Member Article

York Handmade keeps it in the award-winning family

David Armitage, the chairman of the York Handmade Brick Company, has played a crucial role in helping his daughter Louise Sturdy to win the prestigious Best Potton Home award.

David provided 20,000 bricks from York Handmade’s factory at Alne, near Easingwold, for Louise and husband Simon to build their very own dream home at East Knoyle near Salisbury in Wiltshire.

David Armitage commented: “It has given me huge pleasure to help Louise and Simon win such a prestigious award. We provided 20,000 specially-selected Lindum Blend bricks, which were perfect for what Louise and Simon were trying to achieve. They wanted a traditional look for their new house and Louise had a massive input into its design”.

He added: “Louise’s experience of brick-making and the kind of bricks we can produce helped immensely. She knew exactly what she wanted and how to achieve it. Being part of a family of brick-makers certainly helped.”

Louise, who was brought up in Nun Monkton, near York, explained: “The look of the house was paramount because of its unique setting and we took particular care with the brick detail. As Dad has always said to me: “The bricks are about 5% of the cost, but 75% of the look”

The Best Potton Home Award was held to celebrate Potton’s 50th anniversary. Voting took place on Potton’s website, through e-mail marketing and social media during December and January. Over 2,000 people voted including staff, customers and members of the public. The Sturdys’ house won with just over 15% of the total votes.

The couple, who moved from a two-bedroomed flat in London to an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Wiltshire, wanted their children to enjoy the same rural lifestyle they did. And that included never-forgotten features from Louise’s own childhood home, which Potton incorporated into the design.

“I’m quite sentimental and with Potton’s help we copied various details from the old house where I grew up – right down to an arched window on the staircase,” says Louise.

Simon, a managing director, and Louise, now training as a teacher, seized the chance to move from the city with their children Joe, now 14 and Miranda, 11, when Simon inherited a tumbledown house on 68 acres of land just outside Salisbury from his aunt.

Louise and Simon visited Potton’s Self Build Show Centre at St Neots, Cambridgeshire and worked with an in-house designer to develop a totally bespoke four bedroom design based on the company’s Rectory range, incorporating fine sash windows and a sweeping feature staircase in the Georgian style.

“The house stood in a really beautiful and secluded country setting, but combined all the worst elements of boxy 1970s architecture,” says Louise. “We thought about extending and remodelling, but it was incredibly ugly and every builder who came to the site recommended that we should knock it down and start again.”

“Symmetry was an important part of the overall look, and we are so impressed with the results,” says Louise. “We were knocking down quite an ugly property and replacing it with a slightly larger traditional looking house, using handmade bricks and energy efficient technology, so the planners couldn’t have any objections.”

“Simon and I are delighted to have won this award, and grateful to everyone who helped make it possible. It was a labour of love, and we spent hours poring over the drawings, collecting photographs of buildings which had features that we liked, and then sketching them out paying attention to every detail, especially the brickwork”.

“The planners totally understood that we wanted to replace a very ugly artificial stone house with a much more attractive handmade brick dwelling. The fact that York Handmade Bricks had in place environmental policies that complied with ISO14001 Environmental Standard was a bonus, and helped us to comply with a condition of planning that we incorporated some sound environmental features into the build”.

They spent £380,000 on the build, funded by the successful sale of their London flat. Their new home has been valued at £850,000. “The sense of achievement and relief we had when we moved in were equal. It was a relatively smooth process but by the end of it we were exhausted and some of our pictures still have not been hung on the walls”, said Louise.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Robert Beaumont .