Award Winner for Best Landscaping of a Development
APPLE-PIE ORDER
Snowdenham Hall, Snowdenham Lane, Bramley, Guildford, Surrey GU5 0DB
Michael Wilson has featured in these awards several times in previous years for his painstaking and innovative restorations and conversions, not only of large country houses such as Snowdenham Hall but also of large commercial and industrial buildings such as mills and factories.
What is particularly interesting about his work is that he is not just content to repair and restore a building. As an architect, he also considers how to improve a building to make it more efficient in use, and then carries out the building works so that it is often impossible to detect the joins.
At Snowdenham Hall, a Grade II listed house built in 1886-87 to designs by the master of the Surrey vernacular, Ralph Neville (with a beamed Great Hall modelled by "J Bentley" who was possibly John Francis Bentley, the architect of Westminster Cathedral), he has improved the gloomy and cramped entrance way to the house, which was at the back of the building, overshadowed by a steep bank and trees, as can be seen in the aerial photograph.
By cutting back the bank and thinning the trees and shrubs, not only did he make the whole of the entrance front light and spacious, but he also introduced terraces for the apartments on the top floor, giving them gardens in the air. He also excavated the lightwell of a gloomy semi-basement to create a light and airy apartment.
On the garden front of the house, which enjoys spectacular views, he transformed the gloomy cloister under the garden terrace, but he also had the imagination to demolish an unsightly outbuilding and excavate the ground at the side of the house to create underground garages for owners who want their expensive motor cars to be safe and secure.
Expensive as this construction was, it clearly paid off in the prices he was able to achieve for the nine spacious apartments he has created in the Hall, which ranged in price from £650,000 to £1.75 million. An added bonus from this is that he then created a large and varied garden on top of the garages, with extensive new planting and even a large sculpture.
On the other side of the house, he demolished a ramshackle glazed lean-to and replaced it with a large sun room designed to look as though it was part of the original house. It is all this attention to detail in this and other projects that have attracted a large following. It also ensured that this scheme was judged to be this year's award winner for the Best Landscaping of a Development.
Homebuilder: MICHAEL WILSON RESTORATIONS
Kent House, 81 High Street, Cranleigh, Surrey GU6 8AU
Tel 01483 271733
Fax 01483 276111
Website: www.mwrestorations.co.uk
Contact: Michael Wilson, Director.
Email: mjw@mwrestorations.co.uk
Architect: MICHAEL WILSON (as above)
Landscape Designer: CAROLINE PEARCE (as above)