Treehouses, living the high life
With timeless appeal, whether balanced on branches or supported by stilts, treehouses enable visitors to look down on the world
These rooms with a view offer peace and timeless appeal, as Daniel Pembrey explains
It has the same half-timbered style as the Elizabethan hall
Many of us grew up playing in treehouses, hence they represent fond childhood memories. For adults, the appeal goes deeper. Primitive human beings needed access to vantage points and to refuges from dangerous animals and pests, and arguably the instinctive appeal of treehouses hasn’t altered greatly since. It taps into some ancestral part of us.
Treehouses existed in Roman and Renaissance times and have remained popular since the late-18th century. Mature trees were once used as columns in temples. With their roots in the ground and branches in the sky, great trees have been identified as a model for Gothic architecture. The implication is that significant treehouses shared some of the spirit-lifting qualities of temples or Gothic buildings. Alas, unlike those more vaunted structures, few have survived. However, a well-preserved example can be found at Pitchford Hall in Shropshire.
What makes the treehouse there so unusual is that it was the best-preserved building in the hall’s grounds when James
Nason became co-owner in 2016. “Altered and restored at various points in its history, it had clearly been well loved and looked after,” he says. “Pitchford Hall is now open to the public again, after being closed for 25 years, and visitors gravitate once more to the treehouse. They ask me, ‘Did your father-inlaw put it here?’ I have to inform them that it was known to have existed before 1700.”
Indeed, it is believed to be the oldest extant treehouse in the world. Sitting on the horizontal branches of an ancient lime tree, it has the same half-timbered style as the Elizabethan hall visible in the middle distance. Inside, a moulded ceiling and stripped oak floor convey a surprisingly domesticated feel, and this is carried through to the outside in the ogee windows and roof slates. When built, it was entirely supported by the tree; now, both it and the tree are propped up as a precautionary measure. “Visitors often just stare out at the view of the rest of the grounds in a state of wonder,” reports Nason. “Part of the intrigue is the mystery of why it was created in the first place. One theory is that it was built to overlook the deer park, either for the purpose of hunting or observing them, but nobody knows for sure.”
Pitchford’s treehouse also brings up the link between treehouses and royalty. During a visit to Pitchford Hall in 1832, Princess Victoria watched a visiting pack of foxhounds from it, which she recorded in her diary. The link to royalty carries through to present times, in The Duchess of Cambridge’s ‘Back to Nature’ garden exhibited at the 2019 Chelsea Flower Show and in the multi-generational structure that HRH The Prince of Wales had built at Highgrove House for his children, then restored in 2015 for their children.
Elsewhere, an even earlier link to royalty can be identified at Cobham Hall in Kent, now an independent girls’ school but once the seat of the Brooke family. In 1559, Queen Elizabeth I visited the magnificent treehouse erected there by Sir William Brooke, in yet another great-bodied lime tree, this time a three-storey treehouse with each floor being able to carry some 50 souls, according to contemporary reports. For Queen Elizabeth, it served as a banqueting venue with galleries and knotted flowers that “nature seemed to have planted there of purpose in summertime to welcome her Majestie,” recorded the chronicler Raphael Holinshed. A few years later, botanist John Parkinson marvelled at “the goodliest spectacle mine eye ever beheld for one tree to carry”.
Alas, it is there no longer but another treehouse with royal links can be experienced today at Easton Lodge in Essex. The celebrated architect Harold Peto created it for the Countess of Warwick in 1902. She had been a mistress of The Prince of Wales, and he certainly visited, although it is believed that, by the time he did so, their relationship had become one of pure friendship.
Hexagonal and nestled in the crown of an oak tree, this treehouse was officially called ‘Le Robinson’. Shipwreck novels Robinson Crusoe (1719) and The Swiss Family Robinson (1812) had established a strong hold on the public’s imagination. The Countess referred to the structure as her ‘crow’s nest’ and she liked to take tea here. It has been reconstructed and reopened in 2017; now it can be visited on Easton Lodge’s open days.
The duality of primitivism and gentility, seen in the nobility’s predilection for placing treehouses in arranged landscapes, remains a theme in the way treehouses are commissioned today. “What our clients typically look for is that proximity to the natural world while retaining practical benefits,” says Simon Payne of Blue Forest, an East Sussexbased company whose treehouses start at around £40,000 but can exceed £100,000 (some have approached £500,000). Simon and his brother, Andy, founded the company in 2009 with the vision of bringing people closer to nature. Both were born and raised in Kenya, where indigenous treetop structures provided a key inspiration.
“Clients include entrepreneurs, writers and chefs who use them as a haven for creative thinking and a space in which to come up with new ideas. Often, we will include into the design a separation space, for example a rope walkway that might be augmented with, say, exotic plants, creating this impression of entering another world. It’s tremendously fulfilling seeing the rewards these ‘other worlds’ can bring to our clients.”
