A puzzle of mismatched pieces
Pembury Hall, Tunbridge Wells: Making an incoherent estate into a home that flowed.
Complicated projects often lead to fraught customer relationships, but our work shows how harmonious collaboration can lead to remarkable outcomes.
Our clients bought Pembury Hall in 2019, moving from Sydney in search of a slower pace of life in the British countryside. A rambling 18th century estate, with various extensions added throughout its lifetime, the house felt disconnected.
“It was originally a small property” explains the client.
“It had been added to but not coherently. We wanted to make it livable and cosy. We started off looking at two bathrooms - which we went to Andrew Penny for, via our designers Maddux, and then we decided to embark on the full project in 2020 - solving this puzzle of mismatched pieces. We had no hesitation in asking Andrew and Oliver”
Creating a sanctuary out in the country
From the outset, the size and historical character of the property presented daunting challenges.
Pembury Hall, at 6000 square metres, set over nearly 30 acres of land, was difficult to access - the small winding lanes of the Kent countryside, and the narrow gates of the property itself, didn’t allow for large articulated vehicles. But neither did Andrew and Oliver want to send numerous vans in every day - causing both excessive vehicle and noise emissions in a tranquil area. We decided to move the construction team in rather than have multiple vehicles arriving and leaving every day - this reduced the vans from ten to one.
Supplies came in by crane, to get around the access issues. And we gave all delivery companies special maps to ensure seamless access to a very complicated estate.
Peaceful coexistence
With the advent of covid in 2020, our building teams were further confined to site.
Although the premises were large, it was vital to create autonomous spaces for our team and for the family to live, undisrupted. “Andy doesn’t go in with a bulldozer without a care,” says the client. “He spends the first day just protecting everything, making sure the areas of the house were not affected. He’d ask us ‘How do you guys want to access this, or that? Do you need this room?’ It was all so thoughtfully done.”
“We had three weeks on site before the family arrived,” remembers Andrew, “so we raced to get the top floor done for them. We sort of divided and zoned the house so that we could all co-exist. We would move the entrances and routes through the house - so that we didn’t bother them.” That said, the Andrew Penny team developed memorable relationships with the family - including the children and pets, as time went on. “Eventually we were feeding the chickens and dogs when they went away,” adds Oliver. “One of our painters, Karl, became a real favourite of their son - he’d end up making his sandwiches.”
“We never had an argument over what we’d agreed on. They’re completely transparent. Completely reasonable.”
Pembury Hall client.
Restoring craft and quality
As well as the complex restructuring that restored continuity between different areas of the house, this was a restoration job - carefully replacing period features that had been torn out or damaged over two centuries.
From panelling and cornicing in large reception rooms to replacing a vast fireplace, this work had to be applied with an expert hand to protect heritage structures. All the hallways were hand-painted, carefully rendering all the detailing to an impeccable standard.
To provide authentic texture and materiality to the property, Andrew Penny had to source and work with suppliers all over the world. Reclaimed oak was procured from French cattle carts - which arrived covered in bitumen and debris. Each piece was machined with a thicknesser, sanded and oiled. It was then used to hand build an extraordinary bespoke vanity unit and flooring for the master bathroom.
One of the most challenging and successful aspects of the project was the pool house, set into the land itself with curved contours to remain unobtrusive. Our fit out came with an impressive cylindrical shower - flooded with daylight from a glazed circular opening above, and an elegant storage area, with a utilitarian plywood finish. Its discreetly modernist aesthetic, that nevertheless has a harmonious continuity with the older house, was designed by award-winning architects Knox Bahvan. “It was a stunning project,” says Oliver, “complicated, but with amazing payoffs and a lovely client relationship.”
“It was so successful that when we eventually decided to leave the UK and sell the house - we sold the property immediately - within two viewings” concludes the client. “The buyers had been looking for a year and a half. They saw the quality of Pembury and asked where to sign.”