A Suffolk home where glass, steel, timber and thatch come together in perfect harmony

A country childhood — how idyllic that can be, especially when cousins and grandparents are on hand and it is possible to run in and out of one another’s houses. Yet how can that sense of family togetherness be preserved, as time passes and the little ones reach their teens and twenties? That was the tricky question that faced architects Abigail Hopkins and Amir Sanei some years ago. The solution they found has produced a dwelling — more compound than single house — that is as intelligent in its analysis of the issues as it is sympathetic to the landscape that contains it.

Ms Hopkins is a daughter of Michael and Patty Hopkins, architects of the new Glyndebourne opera house in East Sussex and the Lord’s Cricket Ground pavilion in London NW8, as well as joint recipients of the RIBA Gold Medal. In 1995, Sir Michael and Lady Hopkins bought Blackheath House, near Aldeburgh in Suffolk, with a long strip of heathland overlooking the River Alde. Sometimes known as Wentworth Hall or Blackheath Villa, the house had begun as a Victorian shooting lodge, exuberant with tower, chimneys and window bays.

After the Second World War, Raymond Erith, based in nearby Dedham, was commissioned to rein in the excess, which he did by paring away the protuberances to create a plain Georgian-style box. The Hopkinses then brilliantly remodelled the interior of this building, but kept the exterior, together with the many lodges and other estate buildings, which survived from the 1880s. The Alde appealed to Sir Michael’s love of sailing, for which he designed a fleet of boats suited to the river. The estate buildings became holiday homes for the Hopkins’ children and grandchildren.

Ms Hopkins and Mr Sanei occupied a modest cottage on the old service yard of the main house. As their own family grew — they now have five children — the two-bedroom quarters became tight, but meals could be eaten out of doors and the young ones had the run of the hall, as well as the lodges used by other family members. With the passage of time, however, another solution was needed. The couple’s attention focused on Middle Lodge, which was then derelict.

Middle Lodge is one of three lodges on the estate, all of which are variants on a theme of brick and pointed gables. To extend it in such a way as to provide the accommodation needed for a family of seven would have overwhelmed the original building and spoilt its character. They began to think the problem through from first principles and finally decided on a new project.

Old plans show that the Blackheath estate had once been dotted with numerous structures, including several farmsteads. The farmsteads themselves were made up of several discrete buildings, the farmhouse being next to a yard surrounded by barns. Although a yard with a water trough in the middle was suitable for livestock, it was less ideal for a family home, on a site with splendid views of the river. Therefore, the farmstead form was turned inside out: rather than looking inwards onto a yard, new structures — still separate — would be arranged in the form of a cross. Farmstead became Housestead.

Ms Hopkins and Mr Sanei next identified a site on which this could be built, next to Middle Lodge. A self-seeded plantation of silver birch that had grown up on it could be partially cleared. Husband and wife applied themselves to the design and were heartened to discover that the result might qualify for an exemption from the usual planning restrictions under the so-called Gummer’s Law of 1997, which allows buildings of exceptional architectural quality to be treated as a special case.

The principal building would be the gathering place of the new home (Fig 1). The biggest space, it was designed to evoke the farmsteads that had inspired it. It has a thatched roof, of the traditionally steep pitch to throw off the rain. Thatch is a local material and water reeds grow at Blackheath. As Ms Hopkins comments: ‘We wanted the architecture to be as sustainable as possible and for it to have come out of the place.’ Alas, it would have taken too long for the reeds to be farmed in a manner to make them suitable for thatch, but another local source was found in the marshes of Walberswick, 15 miles up the Suffolk coast.

Famously, thatch provides good insulation, but to achieve the desired standard at Housestead, without specifying an exorbitantly thick roof, it has in this case been laid on a base of a modern insulative material. Do not think, however, that a thatched roof implies that the local vernacular is followed in every particular. For one thing, the roof is supported on a frame of elegantly slim steel lattice, rather than chunky timber columns. For another, the walls are entirely of glass.

