For saleTrevance Head
Vellan House
A cliff-top house on the western edge of Trevance Head
- Guide
- £6,750,000
- Bedrooms
- 5 bed
- Internal area
- 612 m²
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The Vellan Coast
Architecturefor the long view
Velora designs, builds and represents a small number of coastal residences each year. Four to six houses, on one coast, built to be worth inheriting.
Velora Properties
We buy one site in nine, complete four houses a year, and represent them ourselves. Everything the practice has built stands within twenty miles of a single harbour.
Founded 2009. Offices in London and Wynstowe.
Residence in focus
Vellan House, examined
A complete circuit of the largest house we have built, from the western glazing to the quarry shelf behind it.
West elevation
Nine metres of oak-framed glazing, opening along its full length in summer.
The granite spine
A single dry-jointed wall, quarried on the headland, that the whole plan is arranged around.
Eastern courtyard
Out of the prevailing weather entirely, and usable in every month of the year.
The quarry shelf
A twenty-metre lap pool cut into the level ground the quarry left behind.
The approach
Three hundred and forty metres of private drive, and two years of groundwork before it.
Available now
Three of the nine residences we currently represent
Six chapters
What a house on this coast actually involves
Architecture
Shelter is bought before glass.
Every plan begins with the weather rather than the view. A wall on the south-west, an opening to the west, and a courtyard that works in February — the drawings follow from those three decisions.
Interior
Three materials, used properly.
Honed granite underfoot, oiled oak above, and lime plaster that takes the light without reflecting it. Nothing in a Velora interior needs a specialist to maintain it in twenty years.
Lifestyle
A coast that is used, not looked at.
Boots by the door, a tender at Wynstowe, and a bay that is swimmable from May. The houses are built around wet returns and long tables, because that is what actually happens in them.
Amenities
Quiet infrastructure, properly specified.
Ground-source heating, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, and a plant room laid out so an engineer can work in it. The parts of a house nobody photographs are the parts that decide how it feels in January.
Neighbourhood
Five places, each with a different answer.
Headland, bay, harbour, valley and point. The right one depends on how much weather you want, how far you are willing to drive for bread, and whether you would rather have land or a horizon.
Investment
Eleven completions a year, on the whole coast.
Consent on open ground has not been granted here since 2019. Supply is structurally capped, which is a more durable argument than any forecast we could offer — and we would rather offer the argument than the forecast.
Six chapters
What a house on this coast actually involves
Architecture
Shelter is bought before glass.
Every plan begins with the weather rather than the view. A wall on the south-west, an opening to the west, and a courtyard that works in February — the drawings follow from those three decisions.
Interior
Three materials, used properly.
Honed granite underfoot, oiled oak above, and lime plaster that takes the light without reflecting it. Nothing in a Velora interior needs a specialist to maintain it in twenty years.
Lifestyle
A coast that is used, not looked at.
Boots by the door, a tender at Wynstowe, and a bay that is swimmable from May. The houses are built around wet returns and long tables, because that is what actually happens in them.
Amenities
Quiet infrastructure, properly specified.
Ground-source heating, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, and a plant room laid out so an engineer can work in it. The parts of a house nobody photographs are the parts that decide how it feels in January.
Neighbourhood
Five places, each with a different answer.
Headland, bay, harbour, valley and point. The right one depends on how much weather you want, how far you are willing to drive for bread, and whether you would rather have land or a horizon.
Investment
Eleven completions a year, on the whole coast.
Consent on open ground has not been granted here since 2019. Supply is structurally capped, which is a more durable argument than any forecast we could offer — and we would rather offer the argument than the forecast.
- Residences completed
- 41
- Every one within twenty miles of Wynstowe
- Years on one coast
- 17
- Founded in 2009, and never expanded
- Of coastline
- 20 miles
- Trevance Head in the north to Penhallow Point
- Houses a year, at most
- 6
- Usually four, and occasionally three
The coast
Five places, twenty miles, one practice
- The working harbourWynstoweA harbour town that still lands fish, with a restored bonded quarter and the only genuinely urban addresses on the coast.
- Inland, above the estuaryAlderleigh ValleyOak woodland and old farmland four miles from the sea, where the light is softer and the land comes in acres rather than metres.
- The far peninsulaPenhallow PointA dune peninsula at the southern end of the coast, with four houses on it and no through road.
The practice
Four to six houses a year, on one coast
Velora was founded in 2009 to build slowly in a single place. Seventeen years later the practice has completed forty-one residences, all of them within twenty miles of Wynstowe harbour, and turned down roughly eight sites for every one it has bought.
We are a developer and a broker at once, which is unusual and occasionally awkward. It means the person selling you a house can tell you what is behind its walls, and that we live with the consequences of anything we get wrong.
In their words
We were shown the house in a gale, which I now understand was deliberate. Three winters in, nothing has surprised us — including the heating bill, which Velora had estimated to within a few pounds.
Adele and Tomas HallamCoreen Ridge, purchased 2023 I asked for the construction record expecting a folder. What arrived was every drawing, every certificate, and the mobile number of the joiner who made the stair. My surveyor finished in one visit.
Nuno FerreiraNumber Nine, Wynstowe Quay, purchased 2024 They talked us out of the first plot we wanted, and were right. It cost them a year of work and bought them a client for life.
Sarah BrennanAlderleigh Valley, land purchase 2022
Enquiries
Come and see it in bad weather
Most people decide about this coast on a second visit, in a different season. We would rather you did. Tell us what you are looking for and we will arrange it — including the houses that are not listed here.