A new Cuckfield house by Sandy Rendel Architects with a stepping ground-floor plinth and 3 first-floor bedroom towers, each with a differently oriented mono-pitch roof

Monkton is a new house in Cuckfield, West Sussex, replacing a dilapidated 1970s bungalow on a narrow 70-metre plot behind the high street. The site offered 3 defining constraints: a 4-metre fall in topography from road to garden, an irregular cluster of neighboring buildings with no clear architectural grain to follow, and the confined width of the plot itself. Sandy Rendel Architects treated all 3 as material for the design rather than problems to work around.

The house is organized as a rectilinear ground-floor plinth that steps down the slope. As you move deeper into the living spaces, the ceiling height gradually releases, following the fall of the land beneath. 3 bedroom volumes rise from this base at first floor, each given a distinct mono-pitch roof oriented in a different direction. The separate roof angles break the massing of the upper level without fragmenting the composition overall: each bedroom reads as its own volume while the house remains coherent from the outside. Dual aspects in each bedroom provide views over the garden, and the angular separation between the towers prevents overlooking onto the east and west boundaries.

The material palette is drawn from the immediate landscape. Waterstruck soft red brick in gritty lime mortar picks up the tonal and textural character of the area's historic clay brickfields, which abut the southern boundary directly. Precast concrete elements and copper roofing provide counterpoints in materials that age at different rates and through different surface processes. The facade will develop a layered quality over time, with each material changing in its own register. Monkton was shortlisted for the RIBA South East Awards 2026.