OAK FRAME HOUSE
To create a home that was tailor-made for their needs and lifestyle, Steve and Susanne Clarke built a stunning oak frame home in their very own garden
HOMEOWNERS Steve and Susanne Clarke
LOCATION Little Easton, Essex
SIZE 260m²
CONSTRUCTION Green oak frame
BUILD TIME 13 months
BUILD COST Circa £750,000
VALUE £1.6m
T heidea of building their own house was the last thing on Steve and Susanne Clarke’s mind when they began searching around for a potential new home. “We’d never had the desire to build our own home and we loved the idea of moving into a barn conversion,” says Steve. But unimpressed with any of the barns they had viewed, the couple began to formulate the idea of building a new house in the garden of their existing home in Essex where they had lived for 20 years, before concluding that planning permission for a new build in and around the village would almost certainly be declined. “We then found a plot a couple of miles away but soon realised it wouldn’t give us the must-haves we needed from our new home, one of which was the ability to enjoy distant views over green fields,” says Steve.
At that point, the couple’s lives took a turn when a new business opportunity saw them move to California for two years. When they returned and restarted plans for a new build, they thought of the house in which they’d lived in the US. “It was situated on top of a hill with panoramic views,” says Steve. “We knew this was the kind of setting we should be aiming for.”
A PROMISING DEVELOPMENT
The pair also discovered that planning restrictions in their village had become more relaxed in their absence. They then went to an open day organised by Oakwrights, and fell in love with their bespoke oak frame houses. “So we set about getting in touch with the company’s regional architectural designer, Pete Tonks,” says Steve. “Knowing how in demand he was, we felt we needed a way of grabbing his attention.” And Susanne had the answer. She penned him a poem expressing the couple’s hopes and dreams for the oak frame house they dreamed of building. Suitably impressed, Pete got back to the couple and came up with some initial sketches of an Essex country contemporary barn that impressed them.
