4 Bedroom Detached House

“I love the light. Whatever the weather, this house raises your spirits. It feels completely private and peaceful, yet I can walk into the centre of Stamford in around ten minutes.”

There is something wonderfully unexpected about this house.

You could drive along Empingham Road every day for years and never have the slightest idea it was here. It is such a traditional Stamford road, so turning onto the driveway, leaving the road behind and suddenly finding this incredible contemporary home hidden amongst the trees feels almost like discovering a secret.

And we think that is a huge part of what makes it so special.

It doesn’t announce itself to the world. You have to be invited down the driveway to discover it.

The house was designed and built by its owner with Potton, the specialist self build company, and completed in 2022. This wasn’t simply a developer choosing a house and putting it onto a plot. The owner was able to think about how she wanted to live, how the rooms should connect, where the light should come from and how the house should feel throughout the seasons.

Even the plot has a lovely story. It had previously been an allotment alongside the owner’s former home and, after exploring whether it could be developed, Potton helped with the architectural design, planning and timber frame construction. The entire build was completed in just ten months.

The finished house is fabulous.

The dark weatherboarding, pitched roof and enormous areas of glass look fantastic against the woodland setting, but even seeing the house from outside doesn’t really prepare you for what happens when you walk in.

Come through the hallway and suddenly the whole house opens up in front of you.

The main living, kitchen and dining space is spectacular. The ceiling soars above you, there is glass everywhere, light pours in from above and, looking down over it all, is the mezzanine principal suite.

It is the sort of room that makes you stop for a second and just take it all in.

The kitchen sits right at the heart of the space, with a large island and plenty of room around it, while the dining and living areas flow naturally around it. Nothing feels squeezed in or overly formal. It is one big, sociable room that works just as well with a house full of family and friends as it does with two people curled up beside the wood burner on a winter evening.

And then there is that glass.

It completely changes the way the house feels because you are constantly connected to what is happening outside. Open the French doors in summer and the living space spills out onto the terrace and into the garden. Close everything up in winter, light the wood burner and you still have the trees, sky and changing weather as the backdrop to the room.

Despite the incredible amount of glazing, the house was cleverly designed for year round comfort. The owner tells us the main room stays beautifully cool in summer and the house is wonderfully warm in winter. Its timber frame is well insulated and the air source heat pump, wood burner and MVHR system, which recovers heat while continually bringing fresh filtered air into the house, were incorporated into a home designed to use less energy while remaining comfortable throughout the year.

What we particularly like is that all of this wonderful architecture hasn’t come at the expense of actually being able to live here.

There is excellent storage, a separate laundry room and a utility room incorporating the cloakroom, so the practical bits of everyday life have somewhere to go. The kitchen has integrated appliances and, outside, the long driveway provides parking for multiple vehicles.

The layout is clever too.

There are two bedrooms and the family bathroom on the ground floor, which gives the house a surprising amount of flexibility. It could be a fabulous family home, but we can equally see it appealing to someone downsizing who wants somewhere really special for themselves while retaining proper space for children, grandchildren and friends to stay.

Then upstairs you find the principal bedroom.

Sitting on the mezzanine above that extraordinary living space, with its own en suite and useful storage tucked into the eaves, it feels almost like a private retreat within the house. The owner says it is her favourite room because she can wake up, look towards the woods and sometimes see the muntjac deer outside.

And that connection with nature follows you everywhere here.

There is woodland immediately alongside the garden, birds everywhere and wildlife regularly wandering past. The owner’s father apparently spends hours simply sitting and watching the deer, birds and squirrels when he visits, which tells you quite a lot about how this house makes you feel.

Outside, the garden has been designed to be enjoyed rather than to consume every spare weekend. There is a large paved terrace with plenty of room for outdoor furniture and entertaining, lawn, established planting and useful garden storage, all surrounded by that wonderful sense of greenery and privacy.

In fact, there is something about the whole place that feels almost protected.

You are tucked away from the road, surrounded by trees and completely removed from the feeling of everyday life going on around you. It feels safe, secure, peaceful and private.

And, dare we say it, a little bit precious.

Not precious in the sense that you would be frightened to touch anything. Quite the opposite. Precious because somebody had the opportunity to create something genuinely individual in a wonderful setting and somehow, in such a traditional town, it exists almost completely unnoticed.

That is what we keep coming back to with this house.

Stamford has beautiful period homes. It has some very good modern homes too. But this is something else entirely.

It is contemporary without feeling stark. Dramatic without being impractical. Full of glass and architectural interest, yet warm, colourful and incredibly inviting. It feels like a home, rather than a piece of architecture you are supposed to stand back and admire.

Most people travelling along Empingham Road will never even know it exists.

You will.

And once you’ve been invited down that driveway and discovered what is waiting at the end of it, we think you might just fall a little bit in love with it.

One of the most remarkable things about 19b Empingham Road is that a setting this private exists so close to the centre of Stamford.

The house sits well back from Empingham Road at the end of a long driveway. By the time you reach it, the road feels a world away. Woodland sits alongside the garden, greenery surrounds you and the whole setting has a peaceful, secluded feel that you would normally expect to travel much further into the countryside to find.

Yet you really haven’t left Stamford at all.

The owner describes the walk into the centre as around ten minutes and regularly walks into town during the day and again in the evening for dinner. Waitrose is also close by, so this is somewhere where you can genuinely leave the car at home for much of everyday life.

Stamford itself offers its wonderful mix of independent shops, cafés, pubs and restaurants, beautiful historic architecture and everyday amenities, while this side of town also puts you in a particularly convenient position for schools.

Malcolm Sargent Primary School is on Empingham Road itself and is currently rated Good by Ofsted. Stamford School and the wider Stamford Schools are also nearby, with Great Casterton and Casterton College Rutland easily accessible from this side of town.

Stamford railway station is approximately 0.62 miles away, with services towards Peterborough, Leicester and Cambridge, and Peterborough providing fast onward connections to London King's Cross. The A1 is also easily reached for journeys further afield.

But the location really makes sense when you stand at the house.

You can be sitting outside surrounded by trees, watching the wildlife and barely conscious that anyone else is around, then decide to walk into Stamford for dinner.

That combination of privacy, countryside feeling and town centre convenience is incredibly difficult to find.