The Country House Ideal – Recent Work by ADAM Architecture

It is not only the quantity of work illustrated in these pages that impresses the reader, but also the variety. The chapter headings ‘Anglo-Classical’, ‘Rural Romantics’, ‘Palladian’ and ‘Neoclassical’ give only a flavour of the stylistic range. Part of the reason for this is that ADAM Architecture comprises four architects: Robert Adam, Hugh Petter, Nigel Anderson and George Saumarez Smith. Each has his own architectural personality. Petter likens the offering to that of Savile Row: you go to the tailor with whom you feel most comfortable. Equally, none of these architects is enslaved to a dogma. Even to call ADAM Architecture a Classical practice is misleading. It is that, but more besides.

While the firm is based in the cathedral city of Winchester, Hampshire, there is also a London office. It is no coincidence that this occupies the same Georgian building as the Art Workers’ Guild. The Guild, founded in 1882, was one of the defining institutions of the Arts and Crafts movement. Adam, Petter and Saumarez Smith are all Brothers of the Guild, and the last two have served as Chairman of the Trustees. An Arts and Crafts emphasis on superlative building skills is at the core of ADAM Architecture. The merest glance at the houses in this book shows a dedication to the finest craftsmanship in the building trades. It is noteworthy that the technical director, Paul Hanvey, whose role it is to ensure that each detail of a building works perfectly, is – as Jeremy Musson explains – ‘embedded’ in the design team.

The architects who flourished during that highpoint of British domestic architecture at the turn of the twentieth century often roamed from the vernacular revival, inspired by the cottages and farmhouses of the Home Counties, to the red-brick, red-blooded Classicism of the English Renaissance. Both were regarded as national styles. That they take their place side by side in these pages suggests a continuity with two golden ages of house design – that of Edwin Lutyens and, before him, that of Christopher Wren. Nigel Anderson is specially attracted to plans of the ‘butterfly’ type, with canted sides, which were developed in the Arts and Crafts period. They allow the maximum number of rooms to enjoy both sunlight and views.

Most of the houses in this book are of the type that Sir Lawrence Weaver characterized, in a series of early twentieth- century books, as the small country house. They are by no means small by ordinary standards; but they are not the rambling monsters beloved of the Edwardian plutocracy, with ballrooms that could also serve for theatricals and courtyards of rooms for filling oil lamps and brushing hunting clothes. The new country houses are generally compact, in what George Saumarez Smith describes as ‘the villa tradition’. Palladian models work well for modern life, providing a series of rooms of different shape and size that can be used as the client needs at the moment. As Saumarez Smith says, ‘Palladio’s houses were not used all the year round: the owners turned up with their belongings and occupied them as they saw best at the moment.’ Their adaptability prefigures the needs of an age in which clients answer emails in whichever room they happen to be, and televisions are just as likely to be found in a bathroom or kitchen as in a sitting room.

Another comparison, observes Hugh Petter, is with the plantation houses of the American South, which were planned more simply than British country houses; not having attached service wings or attic bedrooms, their rooms were more intensively used. But historical parallels will take us only so far in examining the buildings in this book. despite the accusations of pastiche that are still thrown about by unobservant critics, the houses designed by this practice are unlike those of any other period of architecture. They could have been built at no other time than our own.

A generation ago, Classicism and tradition were, for some architects, a place of mental refuge to which they retreated in an attempt to keep modernity at bay. To some Classicists, they may still be. This, however, was never the case with Robert Adam. His younger partners, entering practice at a time when the stylistic battles of the past had been won, never felt the need to adopt the extremist position of a previous architectural generation. There is no attempt to imitate the country houses built at earlier periods of history. Houses that are broadly Georgian in feeling do not always have sash windows; casement windows are easier to triple-glaze. The Classical language is as flexible as that of English in the computer age.

Some expectations of the twenty-first-century client would have been familiar to William Chambers or James Wyatt. Somebody who goes to the trouble and expense of commissioning a new country house will want the first sight of it to impress. It will need a strong façade and an imposing entrance hall. There will then probably be a number of reception rooms of formal mien. The shape and relationship of these spaces are tried and tested. But when we get to the area in which the family spends most of its time – the kitchen/living room and perhaps associated suite – historical precedent runs out. The kitchen is now likely to command the best view on the ground floor. Attached to it could be a dining room, a small sitting room, a conservatory; there may be a further kitchen for caterers. Inevitably, new requirements generate new architectural forms. They also demand a lot of new thought.

Upstairs, bathrooms and wet rooms have arrogated to themselves an importance not seen since the onyx and alabaster bathrooms of the Art Deco era. master bedroom suites may contain two bathrooms, two bedrooms and a sitting room: these are homes to be occupied and enjoyed by their owners, rather than Elizabethan-style power houses for the domination of the countryside or centres of Victorian paternalism, where the tenants could be feted in the great hall. (There is a comparison with the resort houses built on the edges of big American cities in the early twentieth century and later, where sport and relaxation were the priority.) These days, staff are not relegated to the barrack-like rooms re-created for television’s Downton Abbey; comfortable, semi-independent quarters have to be provided for owners wanting to attract a good couple.

One of the benefits of the traditional house is that its construction provides high thermal mass, making it inherently energy-efficient – unlike glass, which, as Adam notes, is the ‘default position of modernism’. Traditional appearance does not in any way preclude the gizmos of the latest domestic technology – although it is noticeable that the desire for touch-screen systems, whereby six or seven different lighting circuits in a room can be controlled from an iPad or iPhone, has waned, as clients come to feel they bring an unnecessary degree of complexity into daily life. On the other hand, light switches that do not need to be wired to the lights that they operate offer practical benefits, particularly to owners of listed buildings (those that are protected by law on account of their historical or architectural interest). Perhaps this reflects a trend among the people – thoughtful, imaginative and successful – who commission new country houses. Philosophers throughout the ages have noticed that simplicity promotes happiness. The same might be said of tradition.