Details
ALDEBURGH
TM4656 CHURCH WALK
837-1/4/10004 (West side)
04-DEC-00 3
and attached walls to north, east and
south, including garage
GV II
Private house and garage, linked by walls to south and east. 1963-4 by H T and Elizabeth Cadbury-Brown for themselves. Warm pinkish sand-lime brick walls. Single-storey, flat grassed roof with tall rooflights or `light scoops'. Largely open plan, with large semi-sunken living room and two bedrooms, divided by a kitchen, utility room and bathroom forming a service core in centre of the house. Entrance through paved court behind garage formed between boundary wall and projecting bedroom wing with square bay timber window. Cross passage through house to garden front, which has diagonally projecting bay to left, double and single-two pane timber-framed glass doors corner projecting glazed bay at right hand end. Connecting walls have openings to give vistas of the house and of Aldeburgh church in the distance behind, and includes built-in seating.
Interior has black quarry tile floors to circulation areas. To left of entrance, full-height double doors open on to dining area, with two steps down to sitting space with cork tile floor; upper floor level carried round as tiled ledge and upstand. In sitting space is a freestanding stove with concrete pipe. The detailing is carefully minimal, with full-height doors on nylon hinges, without surrounds, cornices or other mouldings.
The site of this little house was a bowling green in the eighteenth century, on a level plain just above the town. It was bought in 1957 with the attention of building an opera house for Benjamin Britten; when this fell through, his friends the Cadbury-Browns had the first option on the site. The result is an assured, simple composition that is one of Jim Cadbury-Brown's finest designs, with exemplary detailing by his wife. The careful attention to detail is rational, while the changes in level and grid of cross passages and toplighting gives the house a structure and a sense of considerable complexity. Included as a fine example of a courtyard house with fine detailing and an interesting and effective plan, and as a good example of a good architect's own house.
Sources
Mary Gilliat, English Houses, 1966
Eric Sandon, Suffolk Houses, 1977, p.333
Alan Powers, `3 Church Walk, Aldeburgh, Suffolk', in Country Life, vol. CXCI, no. 40, 2 October 1997, pp.52-7
Neil Bingham, `Out into the Garden', in Perspectives on Architecture, December/January 1998, pp.68-71
Listing NGR: TM4636056736
