Why build a new country house? There's a long list of things you'll gain if you can live without that lovely patina of age

When Clive Aslet, former Editor of Country Life, wrote a book called The Last Country Houses in 1982, the future of the English country house looked bleak. It had been eight years since the landmark exhibition at the V&A Museum, ‘The Destruction of the Country House’, which had told the stories of many houses lost to fire, neglect and the wrecking ball. It was a time when a resurgence of the English country-house tradition would have been unthinkable.

It was a couple of years later, in 1984, that John Martin Robinson brought out a book called The Latest Country Houses, covering the period since the end of the Second World War. By then, there were enough green shoots to suggest that the English country house was not dead and buried after all, with the latest examples suggesting the start of a new revival. More recent books on the subject, such as Alan Powers’s The Twentieth Century House in Britain (2004) and David Watkin’s The Classical Country House (2010), both illustrated with photographs from the Country Life archive, have concluded with chapters on new country houses, showing that their spirit is now alive and well in the 21st century.

Yet, despite the impressive number built in the past 40 years, there remains a certain nervousness around the building of new country houses. It is something to do with old-fashioned English taste that has always been suspicious of anything that looks too new. I even feel it myself, loving the worn, lived-in look that is so indelibly associated with the English style of decoration. Surely, one of the things that makes country houses so lovely is their patina of age.

Another question that often comes up is why build a new house when there are so many lovely old buildings in need of restoration? Without passionate owners to love and care for these houses, what future do they have? Again, I find myself agreeing with this and, indeed, much of my work as an architect has involved breathing new life into homes through gentle re-ordering and sensitive repair.

All of this may make it surprising that the main focus of my architectural career to date has been in designing new country houses. To some extent, this has been inherited; my grandfather was the architect Raymond Erith (1904–73), who worked on many country houses, both old and new, in the post-war years. His career was unusual in that he had rejected the Modern Movement and practiced traditional architecture at a time when this was very unfashionable. In 1962, he had taken on a pupil, Quinlan Terry, and, in time, they formed the partnership Erith and Terry Architects. After my grandfather’s death, Terry continued the practice and by the mid 1980s had become the foremost country-house architect working in Britain.

After studying architecture in Edinburgh, I joined the Erith and Terry office in the mid 1990s, by which time the practice was working on projects all over Britain and also abroad. Country houses were at the core of everything, employing a language of traditional detail and construction that had been refined over many years since my grandfather’s days. Having spent seven years training in this office, in 2003 I left to join Adam Architecture, becoming a director the following year and gradually starting to build up a portfolio of my own. Since then, over the past 20 years, it has included many country houses.

What, then, has been the motivation of my clients who have chosen to commission new country houses? What has tipped the balance for them away from a restoration project and towards the seemingly daunting prospect of starting from scratch? The reasons are not universal, but, over the years, I have seen that there are definitely a few common trends.

Firstly, the owners might have a connection or fondness for a particular site. We are currently building a house in a valley where one of my clients used to play as a child and realised it was their favourite place on earth and, in another case, we built a new house next door to where the owner’s mother lived so that they could be close at hand. Sites with strong personal connections such as these are irreplaceable and signify a family finding its place in the world and committing to the long-term management of the surrounding land.

Next, I often find that clients have lived at different times in old houses and, as much as they may have loved them, they realise how inflexible they can be. The nicest houses will be listed, at the very least at Grade II, but possibly at Grade II* or Grade I. This means that any alterations need to be approved by a conservation officer and, at the higher designation, also by an inspector from Historic England. Anyone with experience of going through this process will know that it can be incredibly frustrating and inconsistent. Something as apparently straightforward as moving a kitchen from a draughty wing into one of the larger rooms with a higher ceiling and a better view can be a major battle.

Similarly, it can be a tussle to put bathrooms into a house where there are not nearly enough to go around or even remove indifferent Victorian or Edwardian extensions that spoil the outside. ‘These are an important part of the social history of the house,’ says the conservation officer, apparently blind to their ugliness. There are no such problems with a new house, where the layout can be planned around modern living with the kitchen at its heart and as many bathrooms as bedrooms.

