Diggs Field

Haddenham, Buckinghamshire

Diggs Field is a Grade II listed house of the late 1960s at Haddenham in Buckinghamshire, designed by Peter Aldington as a long, low building set either side of this double-height sun room. The client's brief, as the owners retell it, was "a house for small dinner parties of no more than six people, to accommodate some cats and some cocktail parties", and the gallery above was placed to catch the sun at every hour of the day.

A deep energy retrofit by 5th Studio later cut the space heating demand by 90 per cent, from 475 kilowatt hours a square metre each year down to 35, with airtightness improved by 93 per cent. The band breaking the glazing at storey height is a deep cedar fascia, and the white walls are sand lime brick under paint.

Peter Aldington

Peter Aldington was an English architect best known for Turn End, his own house in the same village, and ran the practice that became Aldington, Craig and Collinge until he left architecture for garden design in 1986. He died in April 2026, a day after turning 93.

Architecture Peter Aldington. Retrofit design 5th Studio. Seen via @themodernhouse.

The picture comes from this post on Instagram.

Researched September 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.