Couple create a unique family home... in an old Victorian greenhouse Hot property!
CONVERSIONSofwater towers and windmills, schools and churches are pretty commonplace nowadays. But you don’t find many couples bold enough to transform a derelict Victorian glasshouse into a stunning home.
Peter and Carol Leonard came across a For Sale board outside Lillesden Greenhouse in Hawkhurst, Kent, in 2003 and it immediately whetted their appetite.
At the time, the couple were living in a small Georgian house in nearby Cranbrook, but they had previously undertaken several ambitious conversions.
‘We have always hankered after interesting properties,’ says Peter, who once worked in clothing and textile merchandising, while Carol was a hairdresser in Central London. ‘ We’ve put an oast house back together and rebuilt a 1970s bungalow. We like playing around with houses.’
As a planning requirement, their first task, after hacking down the undergrowth so they could actually see what they had bought, was to restore the 75ft-long greenhouse back to its Victorian character. The building – which had a central spine wall with the greenhouse on one side, and potting sheds, a workshop and boiler house on the other – had been built as part of the Lillesden Estate in the 1850s by banker Edward Loyd.
The estate comprised several houses and a mansion, which was later used as a hospital during the First World War, then as a school.
After the school closed down, a developer bought the estate, converted the mansion into flats and sold off the other estate buildings.
‘It’s a nice community, although we are all totally independent of each other,’ says Peter.
The greenhouse had been derelict for 15 years when Peter and Carol found it, and the south-facing glass sections were collapsing. The Leonards promptly installed new glass but managed to salvage the castiron window-opening mechanisms. Once the structure had been made safe, they moved from their former house (which they had conveniently been able to temporarily rent back from their purchasers) into a rudimentary bedroom and kitchen on the other side of the greenhouse’s central wall.
‘We put down basic flooring, put in a central heating system and cooked on a small Belling cooker,’ Peter says. While in situ, they turned this space into a smart, contemporary kitchen/dining room with a slate floor, and a bedroom with limed oak floor and an en suite shower room.
They wanted to create extra space in their home so they have added a living room with a small balcony on this side of the building, and dug down to create a second bedroom and bathroom.
The glass side of the greenhouse is divided into three similar-size bays, all of which Peter and Carol have given slightly different purposes. One end bay is used for gardening implements; the other has a couple of pieces of oak furniture and a plumbago plant in it; in the middle bay there are tables, chairs and two large shades.
Peter put industrial lighting into the glass area and they use this space in which to relax. The couple have two daughters, a son and three grandchildren, and Peter says when they stay, the children are in the greenhouse all day long regardless of the time of year.
Across a courtyard, the property has a smaller greenhouse, which Peter and Carol have turned into a studio or store room.
Gardens surround the buildings, with a large lawn to the west side and a smaller lawn to the east, while to the south there is a flower walk with arches and espalier trees. Beside the second bedroom there is an almost-tropical sunken area.
BUT now the Leonards are moving on to another project. They have been left a small Victorian cottage with a half-acre walled garden in Cranbrook and, although they are now in their 70s, they say they still have the energy to ‘knock around’ another house.
Lillesden Greenhouse is on the market for £675,000 through The Modern House (themodernhouse. com, 020 3795 5920).
Houses with huge expanses of glass offer lots of light, and others for sale around the country include a 1970s Grade II listed house in Higham, Suffolk – the glass is interspersed by black-painted Douglas fir panels.
Set in just over three acres, the three-bedroom house is for sale through Bedfords (bedfords.co.uk, 01394 779444) for offers in excess of £1million.
In Scarborough, High Close is a contemporary flat-roofed, fourbedroom house built in 2010 with a predominately glass-fronted facade. The property includes a cinema, games room and double-height living room, and is for sale for £799,995 through Hunters (hunters-exclusive. co.uk, 01723 336760). And in Sutton, West Sussex, the seven-bedroom Grade II listed Forge House has a striking two-storey glass addition built by a previous owner, Sir Gerald Barry, director general of the Festival of Britain. It is for sale at £1.35million through Clutton Hughes (peterhughes.co.uk, 01798 344554).