Highcliffe
The first family home at 35 Walkford Road, following the move to Dorset in 1950, was much loved. The younger children, Steve and Candy, were both born there (in 1952 and 1954 respectively). The house was embellished by numerous items of furniture and features which David and Katharine created.
However, they had long harboured the desire for a more modern framework for living. In 1967 the family moved into the newly-built house in Chewton Farm Road, Highcliffe, designed by Brian Hitchcox and John King, with whom David had worked on the Bournemouth College Environmental design course. The house, which was designed around the piano and the workshop, also provided an ideal setting for the display of David's work.
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The house occupied a small parcel of land (at the end of their garden) purchased from David’s now-widowed mother Muriel and sister Jean, who had moved to the area with Rev. John C. Ballantyne after his retirement.
Light and space were to be the defining characteristics of the open-plan house. David and Katharine both took an active role in developing its design, which incorporated a number of features that were unusual in the area at the time, including large expanses of glass and a mezzanine bedroom overlooking the living-room. The family soon got used to curious passers-by stopping to look!
David himself made much of the furniture for the new house in his custom-designed workshop - especially living-room and bedroom furniture, fitted and loose - and covered the plain white walls with 'painting by the yard' or mural sculptures.
Light and space were to be the defining characteristics of the open-plan house. David and Katharine both took an active role in developing its design, which incorporated a number of features that were unusual in the area at the time, including large expanses of glass and a mezzanine bedroom overlooking the living-room. The family soon got used to curious passers-by stopping to look!
David himself made much of the furniture for the new house in his custom-designed workshop - especially living-room and bedroom furniture, fitted and loose - and covered the plain white walls with 'painting by the yard' or mural sculptures.
In doing this he was motivated by a belief in ‘making’; a conviction that design and craftsmanship were integral skills and that hand-made objects embodied the spirit of the maker in a way that the products of mass manufacture never could.
David and Katharine put much creative energy into the garden and derived enormous pleasure from it, with an elegant lawn to the front and to the side a patio leading out onto a small garden – with a lily pond, a riot of Mediterranean trees and flowers, shrubs, fruit and vegetables, and a grapevine creeping over the patio window.
David and Katharine put much creative energy into the garden and derived enormous pleasure from it, with an elegant lawn to the front and to the side a patio leading out onto a small garden – with a lily pond, a riot of Mediterranean trees and flowers, shrubs, fruit and vegetables, and a grapevine creeping over the patio window.