The bow of a ship appears to drift into a meadow, while the captain’s bridge on the upper deck, surrounded by a huge expanse of glass, is actually the master bedroom. This astonishing “grand design” sits in splendid isolation in 13 acres of woods and pasture in prime Surrey, near the village of Chiddingfold, eight miles from Haslemere.
It is the home of Robert Burdett and his wife Zoe, who bought the plot with a nondescript house on it in 2013. “We did the big move to the country from Wimbledon about 10 years ago, to a very traditional Surrey/Sussex part-tile cottage with a bit of land,” says Burdett.
They asked London-based architect Mark Hillier of h2architecture to design them a contemporary...