{"id":3047,"date":"2025-09-29T02:12:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T18:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/2025\/09\/29\/the-engine-house-a-romantic-rescue-in-the-english-countryside-available-for-getaways\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T02:12:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T18:12:14","slug":"the-engine-house-a-romantic-rescue-in-the-english-countryside-available-for-getaways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/the-engine-house-a-romantic-rescue-in-the-english-countryside-available-for-getaways\/","title":{"rendered":"Das Maschinenhaus: Eine romantische Rettung auf dem englischen Lande (verf\u00fcgbar f\u00fcr Kurzurlaube)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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What does it take to find the romantic ruin with your name on it? For London art director Sandy Suffield the process was much like online dating: \u201cFor months, I obsessively trawled websites dedicated to derelict buildings. I looked at an embarrassing number,\u201d she tells us. \u201cAnd after a couple of abortive attempts with two other buildings, both chapels, I bought The Engine House. What compelled me? Um, er\u2026I fell in love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Built at the turn of the 20th century to supply electricity to a nearby stately home in Suffolk, two hours northeast of London, the brick structure was abandoned just a few years later, in 1914, when a fire destroyed its manor. From time to time over the decades, The Engine House was put to use\u2014as a forge, a green grocer\u2019s storeroom, and an artist\u2019s studio\u2014but when Sandy arrived it was empty and in need. And exactly what she was looking for.<\/p>\n

Sandy has degrees from Central St. Martins and the Royal College of Art and an impressive resume: she began her career as as designer at Pentagram, later became the art director at TimeOut London<\/em>, and then moved to California to work for Apple. Now freelancing in London, she has a fondness for antiques and \u201cthings with stories,\u201d such as time-forgotten properties. And she wanted to give her heart over to a giant creative project, a retreat she could share with friends, family, and kindred spirits (yes, it\u2019s available for rent). Here, the little electrical building that found love.<\/p>\n

Photography by Jefferson Smith, unless noted, courtesy of The Engine House.<\/p>\n


Above: Sandy first saw The Engine House on UK site Wreck of the Week\u2014and took possession exactly a 100 years after the local estate fire that put it out of commission. She worked with interior architect\/designer Michael Corsar, a friend from her Pentagram days, to transform the structure into a living space. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe building was never intended to be residential, but it had such good bones, it was just exciting to breath life back into it,\u201d says Sandy. \u201cI bought it with planning permission already granted; the proposed plan wasn\u2019t right for me but it was important to know that there was a precedent for approval.\u201d As for the extreme cleanup and months of constructions required: \u201cI plied friends and family with a good picnic and booze and they helped remove old tiles and take down the derelict old lean-tos on the outside. After that, I was lucky to find great local builders, in particular my brilliant contractors Seamans and Robbie, the bricky.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Above: A new extra-wide paneled front door opens to the living area. There\u2019s a sunken sitting room, aka The Snug, on the left, and the concrete steps lead to a large eat-in kitchen with a checkered floor.
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Above: A huge selling point for Sandy was the building\u2019s double-height interior. \u201cMy aim was to maintain the same feeling the space had when I first visited, and to not carve it up,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

An addition that runs perpendicular to this 540-square-foot main structure allowed Sandy and Michael to double the size of the house and introduce three bedrooms (that\u2019s one in the mezzanine over the snug) plus two baths. Scroll to the end to see floor plans and Before photos.<\/p>\n


Above: To make the building livable, the interior brick walls had to be covered in insulation. Wanting to preserve their original look, Sandy added an outer layer of brick (using reclaimed brick from the site and imperfect new brick), all \u201cdeliberately laid to look rough,\u201d she says, \u201clike the walls that sit hidden behind the insulation.\u201d <\/p>\n

The exposed beams are original as are some of the Victorian quarry tiles: Sandy reports that most broke when they were being removed to allow subfloor heating to be installed. Reclaimed clay tiles like these, she says, are easy to find (one source we know of is London interior designer Mark Lewis\u2019s online shop\u2014see his Flooring section).<\/p>\n

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Above: The kitchen cabinets are Ikea\u2019s Kungsbacka design made from recycled plastic bottles and detailed with Hackas pulls ($6.99 for a two pack). The counter is Dark Concrete, a quartz from Whitton Worktops. The diminutive black stove is a Bosch. <\/p>\n

Sandy\u2019s cabinetmakers, Deben Joinery of Suffolk, built the overhead open shelving.<\/p>\n


Above: \u201cI\u2019m an eBay, charity shop, vintage addict,\u201d says Sandy. \u201cThis is both an aesthetic choice and a reluctance to contribute more stuff to landfill.\u201d She also comes from a family of aesthetes and shopkeepers: her mother opened The Hambledon Gallery, a lifestyle store in Dorset that her younger sister now runs. And her elder sister\u2019s related shop, The Hambledon in Winchester, was voted UK independent retailer of the year a while back and just celebrated its 20th anniversary.
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Above: Sandy found the Hans Due 1972 Optima lights on Guloggratis, \u201cthe Danish equivalent of Craig\u2019s List\u2014I bought them separately! A Danish friend helped me communicate with the sellers.\u201d She grew up with the folding chairs\u2013\u201dmy parents bought them at Habitat in the mid-seventies\u201d\u2014and notes that all of the furniture is vintage: \u201cI try to reduce the amount of new stuff that I buy.\u201d,

