Halvorsen Chiltern Road Chesham Bois Anersham Buckinghamshire HP6 5PH

Building

Roofed and walled permanent structures.

Asset type

Purpose built house.

Age

Designed & built in the early 1990’s.

Rarity

Scare example in this area of a high quality modernist house, of this period.

Architectural and Artistic Interest

Halvorsen was a specific commission for the architect, for her mother. The large Edwardian house next door, originally called Three Gates, has a particularly wide plot & has an old garage/coach house type outbuilding. The original had burnt down in the 1930’s & was rebuilt. At the beginning of the 1990’s there was a planning ‘battle’ with much opposition from neighbours to the demolishion of this, to facilitate the subdivision of the plot & the construction of a new house on the grounds that the proposed modernist House was out of keeping with the locality. Permission was subsequently gained. Constructed of predominantly of blockwork, rendered & painted white, under a curving copper roof. The rear elevation is nearly all glass. To the front, the facade respects the slope of the road downwards to the right-hand side by having the garage set lower than the entrance to the main house. To offset this large opening, there is a much smaller window above. To the centre of the composition is the front door, where most of the glazing is situated predominantly vertically where this ‘slit’ has been created into the body of the house & this even continues up to the level of the roof. The right-hand part of the front, projects forward of the left-hand side. To the left, there are 2 windows of narrow proportions one above the other creating visually a ‘column’ effect culminating in this vertical meeting with a another window just below the roofline of wider proportions which then connects to the central lightwell. As well as this lightwell ‘slit’ over the front door, there is also another vertical window situated just to the right, high up, over another beneath, which has a little balcony. The curved copper roof, tucks neatly downwards at the front, capping & ‘framing’ the appearance towards the road. Subsequently, the front garden has been landscaped to compliment the design of the house. 2nd Place: Copper Roofing Competition, 1995 2nd Place: Daily Telegraph Individual Home Award, 1996 Shortlisted: RIBA Awards for Architecture, 1996. For further information & photographs: https://www.halvorsen-architects.co.uk/projects/

Group Value

Located on Chiltern Road, where there are numerous notable detached houses - albeit older ones, rather than modern ones, yet still of significance in forming the interest within the street-scene.

Landmark Status

Very distinctive building, in a road where there are no other modernist houses.

11 Jan 2023

27 Jun 2022

Find out more about this Asset in Buckinghamshire's Local Heritage List:
https://local-heritage-list.org.uk/buckinghamshire/asset/11285