Inspiration of the Week: Arts and Crafts, perfectly preserved

At first glance, Glynde Avenue, in the Hampden Park suburb of Eastbourne, is a street like any other. But wander between the terraces of detached Edwardian villas and you’ll note: no two are the same. And the most striking of them all? The so-called “Flemish” house, with its distinctive Dutch gable and gleaming stuccoed façade, currently for sale with Inigo.

The sweeping avenue was built in 1909, using the concepts of the Garden City Movement as a guiding principle. The land on which it sits had been bought in 1901 by the Artizans Labourers & General Dwellings Company, a co-operative philanthropic development company who created a publication alongside this project, vowing to build “no two houses alike, save for the abundance of the ground on which they individually stand.” Red brick jostles with pebble dash; mock-Tudor timbers with Gothick arches. The Flemish house is surely the finest.

The house has been beautifully conserved. The owners’ choice of a cool and calm palette throughout the house – white, cream, palest buttercup – makes the most of the structure’s simplicity. You won’t find any excessively decorative mouldings here. Meanwhile, original floorboards underfoot and untouched fireplaces help retain the aura of the original design.

It’s the glazing, however, that really gets us. Light, and lots of it, pours into this house front and back. The front door is reached through a vestibule of leaded window lights, while in the reception room facing the glorious garden, glazing runs the width of the space. The brightest star in this show, however, is the triangular oriel window in the largest bedroom, which juts proudly above the gabled roof of the ground floor.

Traditionally constructed (and admirably preserved), clear in form and simple in structure, this house stands as a masterclass in the more restrained strands of Arts and Crafts architecture, and rare and refined beauty.