Above: Glazed double doors framed in oak open to a brick terrace and walled garden. The grocer who once used the building as a storeroom planted tomatoes that Sandy says \u201cstill sweetly and stubbornly grow out back.\u201d
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Above: \u201cWe had to dig down to create enough head height for the snug and mezzanine bedroom,\u201d says Sandy. She recently introduced a pair of classic Ikea sofas to the space. (Scroll up to see how she originally furnished the snug.) Photograph by Sandy Suffield.
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Above: Ikea\u2019s 1986 Moment sofa by Niels Gammelgaard, has a steel frame that was inspired by a visit to a trolley factory. (Long discontinued, the design can be found from vintage dealers.) Sandy reupholstered the cushions in Rivet from Camira, a fabric made from recycled plastic bottles. Photograph by Sandy Suffield.,

Above: The addition\u2019s glazed hallway overlooks the garden. Deben Joinery did all of the woodwork: shown here, walls and doors in oak. The floor is micro-concrete. \u201cI wanted the extension to look like a new addition and not a pastiche of the original building,\u201d says Sandy, \u201cbut they have things in common: simplicity and good light.\u201d
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Above: All of the rooms are painted white\u2014\u201djust a good, basic white, nothing fancy\u201d\u2014because, as Sandy points out, \u201cthere\u2019s enough color in all the tat I\u2019ve bought on eBay.\u201d Among the finds in the downstairs bedroom: Kaiser Leuchten bedside lights, an orange Holmegaard vase from a thrift store, and framed collections of men\u2019s silk pocket squares.
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Above L: Oak stairs in the addition lead to two bedrooms and a bath. Above R: Sandy\u2019s \u201cDonkey Oatey\u201d came from Paul\u2019s Emporium in Islington, one of her favorite London antiques haunts. Right photograph by Sandy Suffield.,
Above L: Bedroom Two has a peaked ceiling and arched window. Above R: Sandy describes the bedside lights as \u201c1960s crushed ice Shatterline style.\u201d Right photograph by Sandy Suffield.
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Above: A pair of vintage French metal hanging rack flank the bed in the brick-walled mezzanine.
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Above: In the upstair bath, elongated matte brick tiles\u2014Rhian 30 x 10  from Walls and Floors\u2014set off a Pozzi Ginori Citterio basin ordered from ViaDurini. Not shown: the room\u2019s large soaking tub.
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Above: A Swedish 1950s Hans-Agne Jakobsson hand mirror and intaglios on a shelf in the upstairs bath. Photograph by Sandy Suffield.,<\/p>\n

Grundrisse<\/h3>\n


Above: The house with its addition is now L-shaped\u20141,290 square feet in total\u2014and oriented to the garden. <\/p>\n

Vor<\/h3>\n


Above: A glimpse from Sandy\u2019s first Engine House visit. Photograph by Sandy Suffield.
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Above: The original checkered floor. That\u2019s the front door (left ) as it was. Photograph by Sandy Suffield.
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Above: The double-height interior and natural light were big attractions. Photograph by Sandy Suffield.
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Above: The green grocer left behind his daily calculations. \u201cI was so sad I had to cover them, but I have photos of all the scribbles,\u201d says Sandy. Photograph by Sandy Suffield.
Above: School milk bottles as found (L) and cleaned up (R). Photographs by Sandy Suffield. <\/p>\n

How is Sandy feeling five years after falling for her place: \u201cIt\u2019s good to bring a building back to life, good to try to re-use stuff, and fun to find beautiful things. I\u2019d do it all again tomorrow if there wasn\u2019t such a chunky hole in my bank account. But as my Yorkshire granddad, Norman, used to say \u2018They don\u2019t make shrouds with pockets.\u2019<\/p>\n

The house is 10 minutes from the Bury St. Edmunds train station in Suffolk, and rents for \u00a3350 per night in summer, and \u00a3250 per night in October and November. For more details, go to The Engine House (and for a closer look at Sandy\u2019s finds, follow @theenginehousesuffolk).<\/p>\n

Ready to repurpose? Here\u2019s more inspiration:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Kitchen of the Week: A Noir Canteen in a Repurposed WWII Control Tower<\/li>\n
  • Expert Advice: What to Source from Salvage, with Zio & Sons<\/li>\n
  • Expert Advice: 7 Tips for Sourcing from Salvage with Architectural Designer Tom Givone<\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Was muss man tun, um die romantische Ruine zu finden, auf der Ihr Name steht? F\u00fcr die Londoner Kunstdirektorin Sandy Suffield war der Prozess \u00e4hnlich wie beim Online-Dating: \u201cMonatelang habe ich wie besessen Websites durchforstet, die sich mit verfallenen Geb\u00e4uden besch\u00e4ftigen. Ich habe mir eine peinliche Anzahl angesehen\u201d, erz\u00e4hlt sie. \u201cUnd nach ein paar vergeblichen Versuchen mit zwei [...]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home-renovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}