London has a way of stretching itself thin – pulling at the edges of its own borders until they blur into the sweeping green of the countryside. Wheathampstead is one such place – a village between the postcard charm of St Albans (and its direct trains to the city) and the broad skies of open Hertfordshire fields. It holds the line, for now, between suburbia and something more pastoral: a place shaped by the idea of home. One that eschews the supposed anonymity of city apartments and embeds it in the ideal of the individual dwelling: a distinct house, its own patch of lawn, and a front door you can see from the street. The village spreads in neat bands – large country piles tucked behind neat hedgerows, a medieval high street, scattered Tudor remnants, clusters of semi-detached post-war houses and newer masses of housebuilder homes that are eager to emulate a kind of traditionalism in miniature. It’s a landscape where clay tiles and red brick dominate, and tree-lined B-roads open up onto rolling fields. As its identity is slowly redrawn by London’s creeping edge, developers increasingly turn to these in-between places to fuel housing demand in the capital.

Built within a designated conservation area and on a plot shaped by local policies dating back to the 1990s, the project was hemmed in by a set of very familiar constraints: traditional character references, a car-dominant layout, and a sense that any new architecture should politely fade into the background. This could easily have led to pastiche – mock-vernacular detailing, faux heritage finishes – but Office S&M took a more agile route. The homes nod to their surroundings but maintain their own personality: materials are familiar but reworked; forms are recognisable but re-proportioned.

Inside, things get messier. After securing planning, Linea Homes sold the site to family-run developer BSK Construction. This is where the homes begin to lose their charm and clarity, revealing many of the deeper dysfunctions endemic to contemporary British housebuilding. The homes suffer from some of the standard compromises of small-scale development: developer-grade materials and plastic finishes that undercut the clarity of the exterior design. There’s vinyl flooring and vertical venetian blinds, and the staircases come with ornate faux Victorian spindles and bulky newel posts that feel at odds with the rest of the architecture. The outdoor detailing falters too, when timber fences awkwardly traverse the steep decline of rear gardens and leave unsafe ledges. At the end of the site, the retaining wall that makes the sunken development possible is wrapped in fake grass – presumably to help it blend in, but actually letting it shout louder than anything else in the landscaping.

Red Cow Terrace is far from flawless, but it is undeniably more ambitious than the typical developer home. It’s a rare attempt to do something contextual, characterful, and contemporary in a planning environment that often punishes deviation. But its delivery exposes the uncomfortable gap between architectural intent and commercial reality. The shift from Office S&M’s original vision
to developer execution is telling – a reflection of a wider malaise in British housebuilding. The result is a watered-down version of what could have been.

Still, there’s something admirable about how the project turned its constraints into opportunities. The conservation area, the sloping site, the decades-long planning stalemate: these could have shut down ambition. But instead, they shaped it. “I think it’s kind of interesting,” says Hugh McEwen. “It’s interesting how it’s very much a product of its location that is working in spite of, or because of it being a conservation area and a tricky topography and all these other bits and pieces, which are obviously potential blockers, but can also then be used to generate something that’s a bit different.”