• Built in 1923-25
• Four bedrooms
• Bathroom and separate shower room
• Workshops in the undercroft
• One of the very few Egyptian houses in Britain
• Comes complete with 3,000 year old Mummy
• 

Here is a veritable oasis in Thamesside Middlesex.

Arnussi is the name of an oasis in the Sinai Desert on the camel route to Persia, which Percy Stammwitz visited in the First World War.

Inspired by Egyptian architecture he came back to England and bought a plot of land in Sunbury near the Thames. Here he single-handedly built his dream home, with statues, domes and minarets all made out of reinforced concrete, and the 3,000 year old mummy of a cat which he built into a wall. The eccentricity is purely visual. The interior is comfortable, practical, elegant and nothing like you've ever seen before.

Here's what you get for your money. The room sizes are shown on the floor plan at the bottom of these details. Click on the plans to see greater detail.

The Egyptian Gateway

Egyptian trabeated gateway surmounted by decorated cornice topped with flanking camels gardant.

Steps up to a covered entrance porch. The front door is decorated with the iron Crosses of Jerusalem, and protected by an elaborate turned wood Egyptian screen door.

Domed vestibule lined with apparent brass repoussé (actually plasterwork) wall plaques decorated with hieroglyphics and various Egyptian gods. A mummified cat in a glass sarcophagus is set into a niche in the wall (picture in the left column).

The dining room

Domed dining room with windows on two sides and fireplace with Stimmwitz's regimental motto carved in relief. The minaret above serves as the chimney.

Off the dining room is Bedroom 1, light and airy with windows on three sides.

A corridor leads to a short flight of stairs up to Bathroom 1 with Aqualisa shower and WC.

Passage through the kitchen to the living room

Passage into the Kitchen. Small, but cleverly and luxuriously fitted out. As we all know, the kitchen is the heart of the house, and nowhere more so than in Arnussi where it also serves as the corridor linking both halves of the building.

The living room

Large Living Room with windows on three sides overlooking a paddock. French windows to a large decked balcony.

Doorway to a dressing room, and beyond that Bedroom 2, with plenty of ingeniously concealed wardrobe space.

On the other side of the living room a passage leads on one side to Bedroom 3 and on the other to Bathroom 2, which has a shower, washhandbasin and WC but no bath.

From this small landing there is a back door with cat flap leading out to an enclosed yard, and stairs down to the lower ground floor with a large utility room, and beyond that, Bedroom 4. Off the utility room is the boiler room, with a fairly new Potterton mains gas fired boiler providing full central heating.

The garden

Outside a 70' garden runs along the side of the house. You can walk underneath the house to the yard on the north side. There are two workshops in the undercroft which are not shown on the floor plan. They measure respectively 16' x 6'6 and 6'9 x 6'.

The house from the rented field

The present owner rents quarter of an acre of the adjacent field for £1,000 per annum from RMC plc.

There is off-street parking outside the house and a freehold Garage on the opposite side of the road.

There is a Resident's Association in The Creek, which is a private road, and they pay £40 per annum for its upkeep.

Click on the floor plan to see more detail

There's a good primary schoool called Beauclerc in the area, and nearby are Lady Eleanor Hollis girls' school and the Hampton School for Boys.

The local authority is Spelthorne, Surrey County Council (remember Middlesex no longer exists) and the tax band is F. There are good bus and train services to London and Heathrow.

Click on the floor plan to see more detail

This is a fairly eclectic mix of Ancient Egyptian architecture and vernacular Middle Eastern domestic building. Stammwitz was a career entomologist at the Natural History Museum and deliberately fused the styles. The house is built on stilts just in case Old Father Thames from down the road decides to pay a visit, and the lower ground floor rooms are tanked. Unlike our other properties, this isn't listed. But it's so bizarre, quaint yet practical (and we've admired it for years) that we always hoped it was going to be a Pavilion of Splendour.

 

To arrange a viewing of this property please contact

Pavilions of Splendour
22 Mount View Road
London N4 4HX
020 8348 1234