By Miriam Balanescu
Writers, artists and thinkers have long escaped the commotion of home for the peace and quiet of the annexe. Dylan Thomas described his shed with sea views as his “word-splashed hut”, while Mark Twain wrote of the “luxury” of his hilltop study, where “the rain beats upon the roof over my head”.
From the Roman age onward, annexes were built on estates alongside “pendicles”, “connexis”, “outsettis” and “dependances” — all minor properties shadowing the grander house. Within were ovens, kilns and furnaces.
Today, the rise of multigenerational living — driven by the costs of property and professional care — has made these secret nooks increasingly desirable. Older family members are finding sanctuary in compact, easily manageable outbuildings. And, instead of flying the nest entirely, younger generations are settling independently into their own space a stone’s throw away. Six bedroom Cedar House in Surrey (below), on the market with Knight Frank for £2.75mn, has such a property at the bottom of the garden, where a former art studio is now a self-contained apartment with its own private patio.
“The vast majority of people that are looking for annexes are in the main looking for Mum or Dad,” says David Johnston, head of sales at Savills, Sevenoaks. Parents hoping to accommodate their grown up children, he says, often “pool resources” towards buying a single, sizeable property — the boon being only one stamp duty cost.
The continuing prevalence of Airbnb and working from home are also contributing factors, explains Morten Boardman, partner at Knight Frank. “We're seeing more and more clients putting it in some form of outbuilding, often nice cedar-clad home offices,” he says.
Not all annexes are built for purely practical purposes, though. Among the more creative are safely soundproofed music studios, gaming hang-outs, kids’ dens, cinema rooms, replica pubs or bars and even crazy golf haunts. “One of the original reasons for people to have annexes was for yoga studios or as a place to keep Pilates or gym equipment,” says Johnston. “That exploded during Covid-19, when gyms were closed.”
When it comes to stylistic decisions, there are also few rules. An annexe can be a seamless expansion of the main premises, the prime example being period outbuildings. The 17th-century Orchard House (above) has landscaped grounds that span the shores of Rutland Water, and enclose an annexe cottage with a glazed gable and a balcony looking out across the reservoir. On the market with Savills for £3mn.
Newly built annexes can also blend in, as demonstrated by this town house on Mawson Road in Cambridge (below), on sale for £1.5mn with Savills. Adopting the honey-hued brickwork ubiquitous in Cambridgeshire, a two-bedroom annexe overlooks the three-bedroom home, with a suntrap garden in-between. The additional building acts as a continuation of its original form as a 19th-century greengrocer with a shopfront still intact.
Many prefer, instead, to modernise, especially when this allows for floor-to-ceiling windows, improved amenities and up-to-date heat and energy. “A lot of downsizers are coming out of older properties that have been, dare I say it, inefficient in terms of heating, their running costs, their maintenance costs,” says Johnston. Hambush Farm in Somerset (below) is one example of modernisation, a 17th-century home surrounded by a cluster of eclectic outbuildings, including a striking, state-of-the-art metal-framed Dutch barn conversion by Orme Architecture, now a three-bedroom holiday home. Knight Frank has this on the market for £2.85mn.
Holiday homes have always lent themselves to annexes, giving guests space and privacy away from the main house. In Barbados, the cottage annexe at historic Tree House on Hill Street (main picture, top, and below) perfectly complements the house with its French shutters the same breezy shade of blue, and provides an additional bedroom, bathroom, plus office space and a kitchen. This Harbour Island home is available from Bahamas Sotheby’s International Realty for $3.25mn.
Undeniably, there is something alluring about an annexe. In a letter to a friend, Virginia Woolf gushed about the morning commute to her writing getaway: “I shall smell a red rose; shall gently surge across the lawn (I move as if I carried a basket of eggs on my head) light a cigarette, take my writing board on my knee; and let myself down, like a diver, very cautiously into the last sentence I wrote yesterday.”
Photography: Savills; Knight Frank; Bahamas Sotheby’s International Realty
