Countryside goes modern

The countryside is not normally associated with cutting-edge architecture and contemporary homes, but recent years have seen a proliferation of intriguing, new rural homes.

One particularly unusual area of activity has been the creation of several grand country houses, and more than a dozen of these remarkable projects will go on show throughout September at the Royal Institute of British Architects.

The exhibition was the idea of architectural historian Neil Guy, who has written a thesis on the renaissance of the country house in the 21st century. "Between the 1890s and 2000, around 1,500 country houses were destroyed because the economic and social conditions were not right to support them," he explains.

"In recent years, however, there has been renewed interest in the country house, but in the period since the Second World War it has been almost impossible to build new country houses, that is until a piece of planning legislation called PPG7 came along."

Notorious in architectural and planning circles, PPG7 includes a clause that allows the building of houses of exceptional architectural merit in a countryside setting. Planning permission has been granted for just 17 such homes.

Nicknamed "Gummer's Law", because it was introduced by John Gummer in the late 1990s under the Conservative government, it may soon disappear under planning revisions by the present government.

The proposals have sparked furious debate, with commentators such as Paul Finch, of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, blaming the Government's opposition to the clause as "chippy class envy", while bodies including the Council for the Protection of Rural England want to discourage building on greenfield land.

Countryside march

"We are starting to see some good schemes, and the continuous renewal of the countryside has been very welcome," says Guy. "Plenty of the new projects are on the sites of homes that have been destroyed and will sit in existing parkland settings.

While they may be contemporary homes, they offer continuity with the past, they can rejuvenate estates and prevent the countryside being set in aspic."

For architect Quinlan Terry, one of Britain's best-known designers of grand homes, changes to the legislation are pointless. "The clause doesn't seem to have opened the floodgates for bad building and appears to be working perfectly well.

I can't see a problem," he says. "Country house-building suffered for 30 years after the war because people had a guilt complex about doing well: it was OK to spend your money on a yacht, but antisocial to build a decent house. There has always been the politics of envy. However, if you build something bad or grossly opulent, then you invite criticism, but something built well and with moderation has to be a good thing."

On the market

Country estates do not come much grander than Hungerford Park in Berkshire. On the market for £13 million, the price includes more than 2,000 acres of farming and country-sports land, plus two dozen houses and cottages, a stud farm and planning permission for an imposing 18,300sq ft neo-classical-style house designed by Jeremy Blake, of architecture practice Fitzroy Robinson.