Another custom treehouse maker is High Life Treehouses, set up by Henry Durham in 2003. This Hertfordshire-based business handled the reconstruction of the Easton Hall treehouse so beloved by the Countess of Warwick. Clients’ needs are fascinating to behold, observes Durham. “Often it begins with a desire to have something for the kids and a belief that this will be obtained for £400 or so from Argos. What happens is parents discover their own interests, that is, aside from providing a play area for the children.”
One of High Life’s treehouses was built for a 60-year-old accountant. “He looks very much like the sort of person you’d want doing your books,” says Durham. “It is a fully-functioning office, with electricity, lights, phone and internet access and yet it is among nature. Accountants like things to balance and the work-life harmony here seems to work well for him.”
But when is a treehouse no longer a treehouse? This isn’t a joke or a trick question. “It’s true that as more clients have commissioned structures on smaller plots of land, and with structures often being detached from trees, there is a question about when they’re simply cabins on stilts,” Durham says. “But their versatility remains their blessing. Some beautiful, large trees may turn out to lack the strength, in which case the structure would need to be propped up anyway. Conversely, trees might have anomalies that in turn make attractive features. We built one high treehouse near Devizes in an oak tree that had lost a large limb and we turned that into a wonderfully distinctive feature inside.”
The big trend Durham sees is the rush towards treehouse hospitality. “Camping became glamping, which has turned into
‘treehousing’. It makes sense because treehouses offer that ideal combination of comfort and nature during an overnight stay.”
For those interested in commissioning one, there can be the opportunity of trying before you buy. One option is The Lodge on Loch Goil in Scotland. Owner Iain Hopkins built a treehouse to offer guests a unique gathering space. “A very old Scots pine tree beside the sea loch was struck by lightning and a large limb fell off,” he explains. “It was the perfect spot for a treehouse. It’s as though the tree has regrown its limb. It balances again.”
The treehouse is perched over the tidal loch with views along it. Seal and red squirrel sightings are common. “Dining in the treehouse is available to hotel guests, and visitors fly in from all over the world for intimate weddings, poker games and more,” says Hopkins. “Because of the microclimate, the view is ever changing. In the middle of December you might be enjoying the warmth of the wood-burning stove then throw open the doors to have a cigar outside, admiring the snow on the far hills.”
For an extreme version of ‘try before you buy’, head to Scandinavia. Kent Lindvall, a vocational guidance counsellor, and Britta Jonsson-lindvall, a nurse, set up a company offering holidays in the northern Swedish forests but struggled to attract visitors. The breakthrough idea was to commission a series of one-off treehouses a decade ago. They renamed the company Treehotel and count Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Kate Moss as guests.
The draw is a combination of wilderness with creature comforts. Snøhetta, the renowned Norwegian architecture practice, received the commission to create a treehouse beside the Lule River in Lapland. “It’s a fantastic but absurd location, two hours drive from the nearest town,” recounts Stian Alessandro Ekkernes Rossi, the architect involved. Fortunately, Rossi had experience with treehouses. “I grew up in the outskirts of Oslo beside a forest, which meant that I always had a plank board and a hammer and nails to hand. Treehouses are close cousins of cabins, which are incredibly popular across Scandinavia. Keep in mind these are countries with landmasses the size of Britain, yet with a fraction of the population, so we’re never far from wilderness.”
Still, the ‘7th Room’, as it was christened, presented unusual challenges. “We wanted to really be in the treetops, yet the truth is that, even with the biggest pine trees, they are not stable above five metres or so in height and any structure attached there tends to ‘dance’ around a lot. So we created a freestanding structure with a 10-metre-high platform, the legs of which mimic the surrounding pine trunks. A pine tree grows through it. You are among the birds and the views of the aurora borealis are unforgettable.”
Construction was aided by use of local materials and by designing a structure that two cranes could erect in a day. A staircase leads up to the platform and reveals the changing views by degrees. Comforts include a small elevator for luggage, indoor toilets and a fireplace. Outside there is moose, reindeer, bear and eagle spotting, (ice) fishing and a chef on hand to cook your catch.
Visitors have come from all over the world yet the majority are British. The 7th Room isn’t cheap, running to the thousands of pounds per night (it sleeps five), but that’s a fraction of the cost of commissioning a similar treehouse of your own. And should you become smitten? “We never do the same design twice,” says Rossi. “Yet the wonderful thing about treehouses is that you wouldn’t want somebody else’s. You will want your very own.”
For further details, visit: The Pitchford Estate, pitchfordestate.com/treehousepage; Easton Lodge, eastonlodge.co.uk;
Blue Forest, blueforest.com; High Life Treehouses, highlifetreehouses.co.uk; The Lodge on Loch Goil, thelodge-scotland.com; Treehotel, treehotel.se
The draw is a combination of wilderness with creature comforts