A multi-millionaire who bought a £13.5m home on Sandbanks, the exclusive peninsula in Poole Harbour, Dorset, has knocked it down to build an eco-mansion.
Tom Glanfield paid the record price for any property on Sandbanks in 2023. It earnt the tag “most expensive bungalow in the world” as the price put it at £4,640 per square foot, a valuation equivalent to luxury homes in upscale residential areas such as central Hong Kong or Monaco.
Seeing the potential of the substantial harbourside plot, he sought planning permission to demolish the rundown, rat-infested Edwardian bungalow that had been in the same family’s ownership for 117 years.
However, the property sits within a conservation area and had been nominated to be added to the local heritage list.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council refused Mr Glanfield’s initial application to demolish the property and put in its place a new five-bedroom home.
But after two years of wrangling, the council last year approved plans for a new development. And the bungalow has been razed to the ground as part of an ambitious £8.5m project on the millionaire’s row.
The luxury home will “set a benchmark for property design for Sandbanks”, Mr Glanfield, 48, said. “It is going to be something that area has never seen before,” he added.
Mr Glanfield said the “house among the trees” will look very different from the modern white-washed mansions associated with the Sandbanks waterfront.
It will be built from sustainable materials – the hardcore for the foundations has been recycled from the crushed walls of the old bungalow – and will have a “living roof and walls”, Mr Glanfield said.
Tom Glanfield at the rebuilding site
With the peninsula made of sand – hence its name – 80 steel piles will be driven 15m into the ground to support the new two-storey house.
A 150m sea wall will also be built to defend the north-west corner of Sandbanks from erosion.
The Grand Designs-style project will take another two years to complete.
When finished the property will have an large open-plan kitchen and dining area, a double-height lounge, home office, entertainment bar and entertainment area, wine store and boot room.
There will be five bedrooms on the first floor, including a large master suite with a raised hot tub with sea views, dressing room, seating area and a balcony. The property will also have a cinema room, gym and shower room.
Outside there will be an upper terrace and patio and an undercover patio and a lawn, which will run down to the water’s edge.
Demolition of the property that had sat in the conservation since the start of the twentieth century
Mr Glanfield said: “[The house] was pretty dilapidated and had rat infestation, asbestos and an oil heating system so it was very antiquated and not environmentally friendly. We have crushed up the old house and recycled it to be put in the foundations of the new house.
“So the old house has never really left the plot, which feels good. Like the old is becoming foundations for the new, most developers would have just dumped the materials from the old house but we have recycled it.”
The 1.5-acre corner plot, called North Haven Point, was originally bought for £1,000 by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, a Victorian botanist. The four-bedroom bungalow was built in 1905 and acted as the servants’ quarters for a much larger house that has long since been demolished.
Mr Glanfield, a renewable energy recruitment company entrepreneur, has previously said: “I am aware that I am the custodian of the biggest and one of the most iconic plots on Sandbanks and I will make sure it will be amazing not just for my family but also members of the public who will see it from the road and sea.”