living space with a loft above, kitchen storage beneath, and an exposed section of original wychert wall in the studio space with an upper gallery and bedspace. Middle Turn has a timber-hung stair accessing the loft. Living areas are finished with twelve-inch red quarry tiles, while bedrooms have sealed softwood flooring.

High rendered concrete block garden walls separate the houses from the entrance court and road, and divide rear gardens. These walls form an integral part of the composition, enclosing a fourth side of a courtyard around the principal rooms of Turn End. A pool sits as an integral element within this courtyard garden arrangement.

The scheme arose when Aldington, then working for the London County Council Architect's Department, was commissioned to design a house at Askett near Prince's Risborough (grade II). This earlier project drew on ideas developed from studying continental examples and contemporary British work, particularly the honest material expression seen in Howell and Amis's houses in South Hill Park, Camden, John Weeks's housing at Rushbrooke (grade II), and Stirling and Gowan's Langham House Close (grade II). After briefly occupying Askett Green, Aldington and his wife resolved to build their own house to demonstrate that village housing could be both modern and traditional.

In Haddenham, a long village distinguished by its characteristic high wychert walls, Aldington secured a plot with outline permission for three conventional houses. With Margaret acting as developer, he redesigned the scheme to retain existing trees and No. 9 Townside, which became their gardener's cottage, while respecting the building line of adjoining properties. Turn End was positioned at the end of a short turning behind a carport. Two smaller houses were subsequently built for sale, screened from the turning by high walls reflecting those found throughout the village. These smaller houses followed a simplified version of the Turn End plan, omitting the large bedroom and studio.

The remarkable homogeneity of the group demonstrates how modern render, concrete tile and large windows can appear quasi-vernacular within a historic setting through careful massing, substantial proportions of roof and dormer to wall, and clever integration with surrounding gardens. The entire composition pivots around the older cottage at No. 9 Townside, which forms an integral part of the scheme and bounds the south side of the entrance. Aldington's architectural office (Aldington, Craig and Collinge from 1980) occupied a converted 19th-century building on adjacent land, which was incorporated into the garden.

This represents an exceptional and influential early example of romantic vernacular modernism, showing how local tradition could inspire thoroughly modern village housing while providing neighbourliness with privacy, relaxed yet exciting spaces. The buildings do not plagiarise their historic neighbours but draw as much from local tradition as from modern architectural thinking and experience. Peter Shepheard observed that the houses and gardens stand as a rare example of adding modern buildings to an ancient village without suburban character. Lord Esher, whose advice was instrumental in securing planning permission, later described it as still being one of the best postwar houses he knew.