The Slide House

The brief

A generous six-bedroom family home set above the village of Mortehoe, designed for large family gatherings and built to make the most of the dramatic North Devon coastline.

The clients wanted a house that could comfortably sleep twelve to fourteen, with a strong oak-framed character to the main living spaces: a building that felt rooted to its setting, warm in winter and open to the sea views in summer.

The design

The plan centres on a double-height open-plan kitchen, dining and living space, with the structure expressed in green oak. Heavy oak posts, beams and trusses frame the room and carry the upper floor without the need for steel, giving the heart of the house a workshop-built, hand-cut quality.

From the main living area, an indoor slide and a separate bookcase-concealed stair connect down to a lower entertainment level with cinema, games and gym spaces. Bedrooms are arranged in two wings to give large groups separation without losing the sense of one shared home.

The build

The oak frame was cut and fitted by Andrew and the workshop team and raised on site, then closed in with a high-performance timber-frame envelope. Larch cladding and standing-seam zinc handle the exposure; the render and glazing keep the elevations calm.

Internally the oak is left clean and unfussy, sanded, oiled and allowed to settle. Joinery throughout (kitchen carcassing, the bookcase that opens onto the stair, fitted bedroom storage) was made in the Woodcraft workshop and installed by the same team that built the frame.

The result

The Slide House now runs as a holiday home, hosting families and groups year-round. The oak-framed living space has become the centre of the house, somewhere a dozen people can eat, cook and sit together without it ever feeling crowded.

Our clients still own and run the home themselves (Paula handles bookings). It is the project we point to when people ask what a modern oak frame can do at this scale.