Extras Perfect Pads: A Beach House

Date Published:

20/06/2008

Embedded In The Harbour Wall

I like Salcombe, especially out of season. It has plenty of very good ice-cream shops, plenty of safe sand to play on and plenty of safe water in which total novices like me can learn to sail. It also has one extraordinary house that is, at first glance, camouflaged into this place. A chunk of the building appears to be embedded in the harbour wall and its green copper roof could easily be mistaken for an upturned boat. In between, the filling in the sandwich, are the living quarters, framed by an elegant superstructure of shipbuilders' steel and almost entirely sheathed in transparent glass. These three treatments, each indicating a component of the building, prevent the treatment of this house as one architectural presence. It is hidden in the jumble of the harbour and the hillside.

Credit: Stan Bolt

Credit: Stan Bolt

Protecting From The Elements

Steel rings and oak treads form the internal stairwell that leads up to the main living areas on the open-plan first floor. Tucked away behind the giant seawall, the bedrooms and bathrooms feel protected from the waves crashing around outside. To safeguard the house, the architects built a wave deflector, so the waves reach this but not beyond.

This home is exemplary in so many ways. For a start, it kind of rewrites what seaside life is all about: not golden sands or rockpools, but ocean-going views and the full raw force of nature outside your sitting-room windows. Stan Bolt has positioned this place for full cinemascopic dramatic effect, smack bang against the waves with picture windows of both land and sea, and theatrically placed overhanging glass floors here and there for a shag's-eye view of the water below. Down in the bowels of the house, the bedrooms feel protected and enclosed. Their windows are pierced through the sea wall and from outside they look like the portholes of a transatlantic liner that was hewn out of granite. How cool is that?

In fact, this whole house has a Northern-Waters integrity you couldn't find in Cannes or Portofino. This is a British Tar of a home, one built to cocoon its occupants and carry them safely through the ravages of an Atlantic gale. One built to defy the waves and stand unmoved by the elements. A house that provides comfort, excitement and shelter from everything that British seaside weather can throw at it.