Gary Collins and Middle Turn

Serendipity unites architect with his dream home

For Gary Collins arriving in the sleepy village of Haddenham in Buckinghamshire, England, fresh from architecture studies in the city of Dundee, Scotland, his immediate thought was, “Is this place real?”

His construction tutor at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Barry Heathcote, had included two images in a lecture illustrating the architectural work of Peter Aldington. It was a transformatory moment. Inspired, Gary put together a portfolio; jumped on a train; travelled to Haddenham village; knocked on the door of Peter’s architecture practice ‘Aldington, Craig and Collinge’ and asked for a year’s work-placement during his studies. The architects were surprised but said, “Yes”.

Haddenham smells of freshly mown grass. There are thatched cottages in narrow streets named after their heritage, such as Crabtree Road and Waggoners Court. Walls of wychert (meaning ‘white earth’) – a natural blend of white chalk, clay and straw topped with red clay tiles – meander through the heart of the village.

Wychert construction was, for a period, a common practice in the area, where a generous deep layer of chalk existed just beneath the local soil. Dug in the autumn, exposed to the frost, then mixed with water and straw, it was laid in chunks on a stone base. Many wychert buildings, including some from the 17th century, still stand in Haddenham. Picturesque today, these walls were built purely for sheltering, for protecting yards and gardens, keeping in pigs and ducks, and keeping out predators.

The lecture images that had so captured Gary’s attention were a cluster of three modern houses; Turn End, Middle Turn and The Turn. Made of wood, concrete block and glass, discreetly tucked away in a mature landscape setting (formerly part of a large Victorian house) with trees of horse-chestnut, conifer, walnut, robinia, evergreen oak, sequoia, fruit and more, and set within old wychert walls. Strongly believing that village housing should combine past traditions and modern technology, to create homes as refuges from the hurly-burly of everyday living, Peter Aldington had designed and built these houses in the early 1960s. The project was his test-bed for listening to the past, making a building of the present that would serve for the future.

This group of homes has always been celebrated as a rare British representative amongst the best of European housing design. They are classified as Grade II* by the National Heritage List for England, sitting alongside only a handful of post-war houses to hold this acclaim of special architectural interest. Peter Aldington received a Royal Institute of British Architects Award for Architecture in 1970, and the house and garden are also noted as an exemplary model of later 20th century intervention in a historic environment.

After two years with the architectural practice in Haddenham, Gary completed his college studies and embarked on his own career. “Others don’t like the term construction aesthetic”, he states, “but it is something in architecture that I resonate with; I feel very comfortable when I can read the building’s construction and how the structure works, like you would a Victorian warehouse or station.” Thus, Gary worked for practices such as Hopkins Architects. “I went to Hopkins because I felt they were doing the same kind of architecture, more than others at the time.”

Living in Oxford with wife Sally and two young children, he then moved to the firm Berman Guedes Stretton Architects (BGS). Alan Berman was a trustee of the – now formed – Turn End Trust, which involved occasional trust meetings taking place in BGS’s offices. So, it seemed serendipitous that Gary reconnected with Peter Aldington.

Friendship with Peter grew over the following years resulting in Gary also becoming a trustee of the Turn End Trust. Gary recalls how a symbol of this friendship was demonstrated one day: “I was still living in Oxford at the time when Peter said ‘I know how you like Braun and the Rams aesthetic. I’ve got something for you’ and he just handed me this Audio 1”. The record player had been sitting in Peter’s loft in need of repair. “So, I got a new belt and new cartridge and all the things to get it working again. It’s not sitting on my Vitsœ shelving at the moment, but when it does, I know that the offset allows you to open the lid, and the records don’t touch the wall. Everything about it is absolutely perfect”.

For both Peter and Gary, Braun and Vitsœ are, as Gary says a “complement to that industrial-design architecture – how much do you need and how much is just art, marks and noise? I feel there is a really strong affinity to what Peter and Rams were doing. You only put in what you absolutely have to put in. Just keep things that are essential and then it will resonate.”

As a young, hungry, design professional in the 1960s, Peter Aldington – like Rams – had a strong appetite for breaking boundaries with design-thinking and realisation. Gary feels, “That this is where Rams was exceptional. It was the paring down, only doing what was essential and being innovative. When Peter was putting in these big glass walls, it hadn’t been done, the technology was only starting to arrive, and he was using the technology to deliver these houses. In my head I can make it align with Rams really well.”

Peter built Turn End as his own home, while Middle Turn and The Turn were sold. Privately owned by a village family for many years, Middle Turn became available in 2018. Constitutionally the house was first offered to the trust, who were unable to raise the funds to purchase it at the time. Gary therefore took the opportunity to ask the trust if they would consider him buying it. They agreed.

Gary has a delightfully soft, purring Scottish accent which delivers added warmth to his story, as he explains his involvement and relationship with Peter and ‘The Turns’. “We have photographs of Sally and the girls when they were really small sitting in Peter’s garden. On open days we would quite often turn up and wander round the garden. It’s very beautiful. The children were very familiar with it, so it came as no shock to them to come here.” Gary explains, “they knew I loved it, but they also love it, Sally is as much a fan.”

The layout of each of the three houses is designed to embrace sun and privacy, using the walled language of Haddenham to wrap around small south-facing courtyards. “It felt really homely when we moved in. It’s a very private house. You come into a central courtyard before you come into the house boundary. You’re two steps removed from any irritation. Then when you’re in the house there is nowhere that you can be viewed from the courtyard or from anywhere around the house. And yet we’ve got big glass windows everywhere and lots and lots of light, but it’s incredibly private.

“It’s a different way of living. Everything is very open. It works really well. I hadn’t quite understood how clever the building is. How compact. How considered everything is, such as the little panels that open, so discreetly. It’s got all these cubby holes and places to put things.” In the galley kitchen, the sink unit is raised above the work surface, allowing the base of the sink to sit at the same height as the work surface, so you are not having to bend.

“I’m quite shocked still at living here, it’s quite staggering, but here I am”, Gary discloses. “If you reflect on it, maybe it looks like there is some conscious path through it all, but really there wasn’t. This is the house I would want to be in, I’m in it, I have no intention of moving on. I love it.”

And as for those two images presented in a student lecture some 30 years previously by Barry Heathcote? A year or so ago Gary happened to look out to the central courtyard and saw an elderly gentleman with a cane standing looking at the properties.

Gary went out to greet him saying, “Excuse me can I help you?”
And he replied, “I just want to have one last look.”
Gary then said to the gentleman “I do know you.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Yes, Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee. You were my construction tutor.”

Turn End Trust hosts a number of educational, creative and public events relating to aspects of the houses and garden to a wide range of visitors, details of which can be found here.