grey.png){kind=small}
More sites required | Get in touch
We build homes.
We are small-scale, niche house builders & developers with an emphasis on design.
Unlike volume developers, we create bespoke, tailored, site specific, eco-homes.
The Orchard; an exclusive, secure, gated development of six architect designed two-bedroom bungalows within the green belt.
Featured Project:
About us.
Cedar Rydal was founded in 2006 by Mark Watts (RIBA) and Ted Watts (FRICS). We are design led and don’t have a 'house style’, ensuring the product is unique as the site itself.
We take time to consult with all parties, ensuring their input influences the outcome of the project, rather than imposing ‘off the peg’, standard house types.
Our aim is to create well designed and constructed houses in an environmentally responsible way. We believe in the adage ‘fabric first’ placing greater emphasis on the building fabric having low maintenance and a long life, before considering ‘bolt-on’ renewable energy systems
Past projects.
Whilst some of our projects have been ‘mixed use schemes’, all of them have included an element of residential development which is our specialism.
The first development project in which the directors of Cedar Rydal worked together was Avilla Development’s project which involved a change of use from light industrial zoned wharf buildings on the south bank of the Thames, close to Tower Bridge, into a £60m mixed-use development incorporating approximately 190 flats, shops and offices. This was an especially complicated site involving the retention and incorporation of listed buildings in a conservation area alongside new-build elements.
In 2005, the directors of Cedar Rydal embarked upon a project in Blackheath, south-east London. The project was a challenge because initially, the Planners were opposed to a modern design; principally because it was in a Conservation Area. We persuaded them, with the help of local residents, that the designs we were proposing were not only good, but would benefit and strengthen the status of the conservation area.
In 2008, Cedar Rydal undertook a feasibility study for the Blackheath Society to establish whether there would be sufficient value in the ‘Library Square’ site to enable a development to be undertaken which would pay for desirable environmental improvements.
In 2009, Cedar Rydal purchased a plot with a single dilapidated bungalow and applied for planning permission for three, four bed terraced houses of approximately 1,500 sq ft each. Planning permission was granted in July 2009 and construction began in September. Because the houses are built into the side of the hill to reduce their bulk and massing, we piled the foundations and constructed the tanked masonry basement off a ‘house-deck’ insulated ground floor slab.
Windmill Close is an exclusive development of five architect designed, two and four bedroom family homes for the 21st century located in the centre of a rural village in the heart of kent. With your front door into the village and your back door opening onto fields, it is an idyllic setting for family life.
This was a site we bought with planning permission for five, three-storey executive houses and re-designed more sympathetically as a ground-hugging terrace of 9 houses. We successfully obtained planning permission at appeal in 2013 and subsequently sold the site to McCullochs who have built something approximating our original design.
Superb three bedroom family homes of 1071sq ft designed for the 21st century with low maintenance and low running costs.
The interior layouts have been designed to flow
well making good use of all the space.