a converted boathouse on the harbour edge at sandbanks

The boathouse sits where the land gives out, its timber flank rising straight from the water on the Poole Harbour side of the peninsula. Built in the 1920s to shelter a working launch, it spent decades as a low brick-and-clinker shed before a two-year restoration returned it to the harbour as a house. The original cradle slip has been retained beneath a glazed floor panel in the entrance hall, so the tide is visible underfoot at the threshold.

Inside, the ground floor opens to a single south-west reception that runs the full depth of the building, its far wall folding back onto a cantilevered deck above the mooring. Reclaimed Douglas fir lines the ceiling, lifted from the original roof structure and planed back; the kitchen is set against the landward wall in oiled oak and honed Purbeck stone, quarried a few miles east along the coast. A second, smaller sitting room on the first floor catches the morning light over the harbour channel and the chain ferry beyond.

Four bedrooms occupy the upper floor, the principal suite gable-end with a window seat set into the eaves and a clear sightline across the water to Brownsea Island. The deep-water mooring runs with the house and is held on a private licence, giving direct access to the harbour and the run out past the bar to Studland Bay. It is a building that has spent a century reading the tide, and the restoration has done little to change that.