Somerton Erleigh

Somerton Erleigh is a single-storey family house of Grade II listed status, positioned at a high point in a rural landscape. The building comprises a series of irregularly shaped pavilions arranged around a flat-roofed glazed 'cloister' that faces into a central square paved courtyard garden.

The walls are of cavity construction, with an outer skin of reclaimed local blue lias stone and an inner skin of rendered concrete block. The pitched roofs are covered in slate tiles, with solar panels on the eastern slope facing the courtyard. Flat roofs are covered in glass fibre, replacing former asphalt. Fascia boards are white painted. Windows are timber framed and double-glazed, with full-height aluminium sliding windows. The sliding windows to the north side of the courtyard were recently replaced (2011) with UPVC framed sliding doors, while those to the south side of the living room were replaced at an earlier date in aluminium. External doors are natural timber with glazing; those to the garage and stone water tower are timber replacements.

The plan arranges the accommodation as follows: the large living room occupies the north-east side; two adult bedrooms and bathrooms are to the south-east; three children's bedrooms lead off a playroom to the south-west; and an open-plan kitchen and dining room is to the north-west. The entrance and estate office are positioned at the north corner, facing outwards as the more public part of the house. The garage projects from the main body to the north-west, accessed internally via the utility corridor, creating an extended wing that frames the entrance drive.

The elevations express the separate internal volumes and geometric plan. The skyline is deliberately fragmented to echo agricultural buildings, punctuated by a chimney and water tower. The roofs of individual elements comprise two differently angled steep pitches set back to back with a diagonal sloping ridge, creating triangular clerestory windows; two of the larger triangular windows have since been replaced with a central mullion. The garage and study have mono-pitch roofs.

On the north-west entrance façade, the office and kitchen pavilions are divided by the low flat-roofed entrance, with the kitchen and garage pavilions separated by a smaller flat-roofed entrance, and the water tower rising above. The kitchen has a band of windows, but the end walls of the office and garage are largely blank except for a small office window. The projecting end of the garage forms the highest point of the house. On the north-east elevation, two volumes feature full-height glazing: the longer dining room and higher office, the former bisected by the chimney and the pair divided by a narrow flat-roofed timber-boarded link. To the left, the living room and the set-back blank end wall of the main bedroom pavilion are divided by a flat-roofed brick recessed entrance. The south-east elevation has two projecting bedroom pavilions with full-height glazing and a flat-roofed timber-boarded bathroom between them. The blank end walls of the children's block and living room are set back to left and right respectively, with another recessed entrance dividing the adult and children's bedroom pavilions. The south-west façade comprises three smaller bedroom volumes with full-height glazing, stepping back from each other between the blank walls of the garage and water tower and the adult's wing.

The interiors feature white-painted rendered walls and quarry tiled floors, with open pitched roofs and pine-boarded ceilings. Original fittings and fitted furniture, including cupboards set into walls for deeper storage, remain throughout. In the living room, dining room and playroom, which are open to the courtyard, the 'cloister' circulation space is delineated by the flat ceiling and wooden posts. Full-height sliding doors open onto the internal courtyard, providing views from room to room across this space. The dining and kitchen room is divided by a screen of fitted wooden cupboards running diagonally across the room. The living room has a stone fireplace in the north-east wall.