Alderbrook Park

In August 2011, planning consent was secured for PPS 7 country house at Alderbrook Park, a 340 acre estate near Cranleigh in Surrey.

The new house occupies the site of a former Norman Shaw house demolished in 1956.

The project goes beyond the reinstatement of the original country house and includes proposals for the enhancement and restoration of the entire estate, bringing back into use historic estate buildings, structures and landscape features. The client and the design team worked hard to produce a scheme that is exemplary in terms of both architecture and sustainability. Sustainability being one of the main drivers in this project; it is seen as an inextricable constituent of the master planning, landscape design and architecture concept, not a ‘bolted on’ extra. This approach was instrumental in obtaining planning consent in the Green Belt and Surrey Hills AONB.

In the new house, two imposing courts act as giant ‘lungs’ for the building moderating the environment in the environmentally closely controlled spaces arranged around them. The courts act as both solar collectors in winter and repositories of cool night air in summer; from these spaces air, naturally tempered by a labyrinth of ducts in the ground below the house, is circulated through the living and sleeping accommodation. The house is clad in locally sourced brick and the large roofs have a glulam structure and are clad in a bronze roofing system with integral solar thermal water heating system.

Jamie Hillier of We Design For acted as Sustainability and Engineering Design lead from inception to completion.

The project was completed in 2017 and We Design For… are currently providing post occupancy services.