Conservation & Heritage Issue 49 October 2025 - Flipbook - Page 114
Cliffhanger
In 1962 young architect Michael Manser (1929-2016) designed one of the first steel-framed
houses in Britain, dramatically cantilevered over a hillside in Godalming, Surrey. The steep
site provided Manser with an opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of steel construction,
with the Meccano-like house built on a modest budget and completed in just half the time
of a traditional masonry house. Cliffhanger was widely published at the time, and people
used to line the fence to look at it, some even knocking on the front door and asking to be
shown around.
Sixty years later, his son Jonathan Manser of The Manser
Practice was approached by the new owners to undertake
a major refurbishment of the house. But by 2022, the
house had fallen into disrepair. Water ingress had severely
damaged the floor and roof build-ups, there was rotten
timber, asbestos, and one of the foundations had slipped
which had led to distortion in the steelwork. This meant
that the house had to be completely stripped back to its
steel frame to allow structural repairs to be carried out.
This provided an opportunity to add thermal breaks,
where possible, to the steel frame, which was repainted
and expressed externally to preserve its original character.
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The energy efficiency of the house has also been
significantly improved by completely re-cladding and
insulating the facade, replacing the original gas boiler
and fireplace with air source heat pumps and underfloor
heating, and replacing the existing single glazed windows
with new thermally broken fixed glazing and opening
façade vents to assist with natural cross-ventilation.
Internally, the clients wanted the house to be primarily
one level. To achieve this, the upstairs bedroom and study
were converted into a large master bedroom suite, while
downstairs the four children’s bedrooms were converted
into a snug and a spacious guest suite. To provide separate
Conservation & Heritage Journal
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