Vellan House

Vellan House stands on the last level ground before the headland falls away. The shelf it occupies was cut for granite in the 1920s, which meant the house could be set low and long rather than lifted on a plinth — from the coastal path a quarter of a mile north, only the roofline and the chimney mass are visible against the sky.

The plan is arranged around a single north–south wall of local granite, laid dry-jointed by the same yard that supplied the original quarry. Everything that needs shelter sits east of it: the kitchen, the bedrooms, the plant. Everything that wants the view sits west, behind a nine-metre run of oak-framed glazing that can be opened along its full length in summer and shuttered in oak louvres when the weather turns.

It took four years, two of them spent on the approach and the drainage before a single stone was laid. That is longer than the house needed and exactly as long as the site required.