A few years ago a good friend of ours, Andrew, who also happens to be a very talented architect, suggested I check out a house called ‘Turn End’. The internet didn't really turn up much other than a few grainy images of what looked like a Spanish Villa in a sleepy village in Buckinghamshire.
A few months later, I had feasted on all I could about Peter Aldington and his work. ‘A Garden and Three Houses’ was my introduction beyond those grainy internet images. After that, I delved further into the work of Aldington, Craig & Collinge and while impressed, I always kept coming back to Turn End. I’ve always had a bit of an obsessive character and it wasn’t long before I needed to visit and see it in person.
Turn End was built by Peter and his wife, Mrs Aldington in the 1960s. They have lived there ever since. It’s great. It’s not your flashy, ostentatious, exercise in excess that most ‘one off’ houses we see nowadays are. In fact, it is not even a 'one off' house, it is one of a collection of three houses on a modest plot in the village of Haddenham. Peter and his wife, Mrs Aldington, needed to build three to fund the building of their own home. When I say Peter and his wife built their own family home, I mean they actually built it together, not just designed it but actually got out there and got their hands dirty.
I also watched a video about the building of Turn End where Peter talks about the difference between an amateur and professional builder. I think he distils it down to something like confidence and lack of hesitation. I think he was being rather modest and a little bit unfair on several professional builders, certainly the ones I work with anyway but I kind of get where he was coming from.
Turn end, along with the other two houses, are now Grade II* listed. Peter has designed 9 other houses. All of them are now listed. He has designed more listed buildings than any other living architect. He retired at he age of 55 and retreated into his garden. I absorbed all this information before our visit, we’d signed up to become ‘friend of turn end’ and had booked ourselves on a open day, luckily this was an open day when Peter would be in attendance.
We sat in his study whilst he went through the story of Turn End. Nothing I hadn't read or heard before. I was more interested in finding out out about the practice. As someone who had just set up on my own I wanted to understand how he achieved what he did and also why it came to a premature end.
It was quite a sad story and I remember leaving that day frustrated that Peter had fallen out of love with architecture (well, more the process of getting things built). The stress and commitment involved had left a strained relationship with his family and work life balance. I certainly didn't feel motivated, as a young architect it wasn't something I wanted to hear and I was also conscious that my own mental weaknesses might not be up to the task of running my own practice.
A few years later, I went to the release of his book ‘Houses’ at some glass and concrete architects office in south London. It was so ubiquitous I cannot even remember where it was. It felt odd that Peter would be in a place like this. I remember seeing him in his yellow fleece with everyone else around him in thick rimmed glassed and clothes along various points of the greyscale. It was so different from the first time I met him, it made me feel uncomfortable, so uncomfortable in fact that I ended up having to leave after a mild pang of anxiety…it was also at this point that I realised I needed to leave London, I needed to find a place where I could belong and connect with the outside world, just like Peter had in Turn End.
The work of Aldington, Craig and Collinge is a constant reference for us here at Chalk. Perhaps because of their rural existence and similar size to where we want to go, perhaps because we strongly believe the connection between house and landscape is key to a successful project or maybe because we just like wearing yellow fleeces. One thing I do know is whenever we get stuck with a design problem in the studio, we often turn to each other and ask, 'what would Peter do?'
