The WhatHouse? team recently left the office to see for themselves a new homes development, and took a train to Bramley in Hampshire to visit Centenary Fields, where Bewley Homes is delivering a range of high-quality two-, three-, four- and five-bedroom homes.
It may be a cliché, but one of the first things to note about this site is its location. It’s a fair Spring day so we walk from the station, past some shops and find we’re at the site in about 10 minutes, looking out over open fields, which is bound to appeal to many house-hunters. Bramley is in a part of the Hampshire countryside that is only a few miles from the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
We were greeted in the marketing suite by sales and marketing director Elaine Stratford and managing director Andrew Brooks. Elaine commented: “Our show areas have been stringently designed to reflect real customers. They are far from the usual staged feeling you get in a lot of new show homes. We have tried to consider the range of ways we all like to live and the many types of families that exist these days! Gone are the Mum and Dad and two children.
“I could not be more proud than when I walk into a Bewley development. Our street scenes will be something we can enjoy for many years to come and they continue to be our legacy”.
To see why Elaine is so enthusiastic, we pop next door to step into the show house, a four-bedroom, double-fronted ‘The Curridge’. Straightaway, we’re into a welcoming hallway large enough to greet a few guests at once without everyone huddling together. The taller-than-average ceiling height, a feature across all Bewley homes, helps give a more spacious feel.
It’s most likely you’ll move forward to the spacious kitchen/dining room at the rear of the house. This is an especially appealing move because that room has double doors onto the hallway, and you can see from the front door through to the full-height bi-fold doors onto the rear garden – a real sense of space in the home.
Entering this room, the full width of the house, the kitchen and dining areas are split roughly equally by a five-ring hob/breakfast bar and its extractor. The kitchen itself is fully fitted, including double oven and dishwasher, and has plenty of workspace. It also has a useful utility room just off it.
Back out into the hallway and there’s a cloakroom and a couple of useful storage cupboards. At the front of the house, on one side is the living room, a nice size and able to work with all sorts of furniture layouts. Opposite that is the study, which could equally be a playroom or hobby room. With underfloor heating on the ground floor, having no radiator does make every room feel larger.
Upstairs, and bedrooms 1 to 3 are very similarly double-sized, while bedroom 4 is a single room. The master bedroom has built-in wardrobes (a standard in every house here) and an en suite (standard on all houses with three or more bedrooms). Here, the en suite with bath and separate shower, is actually slightly larger than the family bathroom, which has a bath with shower fitting.
As with all four- and five-bedrooms here, it comes with its own single garage, though there’s plenty of parking for all homes off-road, and guest spaces in designated areas.
While ‘The Curridge’ show house style is not on the market yet, some examples of available properties are the two-bedroom mid-terrace ‘The Elcot’, from £350,000; the three-bedroom detached ‘The Datchet’ from £470,000; and the four-bedroom detached ‘The Wickham’, from £640,000. Many will be ready to move into this summer.
While based on some tried-and-tested house types, external design at Centenary Fields utilises different bricks and tiles to reflect traditional local styles, to provide an attractive street scene and give the buyer a property that has some individual character to its neighbours. Inside, there have been tweaks to details in the layouts, too. The company pays a great deal of attention to customer feedback to assess what pleases and frustrates purchasers and finds that even small changes to the layout in a new development can make a big difference. It uses a detailed buyer questionnaire to find out what changes could be made to make its customer satisfaction figures (currently well over 90%) even better.
Bewley was founded in 1991, starting out in the luxury property market and moving into the more mainstream sector in the Home Counties a few years ago. The average price of the company’s homes has halved from £950,000 to £475,000 but it is proud to have retained its standards of build quality, and to prioritise the level of design details and specification at all its developments. While standard features are excellent, buyers are also offered a range of upgrades, such as fitted carpets and quartz kitchen worktops, to suit personal taste and budget.
At Centenary Fields, the location combines rural peace and quiet with excellent travel options and proximity to many shops, schools, amenities and leisure facilities. The rail service from Bramley to London Paddington takes around 50 minutes, changing at Reading; to London Waterloo takes an hour, changing at Basingstoke. For a village 50 miles away, this is very convenient, especially when you only have to add 10 minutes walking from the station to open your front door.
By car, the M3 is under 15 minutes away and the M4 around 20 minutes in the other direction. Less than half-an-hour away are Basingstoke, Reading, Andover and Farnborough; an hour is enough to get to Winchester, Guildford or Southampton.
Examples of local schools include Bramley C of E Primary school (rated ‘Good’ by Ofsted and a three-minute drive/20-minute walk from home), co-educational independent Sherfield School in the neighbouring village and Dove House secondary school in Basingstoke (Ofsted rating ‘Outstanding’).
For all buyers interested in following our lead to see it all first-hand, the marketing suite and show home at Centenary Fields are open from Thursday to Monday, 10.00am to 5.00pm. Please tell the team you heard about it through Whathouse.com.