Our Treehouse Projects Hertfordshire
A family wanted a treehouse their children could grow into, under an old oak they did not want to touch. We built it on stilts, independent of the tree, with two turrets joined by a covered walkway.
The brief
The family came to us with three children aged four to eleven and a clear idea: somewhere that felt like a proper hideaway now, and would still be used when the eldest was a teenager. Their one worry was the oak at the end of the garden. It had been there for well over a century and they did not want anything to harm it.
The tree
A mature English oak, healthy, with a broad spreading canopy and a trunk well over a metre across. Big enough to carry a treehouse, but the lower branches were in exactly the wrong places for the layout the family wanted, and we would rather not cut anything from a tree like that.
The site
A long garden on the edge of Tring in Hertfordshire, sloping gently away from the house, with access down the side of the property through a gate just under a metre wide. Everything had to come through that gate by hand.
The challenge
Building around the oak without fixing anything to it. The answer was to carry the whole structure on stilts set on screw piles, placed between the main roots after a careful look at where they ran, so there was no digging and no concrete near the tree. The turrets sit either side of the trunk with plenty of clearance, so the oak can keep growing and moving in the wind.
The build
Larch frame and cladding, cedar shingle roofs on both turrets, and a covered walkway between them. We built the main sections in our workshop, carried them through the side gate and assembled them on site in twelve working days.
The result
The younger two use it most days after school, and the eldest has claimed the second turret as a reading room. The oak looks exactly as it did before we arrived.
We wanted something magical without hurting the oak. It is the first thing everyone asks about when they visit.
