The Haven

This is a house, designed for a site in Surrey, having a hundred feet frontage to a road on its north boundary. The type of building is ground floor and attics, low enough to give breadth of effect, but not so low as to look like a bungalow instead of a country house.

The plan encloses a central court, from which covered entries lead to kitchen and stable-yards. From the main entrance one looks into the central court. The shade of the entry frames the picture, as it were, and in this arrangement of light beyond the shadow, there is the symbol of Hope and the suggestion of a little inland haven enclosed and sheltered. Crossing this main court and entering the front door one approaches the hall by a wide and low corridor. Part of this corridor is included as a recess in the hall, which may be curtained off, if required, when the hall becomes the dining-room. The drawing-room opens into the hall with a wide doorway, and over it a little special stair leads to the billiard-room, which has an open gallery overlooking the hall.

The south-eastern end of the house contains six bedrooms and two bathrooms, with a studio, while there are also two servants’ bedrooms in the western wing. At each end of the south front are open verandahs or garden-rooms.

Under the bathrooms is a heating chamber, which is utilised for heating the house generally and also the hot water for the baths.

The contract price for this house, with the stable and other outbuildings, in a somewhat expensive district in Surrey, including all the structural woodwork in English oak, and the floors in oak and maple throughout, was