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The Hills Plains Cottage Pool House is a guest quarters and natural swimming pool on the property of Jerry Wolveridge, whose family home sits on the same Macedon Ranges hillside. The accommodation is a 50-square-metre single-bedroom cottage, which like Jerry’s home, operates off-the-grid. This mini eco-retreat also offers a natural springs pool, used by family and guests alike on balmy days.
The design of the cottage and pool was chiefly informed by the environmental setting of the project, as Jerry explains the intention to ‘provide protection from the sometime windy conditions, a sense of seclusion for guests and the opening up of a new view-line towards the Heathcote ranges’. The Hill Plains house on the property was informed by the elongated simplicity of Victorian agricultural buildings, and this clean and understated aesthetic is carried through in the design of the cottage and pool.
Jerry highlights that this new addition to the property has ‘become a social hub for our family on warm days, and a retreat for those who want to find their own space’. The design allows for both communal time around the pool, and a private retreat in the self contained single-bedroom cottage, where ‘a sense of separation and privacy is enabled between buildings old and new,’ he explains.
The beauty of this project is matched by its impressive sustainability ethos. Solar panels and backup batteries keep the cottage running, with the cosy addition of a slow combustion wood fire in winter. Book yourself in for a stay, and a splash at Hill Plains Cottage.
