Until the 20th century, most houses were built using local materials, skills and traditions. Each region had it’s own distinct vernacular, making the best use of local materials, whether honey coloured Cotswold limestone, Hampshire flint or Aberdeen granite.

Our expertise in vernacular architecture allows the client to build in the local style, on his, or her, chosen site, reflecting traditional forms and aesthetic ideals.

This house, in a Conservation Area in Sussex, was built mainly with locally sourced salvaged materials.

The client says;

‘Philip Lancashire has designed and built several lovely houses- including mine!

My house in Tillington was finished just in time for the birth of my grand children two years ago. Philip had designed the first stage of it in the late 1980’s, when he helped me convert an old farmyard and stabling into a small weekend cottage. The house was built using as many salvaged materials as possible. When I wanted to build the final stage of the house to make it a permanent home, I asked Philip to help me again. It is a measure of its original sympathetic architecture that when the Building Conservation people came to inspect the site, before I could enlarge it, they thought my cottage was 18th century and I had to show them photographs of the house in the process of being built, with my children standing on the footings!
I am delighted with the finished house as it fits in beautifully into the Sussex countryside and the people in the village love it.’