Style with sympathy

Chandler’s House, Alton Barnes, Wiltshire - The sympathetic restoration of a delightful house has created new, liveable and stylish interiors within potentially awkward constraints, as John Goodall discovers

-  John Goodall

CHANDLER’S HOUSE stands in Pewsey Vale with a clear view of the Alton Barnes White Horse, a huge chalk figure cut into the slope of Milk Hill in 1812. It’s a house without a public front, in the sense that it presents to the narrow access lane behind little more than a long, deep catslide roof. That makes the experience of passing into the property all the more surprising. To the west, overlooking the garden, is the façade of the house you might ordinarily expect to see overlooking the street: a neat elevation of about 1700, five window bays wide with a central door and hipped roof (Fig 1). One small asymmetry— a narrow window to the left of the door—lends interest and charm to the whole.

The house is built of brick laid in a neat bond that is exactingly picked out in colour, with red stretchers and headers that have been burnt deep maroon in the kiln, a finish typical of smarter 18th-century buildings in the wider locality. Another mark of the relative expense of the building is its detailing with stone angle quoins, moulded string course and window surrounds. In their original form, the windows were divided by mullions and transoms of stone, but these have since been cut out and replaced with sashes. Despite the careful trimming of the mouldings, the change has left telltale, matching blocks of stone-the truncated ends of the transoms-to either side of several of the openings.