Snuggle Cottage, Wells-next-the-Sea: a larch watch tower with sea views

The brief

The exterior finish on a £1.8M coastal build

Snuggle Cottage sits at Wells-next-the-Sea on the north Norfolk coast, part of a build with a circa £1.8M build cost. AJB Group was entrusted with the exterior finish package: the part of the job everyone sees, and the part that has to survive salt air, wind and horizontal rain for the next few decades.

Two things were in scope. Full exterior cladding on both properties, and a watch tower built to overlook the sea. The tower is the piece that makes this project unusual. It is a one off structure, for a high end client, with a view as its entire reason for existing.

The starting point was not a finished drawing. Packs of loose sawn Scottish larch timber were delivered to site and, as the team put it at the time, a very questionable plan from the architects. Everything else had to be resolved by the joiners on site.

What we did

Machined up on site from loose sawn larch

The tower was machined up on site by AJB Group joiners, working from raw packs of loose sawn Scottish larch. Working from sawn stock rather than pre-machined sections means every section is dimensioned, faced and cut on site to whatever the structure turns out to need, which is the only sensible way to build a one off when the drawings do not fully resolve.

Larch is the right timber for this position. It is naturally durable, it is stable enough to work in exposed conditions, and left to weather it silvers down into the Norfolk coastal palette instead of fighting it. See more of our larch cladding work.

Insulated and lined for year round use

A lookout that can only be used for four months of the year is a folly. This one was built to be lived in. Internally it is constructed with PIR boards and battened out with an oak faced cladding, making the room fully adequate to be enjoyed all year round. That combination, rigid insulation behind a battened oak lining, gives you thermal performance and a finished interior in the same build-up, which matters when the internal face is also the visible face.

Full exterior cladding on both properties

Alongside the tower, the package covered full exterior cladding across both properties on the site. On a coastal build the cladding is not a decorative layer, it is the weather line, so the setting out, the fixings and the detailing around openings are the whole job.

Priced on value, not on being cheapest

AJB Group is straightforward about where it sits on price. In the company's own words: we guarantee we will not be the cheapest, but we do guarantee true value for money on our builds. On a project like this, where the finish is the product, that is the honest position to take.