Glass was dictated by view. The setting is paramount — why not enjoy it to the maximum? The owners say that, beyond allowing them to feel at one with the landscape, this has created a practical domestic environment. A judicious closing of voile drapes on one side and opening of doors on the other is enough to control the heat, even during a hot summer such as that of 2025; the south front, facing the river, is shaded by a deep overhang of the roof. Double glazing reduces heat loss. Indeed, a low sun during the winter can mean that doors again have to be thrown open, because the floor, made of dark brick, serves to absorb and radiate heat. A close eye is kept on the controls of the log-fuelled boilers and solar hot-water collectors that heat both the hot water and the house itself, which can be read on a mobile phone. The readings show that Housestead is thermally efficient.

Giving visual warmth, the steel structure is painted in a local colour — Suffolk pink, traditional as well as vibrant (Fig 5). At first glance, the wooden roof also seems to make reference to age-old building practices, but that is only half right. The material is birch plywood, cut into laths: the strips that, in an old house, would have been plastered. How-ever, there is no plaster here. That would have created another hard surface, on top of the glass walls and brick floor — an acoustic nightmare. Instead, the strips have been left uncovered and they are backed with hessian. The effect is extraordinary. Guests around the dinner table can hear each other perfectly clearly, but it is possible for children to watch television on the living deck above the kitchen at the same time as other family members read newspapers on the sofas at the other end of the roof, unaware of their presence. It is a tour de force.

The bedrooms occupy the eastern arm of the cross (Fig 3). Here, the roof is ideally positioned for photovoltaic panels, which help reduce the electricity bill. Six bedrooms (Fig 6) are strung out rather in the manner of stables, linked by an unheated corridor. The walls are made of super-insulated prefabricated OSB board panels, which moderate the temperature at all times of year. Each bedroom is, in effect, a pod, to which other rooms could be added to suit future need. It is hoped that the flexibility will mean that Housestead will continue to serve as a family hub for years, if not generations, to come.

The services are at the back of the house, on the northern front. They include a garage and car-parking space, because it is here that visitors arrive — their view of the river denied them at first by a screen wall (Fig 2) and what appears to be a corrugated-steel barn, of the kind seen throughout Suffolk. This was principally intended to house boilers and other technology, but enough roof space was left over to provide a cinema-cum-party room that has proved popular with the younger generation (Fig 7). Outside, logs are stored in circular corrugated-steel bays fashioned by Suffolk’s premier maker of pig arcs — two semicircular arcs joined together provide the requisite shape and space (Fig 4). They evoke a memory of a treehouse that Mr Sanei once made for the children.

The pièce de résistance is surely the study (Fig 8), which stands at the western extremity of the imagined cross and is connected to the main building by a pathway. It is again inspired by a local building type, notably the towers that punctuate Suffolk’s gently rolling landscape. Towers take many forms in this county — church towers, water towers, the magical House in the Clouds at Thorpeness — but the utilitarian form is the one that has greatest resonance here. Control towers that survive on Suffolk’s many Second World War airfields and observation towers at ports gave the language.

The study is essentially a glass box at treetop height, which is reached by a steel staircase — reminiscent, coincidentally, of the tower that architect Thomas Croft recently created for Doddington Place, Kent. Nowhere could be more peaceful or, surely, more conducive to the design process than this eyrie, where the only temptation is to look at passing birdlife rather than one of the pair of computer screens.

With planning permission obtained, there remained the challenge of actually building a house of such ingenuity and invention. Happily, it was discovered that local craftsmen could supply most of the skills. By 2018, the family could camp in the house. It was to Housestead that they retreated when covid struck. This allowed the wider family to help with the care of Ms Hopkins’s father, when the new house — parts of which were still being built — was being stress-tested by family occupation for a period of months. It passed with flying colours.

The landscape remains something of a work in progress. The idea has been to extend the heathland of what, in these parts, is known as the Sandlings. To that end, some local heath was mown and the cuttings laid on the open land around the house in the hope that seeds native to the area would germinate and take root. Topsoil was brought from another part of the 400-acre Blackheath estate, which is known as Gorse Hill. This is now regarded as a happy mistake, due to the number of young gorse bushes that have sprung up — the clue is in the name; even when cut down to the ground, they prove prickly to bare feet. However, Housestead, which was designed in such time that the owners could snatch from their own busy architectural practice of Sanei + Hopkins, has taken shape at its own pace. Not to have a project on the go might, one suspects, be a disappointment to this creative family, kept together by this vital hub of a home on the Alde.

This feature originally appeared in the February 18, 2026 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.