Ellis-Miller House
Prickwillow, Cambridgeshire

SOLD

Architect: Ellis-Miller Architects

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Designed by the architect Jonathan Ellis-Miller for his own occupation, this exceptional single-storey house is constructed primarily from steel and glass. Built in the late 1980s, the house overlooks the Cambridgeshire Fens, offering views across agricultural land to the nearby Ely Cathedral. Clearly echoing the American work of architects like Mies Van Der Rohe, Charles and Ray Eames and Craig Ellwood, the house has been the subject of a select number of articles in architectural books and journals. The house was the recipient of the 1993 RIBA British Steel Awards.

Entered from the carport beside the house, accommodation compromises one master bedroom with en suite bathroom, a kitchen / breakfast room and an open plan central space (divided by a large chimney breast and open fireplace) that forms the living room and a further bedroom (currently used as a dining area). The house has a small lawn to the rear and a terrace with pond to the side. Plans to sympathetically extend the house have previously gained permission, although the permission has recently lapsed.

The Ellis-Miller house 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 another property by Ellis-Miller. Other local houses include the renowned Rusty House (2007).

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.

For a map click here.

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. He built the
house in Prickwillow as a residence for himself in the
late 1980s.

At the time, Ellis-Miller was working 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 proved obvious
inspiration for Ellis-Miller when he came to design,
with the help of Winter, his house 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 the
Prickwillow house in Country Life magazine. 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.

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