New Forest Property - Sandbanks esque futuristic property now available for sale in New Forest

The Avon Castle estate is an upmarket private enclave on the edge of the New Forest, two miles from Ringwood and 10 from the coast. Once the grounds of a country house, it is a patchwork of twisting lanes and high hedges, behind which is a growing collection of Sandbanks lookalikes. The most spectacular of these, Saturn, has just been completed by Kevin Froud — and is on sale for £2.25m, which wouldn’t buy much in Sandbanks itself. “I built this house with a specific type of buyer in mind,” says Froud, 45, who was a professional motocross rider for Yamaha in his twenties and is now a builder. “Somebody rich and in the public eye, who wants a fun party house to show off to friends.” Froud has done subcontracting work for building companies at Sandbanks, and copied their game plan. It reads: 1) Buy a traditional home on a good plot. 2) Get planning permission to build on its footprint. 3) Knock down the original house. 4) Build something altogether more shiny and palatial in its place — and sell it for a considerable profit. He has, however, added a twist — which is obvious as you approach Saturn. What do you expect to see as you pass through the security gates of a multi-million-pound house? Probably not a huge, curvaceous white wall, absolutely featureless save for a few tiny windows and a thin strip of glass at the entrance. This, Froud insists, has been carefully planned. “I want people to stop still and ask themselves — what is this?” he says. “That’s why the garages are underground. I don’t want the visitor to see cars or anything else at all except those blank walls.” It may sound a bit cranky, but it is intriguing, too. Froud leads the way through the front door and we find ourselves in a tall glass atrium — more than 30ft high — with views straight ahead over the treetops, and out across the Avon Valley to the New Forest. The light plays tricks: the vast expanse of tinted glass — £350,000 worth of it — makes it visually confusing. Cherrywood stairs draw you to the open top landing, with the huge kitchen/dining room to the left. Only then does it register: this enormous house — which spans more than 10,000 sq ft — is wave-shaped, and every single wall is curved. Indeed, it is all these curves and circles, together with the space-age feel, that inspired the name. “I drove my architect, Peter Thompson, absolutely wild,” Froud says. “My instructions were that I wanted something completely different, something nobody had ever seen before. He sent me three outlines and I chucked them back. They were too ordinary. Then, apparently, he noticed the lazy S-shape of two coffee cups he had in front of him, and that was his eureka moment. That was the shape he came up with for this house.” This was Froud’s first big building project, and he effectively did it himself — with a little help from his wife, Sam, 42, and daughters Charlotte, 13, and Lucy, 12. “I would never have been able to afford to build a house like this using traditional methods: it would have been too labour-intensive,” he says. “So we used a new method of building — we simply put up two layers of polystyrene slabs, called Quad-Lock, as shuttering, then poured in concrete.” It also makes for better energy efficiency and soundproofing. The kitchen is focused around a crescent-shaped granite worktop, but the real “wow factor” is found off the dining area. Here, an indoor balcony overlooks a fantastic pool room. The sky-blue infinity pool follows the curve of the glass walls, resembling an indoor moat. Delicately illuminated by Lutron uplighters and downlighters, with patio furniture arranged in clusters, it has a 52in screen built into the wall. It’s enough to cause a footballer’s wife to spill her chardonnay in excitement. Everything else pales in comparison: the five bedrooms have a faintly institutional feel. Yet Saturn has all the playrooms a pampered star could hope for, including a cinema room, a gym, a sauna and a wet room, as well as a garage the size of a subterranean car park and, of course, a spot out front that could be used as a helicopter pad. Building started in September 2006, and the Froud family roughed it during construction, moving into one ground-floor room about a year ago. “It was fun,” Sam says. “The girls had no television or computers, yet they loved it — building fires outside for jacket spuds, helping with the build.” The house was finally finished this summer. Froud originally intended to live in the house himself, but at just under £2m — for the plot and the works — it all cost rather more than planned. “It’s such a big house, and the specification all had to be top-of-the-range,” he says. The market has also turned since work began, further squeezing his profit margin. He is a realist, however, and is keen to move on to other projects. “We would have been asking more than £3m if it had been 18 months ago,” he says. “But we are where we are, and there are good deals out there at the minute if you have some money in the bank.” Saturn is for sale for £2.25m For London, UK Country Houses & Farms Property Search and Relocation assistance, contact Sands Home Search. Tel: UK Office - 01425 462 549 (0044 1425 462 549); For Cape Town, South Africa Property Search and Relocation assistance, Tel: Cape Town, South Africa Office - 076 222 7518 (0027 76 222 7518)
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Sands Home Search are Property search agents & Relocation consultants who specialise in finding the finest properties for sale in London, the UK Country House, Estate, Equestrian & Farm property markets & the prime residential property market in Cape Town

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