For sale, a Cornwall beach house on an unrivalled site above the golden Praa Sands

Designed by architect Alex Michaelis, this spectacular Cornwall beach house is on the market for the first time since completion. Originally designed as the architect’s own family retreat, Little Cottage is located above Praa Sands, a justifiably famed Cornish beach on the UK’s south coast.

The sea-facing facing, Little Cottage (Image credit: Lillicrap Chilcott)

Tour the Cornwall beach house now for sale

The house presents an unsullied view of the English Channel and the Atlantic beyond; it’s right there at the end of the garden, with the sandy beach itself just steps away. Arranged over two levels, with a separate self-contained bedroom shack tucked away behind the house, Little Cottage is not the ersatz rural dwelling implied by its name. Instead, 2,422 sq ft of accommodation is contained within a sculptural white box that owes more to Le Corbusian modernism and noughties minimalism than conventional seaside architecture.

The view from the 50ft-long sitting room (Image credit: Lillicrap Chilcott)

The coastal façade is an exercise in asymmetric reductivist design. The ground floor is given over to a 50ft-long living room and kitchen, with central sliding glass doors that open it out onto the lawn. On the west side, the principal bedroom suite is tucked away behind a private sitting room, while the east wing houses the entrance, hallway, with the cylindrical stair tower leading off to the right, illuminated by a circular skylight.

Inside the stair tower (Image credit: Lillicrap Chilcott)

Upstairs, there are three more en-suite bedrooms, all of which have views across the water. Curved walls create a sculptural upper level, with access to a balcony one end of the bedroom corridor. Detailing is minimal throughout, with white walls, floors and ceiling paired with frameless glazing to bring in as much light as possible. The material palette includes French-plastered walls and limestone, with Corian worktops in the kitchen, mosaic clad bathrooms and wide cedar floorboards throughout.

The kitchen (Image credit: Lillicrap Chilcott)

The ground floor also hosts a cloakroom and utility room, along with a wet room with direct outside access and special provision for drying and storing wetsuits. The stair leads up to a light-filled landing and corridor, while two of the three upstairs bedrooms occupied the curved ends of the first floor; all have free-standing baths while the bedrooms have Juliet balconies.