Commendation for best small housing development
Hale and well met
As the well-designed and informative sales brochure - which is not always the case with many homebuilders -
said, this development of four detached and 14 semidetached houses, all with garages, on the edge of the
Cheshire village of Hale, near Altrincham (which is now in Greater Manchester), combines “Victorian elegance with contemporary living.”
Most pastiche developments make one wince, because the proportions and details are usually wrong, but this was designed for local builders Brindle Homes by local architects, the Calder Peel Partnership, who know how to get things right, having received many awards for contemporary housing developments as well as for the conservation of period houses.
This is, in fact, a new development worthy of a Civic Trust award for having redeveloped a brownfield site formerly occupied by bungalows with houses of a size, character and quality more in keeping with the vernacular of other properties in Hale Road and, as the architects point out, paying particular attention to the details, scale and mass of those close to the local Cenotaph.
But there the pastiche ends. At the early stage of design, it was agreed that a traditional housing layout with generic house types should be avoided. Instead, these are individually designed houses, each with its own identity, and all carefully related to each other, so that the perceived distance between houses was maximised by ensuring that three-storey elements were separated by lower-level wings and garages.
Apart from the houses themselves, the layout maintains the local tradition of houses fronting the road, and of having landscaping (by Claire Payne of elp:rdu) in the form of hedges, trees and small entrance gates. At Annan, even the five houses at the back of the site have their frontage to the new entrance drive, Charlotte Place. It is this attention to detail that so many volume homebuilders get wrong - and see how unexpectedly non-traditional the interiors are. The houses were sold at prices from £425,000 to £595,000.
HomeBuilder: BRINDLE HOMES LIMITED
The Courtyard, 69 Ashfield Road, Hale, Cheshire WA15 9QN
Tel 0161 929 9191 Fax 0161 929 9292
Contact: Richard Sidi, Managing Director
Email: info@brindlehomes.co.uk
Website: www.brindlehomes.co.uk
Architects: CALDER PEEL PARTNERSHIP LIMITED
20-24 Church Street, Altrincham, Cheshire WA14 4DW
Tel 0161 929 7622 Fax 0161 929 7655
Contact: Caroline Lamb, Business Development Manager
Email: carolinelamb@calderpeel.com
Website: www.calderpeel.com
Photography: MICHAEL BLACK (0161 798 8054)
