Just because a house dates from the 18th century, there’s no reason it can’t
have 21st-century ecological credentials. Ask Barry Morgan. When he bought
Foots Cray Place, a Georgian stables complex on 2½ acres, in November 2005,
it needed complete renovation. Built and designed by Isaac Ware in 1756, the
property was in an appalling state after almost 60 years in the hands of
Kent county council and, more recently, Bexley council.
The stables, an adjoining chauffeur’s cottage and a smoking room – where a
former owner, Lord Waring, used to enjoy a quiet cigar and, rumour has it,
entertain his mistress – were once part of the Foots Cray estate,
established by Sir Francis Walsingham, secretary of state to Elizabeth I.
The main house, a Georgian rebuild, burnt down in 1949. When Morgan started
work, the outbuildings were derelict, and the area in front had become a
gravel car park, strewn with council equipment and rubbish from Foots Cray
Meadows, Kent’s wilder version of Hampstead Heath, which adjoins the
property. The various buildings carry separate Grade II listings, and all
were on English Heritage’s “at risk” register.
Two years later, the site, a 10-minute drive from Sidcup, has been
transformed. The stables complex has been beautifully restored and converted
into a spacious eight-bedroom family home, and the elegance of its early
Georgian design has emerged. The house and grounds that Morgan, 53, and his
wife, Roz, 52, have created sit within a high perimeter wall, restored and
where necessary recreated in brick; the ornate front gates were recovered
from the overgrown garden and restored. Inside, the place is a glossy,
modern country pad, all bright open-plan spaces and high-tech lighting. (The
house is rigged up with Cat 8 cabling, so it is “future-proofed” for
advances in home technology.)
Arguably the most stunning aspect of the house, however, is its greenness.
“From the start, we wanted this to be eco, partly to prove you could do it
with a listed building,” Morgan says. The home has been awarded a C on its
energy-performance certificate – remarkable for a period property.
The scale of the project may have daunted some, but Morgan is experienced in
such matters: his company, Morgan Restoration, does up historic buildings
and divides them into flats. Even so, Foots Cray Place was a tricky
prospect. Morgan began negotiating the purchase with Bexley council in 2002.
As a condition of selling, it insisted any prospective buyer devise a plan
to revamp its maintenance depot at the back of the site. It wasn’t until
this was completed, in February 2006, that Morgan was given access to the
stables to start on the house.
Working on a derelict property had some unexpected advantages. The level of
insulation, for example, exceeds that required by building regulations, as
Morgan was able to gut the interior and add wall insulation. He used double
argon-filled solar glazing – an insulating glass that stops heat
transmission – when he replaced the windows. And he could install the latest
in eco-technology, including whole-house heat-recovery ventilation, which
recycles air that would usually be wasted, such as bathroom condensation. “I
hate waste,” he explains. “It’s one of the reasons I enjoy reusing old
buildings.”
An 18,000-litre rainwater-recycling storage tank supplies water for the garden
and for flushing the loos. Sun pipes feed daylight down from the roof into
four windowless utility rooms, so they only require light bulbs at night,
“even on a dull day”. Meanwhile, 270 sq ft of solar panels on the flat roof
of one arm of the rear extension heat two 1,000-litre water-storage tanks in
the cellar, which provide some of the home’s underfloor heating, all its hot
water and heat for the 41ft indoor swimming pool: a £10,000 scheme.
The layout is unusual, dictated in part by the two-storey building’s original
purpose. The main entrance is at the side, its character retained with
simple exposed brickwork. A glass sliding door on the left opens to what was
the chauffeur’s cottage. This is now a two-bedroom flat – though not fully
self-contained, it would make an ideal granny flat. A brick-walled hallway
leading around to the right takes you to the main four-bedroom family
section. Running off the large open-plan kitchen/dining area is a
library/study with its own wet room, and a hobby room, which has its own
bathroom. A huge glass and steel staircase leads to the bedrooms and
television area on the floor above.
A striking, contemporary two-pronged cedar-clad extension at the rear contains
a sunken seating area, positioned to take in views of the garden, and an
impressive leisure area: as well as a pool, it has a gym and changing
facilities. “We wanted a 2007 building added onto our 250-year-old building,
so it’s clear where the main intervention in the building took place,”
Morgan says. Although he and Roz were responsible for the conversion and
design of the original building’s footprint, the extension was designed by
the architects MKA, a Kent-based practice known for its work on listed
buildings and conservation areas, and which had impressed him with an
extension on his original family house, a barn conversion eight miles away.
Morgan has compromised neither on modern comforts nor on the house’s original
Georgian features. “The rule is, when you have original features, keep
them,” he says. The high-tech double glazing, for instance, is not to be
seen on the windows of the facade: here, he felt it important to replicate
the original Georgian style, which can be done only with single panes. Hooks
that were used for tying up the original equine occupants now act as
decoration for the hallway’s exposed brick walls. In the upstairs bedrooms,
where Morgan has installed slick bathrooms and wet rooms, he also uncovered
and left exposed original timber beams.
The garden – Roz’s domain – is a blend of modern aesthetics and green
sensibilities, with two-thirds of an acre given over to onions, lettuces and
pumpkins. The Chelsea-gold-medal-winning landscaper Chris Beardshaw has
created “rooms” of vegetable patches, wild flowers, shrubs, ponds and
fountains. A wall splits the grounds in two, and the smoking room, which
contains yet another two ensuite bedrooms and a sitting area, lies at the
end of the second section, beyond a greenhouse crammed with tomatoes. “Roz
is even greener than me,” Morgan says. “When all our kids were living with
us, we only filled one bin bag a week because she composted so much.”
Right now, though, few people seem to be following the Morgans’ example and
renovating grand old buildings with a green agenda. According to Julian
Brooks, managing director of Green Moves, a website that lists eco-friendly
homes for sale, the “hardest nut to crack” is existing property. “Most
people think it’s impossible, because it is hard to retrofit features such
as insulation in listed properties,” he says. “We’ve probably shown a
handful [similar to Morgan’s] on Green Moves.
“What tends to happen is that people are doing it for themselves, not to add a
profit. They do it because they want to contribute to the climate, but don’t
like modern property.”
Agents say it is hard to gauge whether people are prepared to pay a premium
for green features, on top of the high prices top-end houses are selling
for. “Barry didn’t do this as adevelopment scheme, he did it for himself,
and his additions are not fully reflected in the price,” says Richard
Gayner, head of country houses at the estate agency Savills. “This project
is very unusual. We have priced without thinking too carefully about the
green agenda.”
Unbelievably, after 22 months of hard slog, and after just a few months of
camping out amid packing boxes at the new place, the Morgans are selling up
and going back to their old home. They realise that moving into such a large
place just as two children had flown the nest had not been well thought
through – and their other home has not sold, in what is a slowing market.
“I’ve spent too much,” Morgan says. “My acquisition costs were about £1.25m
and I’ve spent about £2m after that. The rainwater-recycling storage
alone cost the best part of a pound a litre to put in. Nobody is going to
give me that £18,000 back on top of this house.”
He realised he would have to sell about four months ago. “I ummed and ahhed
for five minutes,” he says, “then thought, ‘I’ve always said I was going to
put that solar system in, so I’m going to put it in.’ The main thing is,
I’ve done it. I’ve taken a redundant building that nobody wanted and turned
it into something really nice without compromising one bit. This building
deserved that.”
Foots Cray Place is for sale for £3.5m through Savills; 01689 869601, www.savills.co.uk
