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Stonecrop was designed in 1955
by Coventry-born and Birmingham-trained architect
Robert
Harvey (1919-), after a frustrating intercourse
with the local planning office. The house was
self-built on Campden Hill, Ilmington, with the
help of family and friends to offset costs. Today
it remains the Harvey family home; testimony to
an architectural practice which, among projects
for corporate clients, supplied domestic architecture
of quality to a wide range of purses: a schoolteacher,
a retired businessman, a builder, etc.
Harvey stresses that a house
is a 'shelter' for 'living in' and that, consequently,
its external appearance should be the result of
what goes on inside rather than be the expression
of some preconceived idea about how it should
look.
This is evident in the design
of Stonecrop, built on the flank of a hill - on
a gradient of 1/7 - now shrouded in dense vegetation.
From the outside the house does not give anything
away and one could easily assume that it is a
bungalow built on levelled ground.
The overhanging roof, the emphatic
display of roughly cut Cotswold stone and clerestory
windows bring to mind the name of Frank Lloyd
Wright, whom Harvey regarded (and still quotes)
as an inspiration and a reference since his student
days. 'Ensure that the whole building is clear
in your mind before putting pencil to paper' Harvey
replies, to my question about the role of drawing
in facilitating the emergence of ideas.
Descending the stone-floored
staircase into the double height living room and
catching the splendid view of the Malvern Hills
through the panoramic window in the dining
area one realises that the house hangs on
a steep slope which contributes to its internal
dynamism.
With its spectacular stone fireplace,
and chimney breast, the living
room acts as the anchor point for the different
areas of the house (functional spaces) which fluidly
unfold around it (according to an open-plan on
two levels) along an ascending spiral: Down –
hall, staircase, living, dining, kitchen; Up:
sitting, study, bedroom, bathroom, bedroom, gallery.
Contrasting with the monumentality
of the roughly hewn stones, substantial timbers
and Hornton stone floors, the transparent skin
of the walls and corners
afford extensive views of the courtyard, surrounding
garden and the valley in the distance. This was
achieved by releasing the corner walls and a substantial
part of the walls from their traditional load-bearing
function, and by redistributing the weight of
the roof on counter-levered supports.
In spite of this transparency
of the walls, stone remains a prominent feature
of the interior, left apparent in its 'natural'
quarried state, as a celebration of the material.
Timbers are also prominent:
12' by 8' English elm for the balcony boards and,
for storage, afrormosia - a hard wood with a close
grain similar to teak - and contribute a warm,
natural feel to the interior. In the kitchen formica
was introduced, where appropriate, for work tops
and cupboard doors. Throughout the house storage
space is maximised by an extensive use of built-in
furniture and shelving (discrete and unobtrusive)
thus limiting the need for conventional furniture
to chairs and tables.
In the kitchen, a judicious
system
of shelves with lifting doors (garage-style),
designed and made by Harvey, runs above the work
bench providing selective storage for boxes and
jars with minimum waste of space. In the hall
and bedrooms, built-in wardrobes and cupboards
provide a warm finish to the walls and unobtrusive
storage space. For the sitting and dining areas
Harvey made some of the furniture himself using
recycled timbers.
The custom-made dining table
and chairs were manufactured by Ercol from High
Wycombe who, besides their modern interpretations
of traditional chairs, supplied a custom-built
table with an irregular top matching the splay
of the wall and the built-in bench to Harvey's
specification. Walking, sitting and looking around
the house, one experiences a special sense of
space. Unlike some of the more 'boxed-in' solutions
preferred by some of his clients, the quality
of space here - open, fluid, convivial and generous
- is what makes this house special, as the members
of the 20th Century Society fortunate enough to
enjoy Bob and Beth Harvey's hospitality on the
recent Tour of Harvey Houses in The Midlands were
able to appreciate. This is fitting as Harvey
considers 3-dimensional space as the primary material
of architecture.
gerardmermoz@hotmail.com
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