The architect and gardener Peter Aldington, who has died aged 93, had a following and influence out of proportion to the relatively modest quantity of his buildings over a span of little more than 20 years. The relationship between quantity and quality came mainly from a refusal to compromise. His attention to detail and materials, combined with a sensitivity to space indoors and out, imagining how people would live or work, and his stubborn integrity meant that he never accepted second best. This approach did not make for an easy working life and led to him quitting architectural practice at the age of 53.
Aldington’s first solo project was a small village house at Askett, Buckinghamshire, commissioned in 1961 by Michael White, a timber specialist whom he had met while on a climbing holiday in Scotland. Robust pine woodwork sat on white painted brick walls, the palette for several later houses. Aldington and his wife Margaret, a nursing sister, occupied the unfinished shell and finished the interior in lieu of rent.
