Few properties enjoy such a spectacular, yet discreet, location as Haddon Lake House on the Isle of Wight, which is set in seclusion among two acres of immaculately restored and designed gardens and which is up for sale!
Haddon Lake House in St Lawrence is a stunning contemporary dwelling, as featured on television — most recently in George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces.
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This striking coastal home marries design-focused modernity, with its sanctuary landscape of lake, woods and walled garden — once described in print as a “miniature Lost Garden of Heligan in a magical seaside setting.”
Designed to deck out over the impressive lake, the house itself spectacularly unites architecture with the landscape by appearing to float on the water.
Haddon Lake House has featured in national and international media and has won awards for architecture and landscape.
The main house has three bedrooms and is a stylistically contemporary ‘boathouse’ with Japanese influences, which has been acknowledged for its impressive build quality and environmentally conscious credentials.
The interior, filled with light and reflections from the water, employs a cohesive palette of natural materials and glass surfaces.
The architects, Michael Rainey & Simon Clark, put much effort into giving the house its keynote ‘green’ credentials and environmentally friendly agenda.
Together they produced an award-winning building that on the one hand is flooded with light, visually mellow and wedded to its landscape, while at the same time, green, comfortable, and economic to run.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH the video tour
Also within the grounds is The Boathouse, a recently converted, detached single-storey barn with two bedrooms, adjoining the walled kitchen garden.
Haddon Lake House sits within two-acre gardens, formerly part of the historic pleasure grounds of Old Park, a significant Victorian marine residence dating from the 1820s.
Early last century, a portion of this important ‘Picturesque’ landscape, was separated from its mansion house, eventually overgrown, but still retaining the beguiling grandeur of its rich history.
The restoration of the lake site, together with the building of Haddon Lake House, was undertaken by the current owners in 2004/5.
The resulting landscape, rich in variety and the nuances of history, allows the house itself to be shown off to perfection.
Fruits, vegetables and flowers all combine in the restored organic walled garden.
This vibrant, abundant planting, embraced within a structure of paths, harks back to the philosophy of ancient gardens in sustaining the body as well as the soul.
The restored garden offers a diverse range of experiences that belie the site’s scale. The centrepiece is the early Victorian walled kitchen garden, reconstructed from scratch, complete with period greenhouse, potting shed and quadripartite access paths arranged in a decorative potager design.
Adjoining the walled garden is a quietly contemporary courtyard and to the west of the house, the gloriously tranquil one-third acre lake is enhanced with a gravity-fed Victorian fountain.
The courtyard, an outdoor relaxation and entertaining extension of the house, is a cool contrast to the lush, but low-maintenance, ‘tropical’ borders, where a diverse array of plants, including tree ferns, gingers, cannas, olives, and agaves, echo the exotic Victorian garden.
Haddon Lake House sits within the Undercliff, a designated Area of Ooutstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), some 650m from the beach at Binnel Bay.
The exceptional peace and tranquillity of the setting makes the house both the perfect family home and weekend coastal retreat.
The house is situated on a private road that is approached in a westerly direction from the village of St. Lawrence, 4km to the southwest of Ventnor.
Andrew Wilson, garden author and chair of assessors for RHS Chelsea show gardens, wrote: ‘Some places are simply special, revealing their unique character as one arrives, drawing the visitor in with a distinctive personality and presence.
‘Haddon Lake House is such a place; one dip into its isolated beauty and you will be forever hooked. It is a magical place in situation and structure that is much more than the sum of its parts.’
CLICK HERE to watch Haddon Lake House's appearance on George Clarke's Amazing Spaces - it's episode five of series ten.
LOCATION: St Lawrence
BEDROOMS: Three + two
PRICE: £1,950,000 (guide price)
AGENT: BCM
TEL: 01983 828800
WEB: bcm.co.uk
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