Asking price £1,450,000. Finished in 2019, one owner from new, sold with the full drawing set and a garden studio.
Larch House sits at the top of a sloping plot on the edge of Wivenhoe, with the lane to the north and the Colne estuary opening out below the garden to the south. The plan is simple: a twelve-metre timber frame, one room deep at the living end, with every principal room facing the water. The living room is double height under the high end of the mono-pitch roof; a gallery library runs above the kitchen and looks back into it.
The house was built by the current owners over fourteen months and completed in May 2019. It is sold with the full set of Marta Ilves Architects' drawings, the structural calculations, the air-test certificate and the ten-year structural warranty, which has four years to run.
| Room | Metres | Area |
|---|---|---|
| Living room, double height | 6.2 × 5.4 | 33.5 sq m |
| Kitchen and dining | 5.8 × 5.4 | 31.3 sq m |
| Study | 3.4 × 3.6 | 12.2 sq m |
| Hall, utility, cloakroom, plant and boot room | various | 31.0 sq m |
| Bedroom 1 | 5.8 × 3.4 | 19.7 sq m |
| En suite and bathroom | various | 11.6 sq m |
| Bedrooms 2, 3 and 4 | 3.0 to 3.4 × 2.7 | 25.9 sq m |
| Gallery, landing and corridor | various | 34.6 sq m |
| Garden studio, insulated, with power | 4.0 × 3.55 | 14.2 sq m |
| Gross internal area, house and studio | 214.0 sq m |
Vertical boards, 145 mm, on a ventilated cavity. Untreated, silvering evenly on the south face after six summers.
Pre-weathered zinc on a warm roof, 430 mm seams, concealed gutters. Rainwater runs to a 3,000 litre tank for the garden.
Three coats of lime on woodwool board throughout. Breathable, soft under raking light, and repaired with a trowel not a tin.
Power-floated raft, ground and sealed, with underfloor heating cast in. Same surface continues out onto the south terrace.
Stair, gallery balustrade rail, kitchen fronts and every internal door, made in Suffolk and oiled, never lacquered.
Whole-window value 0.8 W/m²K. The living room screen is one fixed pane and two sliders, 5.9 m high, 2.6 m wide each.
85band B
Energy performance certificate, issued March 2024, valid to 2034.
£1,140
Total electricity cost for the year to August 2026, after export credits. There is no gas.
6.4kWp
Solar array on the south roof slope, sixteen panels, with a 10 kWh battery in the plant room.
8kW
Air-source heat pump feeding underfloor heating and a 300 litre cylinder.
0.15W/m²K
Wall value: 300 mm of cellulose in the frame. Roof 0.11, floor 0.12.
1.4m³/h·m²
Air permeability at 50 pascals, tested at completion. Heat-recovery ventilation to every room.
4,900kWh
Total annual consumption including the car charger. The array generated 5,700 kWh.
3,000litres
Rainwater storage under the terrace, plumbed to the garden and the utility.
The house is on Anglesea Lane at the eastern edge of the town, where the last houses give way to the marsh footpath. It is a quiet, unmade lane with six other houses; the estuary path runs along the bottom of the garden to the quay in one direction and to the Alresford creek in the other.
Wivenhoe has two pubs on the water, a bookshop, a good baker, a primary school rated outstanding and the University of Essex campus on foot. Colchester, with its market and the mainline, is fourteen minutes by train.
Viewings run on Thursday afternoons and Saturday mornings from 12 September. Allow an hour: the house takes twenty minutes and the garden takes the rest. The owners will be out; Ellen will meet you at the gate on Anglesea Lane.
Ellen SedgeSedge & Hollis, sole agent
01206 570 114Weekdays 9 to 6, Saturdays 9 to 1
larch@sedgeandhollis.co.ukSay which slot suits and how many are coming