Turn End open house
Peter Aldington's three village houses (The Turn, Middle Turn, Turn End) in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire were designed and built in the 1960s, Peter and Margaret Aldington doing much of the building work themselves. They received a Royal Institute of British Architects Award for Architecture in 1970. Every year this wonderful place opens to the public, for information on visiting :
As modern housing, made of wood, concrete block and glass, in a traditional setting, the group has always been celebrated as a rare British representative amongst the best of European housing design, and has welcomed visitors from all over the world. It has provided teaching material for students of architecture and landscape design, been written about nationally and internationally and photographed widely.
The Aldingtons still live at Turn End, Middle Turn is privately owned and occupied, while The Turn is currently let. The estate also includes a 19th century cottage 9 Townside, and a Victorian house 6+8 High Street, which was converted by the Aldingtons in the 1970s to provide flats, and office space for the growing architectural practice.
In 1998 the Aldington family and a group of founder trustees formed Turn End Charitable Trust (now Turn End Trust) to ensure the continuing maintenance and use of the buildings.
One of the three principal aims of the Turn End Trust is:
‘The advancement of education and scholarship in the art of building and garden design and in so doing to foster the integration of these two disciplines into a single indivisible process, each element to interact with and be dependant on the other.’
The garden's interlinked informal spaces and garden rooms with naturalised planting around existing trees, all interwoven with the house, reflecting Aldington's hands-on approach, spatial skills as a designer and deep understanding of materials and plants.