Then there is the question of running costs. An old house with single-glazed windows and solid walls is likely to come with an astronomical heating bill. Upgrading insulation, even if desirable, may be resisted by a conservation officer and will involve a significant cost. The same goes for the fuel source: out goes the old oil tank and in comes the new geothermal heating system, all a big step forward, but with a massive price tag attached. Halfway through a restoration project, the realisation begins to sink in: old houses are unpredictable money pits. On the subject of cost, too, everything that forms part of the restoration will be subject to VAT. The costs of building a new house, by contrast, are VAT exempt.

When you put all these factors together, the appetite for restoring an old house can start to dissipate and the benefits of a new one take on a sharper focus. The last piece of the jigsaw puzzle is to find someone to design it: the one thing you definitely don’t want is for a new house to look not quite right when it is finished. This was more difficult in, say, the 1960s, when architects had turned their backs on the past and there was a wilful desire to reject traditional forms, no matter how attractive they might be, but there are now quite a few architects with the training and experience to design country houses to a high standard.

Once the decision to build a new home has been made, a world of possibilities opens up about its design. Some of my clients have brought with them a lifelong interest in architecture and have very definite views about styles, perhaps even down to having a favourite decade of the 18th century. Others are keen to explore a range of options and to be guided along the way, when a key part of the design process is for us to go and look at other houses that might serve as inspiration. Little by little, the design starts to take on a character all of its own, shaped by the site and by the owners’ requirements and taste. When approached with care in every detail, there is no reason why a new house, given a bit of time, should not look every bit as good as the old houses that we all admire.

This is the key thing: the importance of time. I would be the first to admit that a brand-new country house, when first completed, is likely to look much too new. Clients over the years have asked my advice: should we smear manure or yoghurt over the brickwork to accelerate the weathering process or choose a more faded colour palette for the paintwork? My advice is always the same: have patience.

The great thing about new traditional buildings is that, although they might look uncomfortably new at first, it will not be long before the effects of weather start to show. Within a year or two, a stone or brick house will have begun to soften and, as the plants flesh out in the flowerbeds around the house and trees begin to grow, the appearance of newness will start to fade. Within five years, the more exposed parts of the house — the roof, chimneys and hard landscaping — will no longer look new at all and within 10 years the house will be entirely established within its landscape. It continues to improve and, in only 20 years, you would not even know that it was a recently built structure.

About 10 years ago, I made this point in a talk to a group of students and concluded that traditional architects really ought to wait a few years before photographing and publishing their work. A new house will look so much better, I said, if you leave a bit of time for it to bed in. Then, a couple of years ago, I was approached by a commissioning editor, Philip Reeser, about writing a book on country houses and realised that this was the opportunity for which I had been waiting. Happily, the owners all agreed to me doing it and, with the architectural photographer Peter Dixon, I spent a few weeks last year taking new photographs of 12 different houses. Without exception, the owners were extremely welcoming; indeed, it has been wonderful how many of my former clients are now counted as friends. Meanwhile, I wrote down my thoughts on the design of each house, all of which have now made it into the book as a guide to anyone contemplating a similar journey.

Ultimately, the building of new country houses is a statement of confidence: of putting down roots for this and future generations, investing in building well, not needing to follow the latest trends and being safe in the knowledge that time will take care of the rest. It is, of course, also a creative endeavour: since time immemorial, building has been a way to leave one’s mark on the world. For most clients, it is immensely enjoyable to work not only with an architect, but also a landscape designer and an interior decorator, collaborating with the common goal of making something as beautiful as possible. For me, it has been hugely rewarding not only to be so involved in the design and construction of new country houses, but to see over many years how they take their place in a tradition that stretches back deep in time and will, I hope, also have a long future.

‘The Romance of Classicism’ by George Saumarez Smith is published by Rizzoli (£47.95).

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.