The Water Tower
Cheveley, Cambs

SOLD

Architect: Michael Carapetian

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This former water tower located in the countryside close to the Cambridgeshire / Suffolk border was originally converted into a wonderful home in the late 1970s by the architect Michael Carapetian. It has subsequently been refurbished to exacting standards by the architect Trevor Jones. The house has over 3,500 sq ft of internal space, arranged across a series of remarkable light-filled spaces, and sits centrally on large, level plot of approximately 1/2 an acre.

The house is entered via an entrance hall leading to a kitchen / dining room that makes up the base of the tower. From this room steps lead down to a beautiful living room with an open fire and a conservatory off it that opens out onto the garden. There is a mezzanine bedroom / study above the living room. Also on the ground floor is a utility room, a library with floor to ceiling glass windows, a small shower room, WC and a further room with steps leading up to the first floor.

On the first floor is a large room currently used as an artists studio but easily adaptable as a bedroom. The main bedroom and bathroom can be found on the first floor of the tower. The bedroom features the arched windows of the original 1912 tower.

Steps lead up from the first floor to what is perhaps the most impressive and unique room in the house, a square open-plan space over 23 ft by 23ft in size that is currently used as a studio / bedroom but could be put to a variety of uses. This amazing room has high ceilings and excellent views across the local countryside, retaining the original character of the tower. There is a further floor above this that provides an attic space.

The house is approached via a short drive. The house is surrounded by level gardens and borders onto farmland and paddocks. The current owners have worked hard over the past 30 years to establish an attractive, mature but manageable garden that is largely south-facing. The gardens are largely lawn, with a good variety of shrubs, plantings and mature trees.

Michael Carapetian is an acclaimed architect and photographer now based in Venice, Italy. Carapetian’s work at The Water Tower, as well as the subsequent work done to the tower by Trevor Jones is, as Jones puts it, “a synthesis of both Modern architecture and conservation architecture”. Carapetian’s original clients were an American / Iranian couple; Bill Wright, an early Apple software writer and photographer, and his wife Zara, a writer and potter. The following owner, Roseanne Mark, was a noted musician, and she sold it to the current owners, an architect and an artist. All owners have relished the amazing space offered by the building and the tranquil setting.

Cheveley and Cheveley Park make up an attractive village area approximately four miles from the larger town of Newmarket and approximately sixteen miles from Cambridge. Originally part of parkland owned  by the Duke of Rutland, the area is now largely given over to paddocks for racehorses. The village has most essential services including a primary school, pub, Post Office, church and recreation ground.

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

Below is a history of The Water Tower, written by the architect, Trevor Jones:

“The water tower was built in 1912. An unusual phased design was proposed compromising two towers and shared pump house. Only the smaller tower was built. The water tower was in use up to 1976, when, because of problems with the water source, it was replaced by the modern circular concrete tower in nearby Wooditton.

At this time Californian photographer / Apple software writer Bill Wright and his Iranian writer / potter wife Zara were looking for a building that could house two studios. In 1978, they applied for planning permission to convert the water tower into a residential building. Their architect was friend Michael Carapetian, an international architect who went to the AA and documented Pierre Chareau’s 1927 La Maison de Verre in the early Sixties – which has influenced his work, now largely conservation-sensitive projects in Venice. Carapetian took a personal interest in the water tower, which  has an iconic Sixties-style conservatory (see Carapetian’s axonometric above) including barrel vaults, spiral staircase and mezzanine connections. As well as being an architect, he is also an acclaimed architectural photographer and writer on architecture. Carapetian took the famous photograph ‘The Man on the Economist Plaza’ (Economist Building, Alison & Peter Smithson, 1964). According to David Gisson (in The Carapetian Effect, 2008): ‘ When most photographers were taking crisp photos of buildings with their characteristically strong shadows and deep perspective, Michael Carapetian demanded that architectural photography be filled with provocations and new ideas”.

After the Wrights left the water tower was sold to the musician Roseanne Mark, who worked for the American rock band Dr. Hook. She used the tank space for her Sounds Around The Water Tower music class.

We [Trevor and Susan Jones] bought The Water Tower in 1985. Over the past 30 years, we have transformed the annexe and established the mature garden. Although we appreciated Carapetian’s design philosophy of a machine-aesthetic intervention in an engineering building, we chose to complete the conversion by taking more heed of the architectural nature of the tower and the pump house. Last year, Carapetian, on seeing pictures of The Water Tower, said that we had turned it into a “romantic house”. The final result is something truly unique, that no one person could have envisaged along, synthesising aspects of modern modern architecture and conservation architecture.

Susan describes the house as ‘like living in a corner of paradise’. We love the setting, the views, the changing light and the big East Anglian skies”.

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