Luxury Featuring a vast central barrel vault, this one-of-a-kind home has been used to host Kevin McCloud’s House of the Year When Chris Taee decided the time had come to move out of London he thought it would be a case of booking a few viewings and selecting a new property to buy. But after two years of fruitless searching he came to the conclusion that he was going to have to take a more hands on approach. In 2009 Chris bought a 2.
5 acre site in the South Downs National Park , near Petersfield, Hampshire , and put his life on hold to oversee the long process of building a new house from scratch. “It was the project of a lifetime,” he said. The result of his efforts is an extraordinary oak-clad house with a monumental barrel vaulted central dining hall with a 23-foot-high ceiling which acts as a walkway between the front and back doors of the house.
Downley House has three storeys, measures 7,373 sqaure foot, and is made up of a series of towers and turrets accessed by spiral staircases. Kevin McCloud opted to host his Grand Designs House of the Year show there, and it was shortlisted for the prestigious RIBA House of the Year award. Now, some 12 years after moving in with his young family, Taee is saying goodbye to his one-of-a-kind home.
He divorced last year, and with his two children at college in the United States he has decided it is time to move on. Downley House is on sale with House Partnership estate agents for £5 million. Back in 2007 the Taee family was li.
