With its golden sand sweeping along the bay towards Lyme Regis, the young river bubbling into the surf and the weathered limestone cliffs rising and falling along the Jurassic coast, there are few more picturesque beaches in the country than the one at Charmouth. And it was, of course, that view that Allan and Ali fell in love with.
Ali, who works as an advisor on catastrophic injury awards, and Allan, a retired KC who had spent most of his working life travelling around the north of England dealing with criminal cases, just happened to be passing an estate agents and saw a picture in the window. It wasn’t just love, it was love at first sight. ‘We weren’t even looking for a house,’ Allan says.
All the rooms except two have cathedral ceilings. They’re completely open and look magnificent
They certainly weren’t looking for the existing building that occupied the triangular site on the cliffs above Lyme Bay. It was an old house they quickly termed ‘the shack’ and was riddled with asbestos. They figured they could demolish it, at some expense, and get planning permission to build a modern home.
‘After being assured we would be 1,000 years from falling over the cliff face, I cashed in my pension,’ says Allan.
Planning permission in such a scenic spot was always likely to prove an ordeal. ‘We figured we could build an “upside-down” house to maximise the view and tried to move the footprint up the hill, but the planners wouldn’t allow it,’ Allan says. ‘In the end we had to use the footprint of the original building.’
They turned to Phil Coffey, of Coffey Architects, for help, after being introduced by a friend who worked on large office buildings. Coffey has done more than a few of those.
‘It was a tough planning environment, given it’s an area of outstanding natural beauty, but we like to think we’re good at planning,’ Coffey says. ‘A sensitive architectural response helped convince the planners – we moved the proposed home further north so it fitted into the existing line of houses and turned it so that the profile, as seen from the coast, was as small as possible, with the volumes hidden behind each other. We estimate we were able to increase the size [compared to the previous occupant] by about 40 per cent.’
Planning permission was finally granted for the project in 2017, three years after they bought the site. But it wasn’t just securing that that was a battle: there were also problems putting in an access road, thanks to an uncooperative neighbour. Then came the departure of the project manager and issues with the geology. ‘There was so much movement with the soil – greensand on top of gault clay – and effectively a stream running through it,’ Coffey says. ‘We put in 30 concrete piles down to six metres and it became a significant piece of engineering.’
In fact, Allan estimates that the foundations alone – the piles and the concrete raft they hold up – cost £250,000 out of a total budget of about £1.5 million, including the outside landscaped spaces and Ali’s prized yurt.
Costs on the 1,600 sq ft property ballooned during the pandemic. ‘Everything Kevin McCloud says on Grand Designs is true,’ Allan jokes. ‘It always costs more and takes longer than you think it will.
‘During the pandemic, it was all out in the open so we were able to carry on. But there were interruptions as people went off sick and then all the prices shot up. Wood went up 50 per cent. Paint too. We bought handles from Ukraine the week they were invaded by Russia. But by then we were totally committed. We’d sunk our life’s savings into this, sold the houses in London and Charmouth. We had no backup – this was it.
‘I would never do this again, honestly, but I have no regrets as I have died and gone to heaven. I have never lived like this.’
He certainly hasn’t. In fact Ali, 62, and Allan, 71, had never really lived together before, despite them having been together for 25 years and marrying in 2013. Allan’s high-powered legal job, before he retired at 70, had kept him in Manchester or Liverpool during the working week. ‘It was difficult to have a conventional relationship,’ Allan explains.
‘They were very different people,’ says Coffey. ‘We effectively started with two different houses and brought them slowly together.
‘Allan wanted a proper piece of architecture as well as a home. Allison wanted a home over the architecture. You can see their personalities and how they live together in the building: Ali is about comfort and is in control of the interior; the crispness and detail and exterior is all Allan. It’s an interesting juxtaposition between the two – we think they enjoy all the differences.’
Allan agrees: ‘It’s a very unconventional layout, which maximises the living space at the expense of the sleeping areas. I always had this vision of a big window overlooking the sea and Phil’s design means you can see all the way from the front door to the bay. All the rooms except two small ones – the utility room and larder – have cathedral ceilings. No beams, no trusses, no ties – they’re completely open and look magnificent. The whole house is magnificent.’
It’s also very flexible. It has to be. Add in a requirement to accommodate Allan’s three children and Ali’s son, sister and mother – not all at the same time – plus a horde of grandchildren, and it has the potential to be, as Ali puts it, ‘anarchy’. No wonder she keeps that yurt at the top of the garden.
Ali adds: ‘It was a leap of faith but it’s been totally worth it – I love it. It’s stunning. To anyone who’s thinking of doing something similar, who has a dream – I say follow your dream!’
For Coffey, the journey has also been an experience he won’t forget. ‘The projects with the toughest constraints usually produce the best results: the more difficult it is, the bigger an achievement it is. We never thought we’d build a house on such a tough site, with its planning and topography issues, for a couple who had never lived together! But between us, the client and the site, we think we’ve done OK. Life would be dull without constraints and architecture would be nothing without relationships, and this truly is a relationship that’s now set in stone!’
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