Banham Studio
Prickwillow, Cambridgeshire
Architect: Jonathan Ellis-Miller
Register for similar homesThis elegant house was designed by the architect Jonathan Ellis-Miller for the artist Mary Reyner Banham in the early 1990s as a studio and country retreat.
Clearly echoing the influential American designs of Mies Van Der Rohe, Charles & Ray Eames and Craig Ellwood, the structure is steel-framed with magnificent full-height glazing giving far-reaching views across the Cambridgeshire Fens to the tower of Ely Cathedral. Built alongside Ellis-Miller’s own neighbouring house, the pair have been the subject of numerous articles in architectural books and journals.
The majority of the internal space is occupied by a spectacular main room which, thanks to full-length floor to ceiling glazing on two sides and skylight fills with light. Forming an open plan space with this main room is a seating area which Banham has also used as a sleeping area.
A galley kitchen runs along one side of the building and there is a bathroom with has a separate shower in it. At the back is a bedroom overlooking the gardens.
There is also a store room which has the potential to be converted for another use.
The full-height glazed doors in the main space slide open, leading to a narrow terrace with steps down to a garden. The garden is largely lawn, surrounded by a pathway and a pergola in one corner. There is a carport to the side of the building.
Jonathan Ellis-Miller is a celebrated London-based architect who was born in East Anglia. The Banham Studio and his own neighbouring house are two of his earliest designs are what kickstarted what has gone on to prove an incredibly successful career.
Mary Reyner Banham is a noted artist and the widow of Reyner Banham (1922-88), one of the most important cultural critics of the 20th century. Banham’s best known books are Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies and Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. He was a noted forward thinker, writing about sustainable design, Brutalism and even Pop Art before many other commentators had caught on these cultural trends. It was he that saw the potential in the young Ellis-Miller and, with his wife, he commissioned him to create this remarkable building although sadly he never lived to see it completed.
The Banham studio, which has never before been on the market, can be found on Kingdon Avenue, a residential road in the small Cambridgeshire village of Prickwillow. Prickwillow is a small Fenland village of around 300 residents. Although primarily an agricultural area, Prickwillow has a thriving arts community and is distinguished by the fact that it is home to a number of celebrated contemporary houses. The Manser Medal-winning Black House by Mole Architects (2004) is also on Kingdon Avenue, as is Ellis-Miller’s own house. Other local houses include the renowned Rusty House (2007), also by Ellis-Miler.
Although Prickwillow has no amenities, the nearby cathedral city of Ely (three miles away) has plenty to offer. A short five minute car journey from Prickwillow brings you into Ely train station with direct links to London (1hr 20min), Cambridge (20min) and elsewhere. Aside from the magnificent cathedral, Ely offers a broad range of shops, great restaurants (such as the award-winning Cutter Inn and Boat House Restaurant), good schools and arts venues such as the Maltings. The countryside surrounding Prickwillow offers wonderful walks along the waterways of the Fens. For a wider range of services, Cambridge is approximately twenty miles away along the A10, with Newmarket fifteen miles to the south. The coast can be reached in under an hour.
Please note that all areas, measurements and distances given in these particulars are approximate and rounded. The text, photographs and floor plans are for general guidance only. The Modern House has not tested any services, appliances or specific fittings — prospective purchasers are advised to inspect the property themselves. All fixtures, fittings and furniture not specifically itemised within these particulars are deemed removable by the vendor.
History
Jonathan Ellis-Miller is a Norfolk-born architect with an established international reputation.
At the time of designing the Banham Studio, Ellis-Miller had just established his own practice having worked previously for John Winter, an architect renowned for his knowledge and enthusiasm for the American Modernist style. The famed ‘Case Study’ houses built in California in the 1940s and 50s by architects such as Pierre Koenig, Craig Ellwood, Charles and Ray Eames and Richard Neutra were clearly beacons for Ellis-Miller when he came to design, with the help of Winter, the buildings at Prickwillow. The use of a simple steel and glass construction is the most obvious reference that the Prickwillow house makes to these Californian houses, but one can also point to the low-lying nature of the house and its integration into the landscape. Mies Van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House near Chicago (1946-51) also provided a source of inspiration for Ellis-Miller, although in the architect’s own words Ellis-Miller attempted to avoid the “exquisite excesses” of the Farnsworth House by building something far easier, and less costly, to construct and maintain.
“The ‘Case Study’ dream lives on, improbably but gloriously, in the English fens”, wrote architecture critic Hugh Pearman of the Prickwillow house. “In a working agricultural village outside Ely you will find the style looking as fresh as ever”. Architectural historian Alan Powers, in his book The Twentieth Century House in Britain, also refers to the house as being “in the tradition of lightweight American Modernism”.
In 2003, Jeremy Melvin wrote an extensive study of Ellis-Miller’s Prickwillow house in Country Life magazine, much of which is also relevant to the Studio. He quotes Ellis-Miller as describing the house as “an exercise in how to build something practical and elegant”. Melvin writes that “three bays of a slender, steel frame establish the form [of the house], and the layout of the spaces inside is simple and rational”. He goes on to say that this “rationality” is combined with something more “primordial” (the house is “about being connected to the ground”, Ellis-Miller once said), which forms “an interplay with the needs and emotions of human habitation”.
The landscape of the Fens, like that of California, is known for its wide skies. Ellis-Miller has embraced this at the Prickwillow house with a floor-to-ceiling glass façade that allows magnificent panoramic views, both day and night.
