Private Villa on Leisure Island

A thatched villa on Bowden Park Road, standing behind a large tree at the end of a brick-paved driveway. The thatch is the character of the whole place: every main room goes up into it, timber trusses and all.

Parking is on the brick paving. The house presents modestly from the road and opens out inside, where a double-height mezzanine landing looks down over a round dining table. Stone runs through the ground floor as an accent.

Under the thatch

The living room has white sofas round a fireplace with an arched bookshelf beside it, and cowhide-upholstered chairs in the next room opening onto the garden. The kitchen has an island, an extractor hood and a black range cooker, with a pass-through to a wooden dining table and rattan chairs. High ceilings and exposed beams carry through all of it, and a round window lights the hallway.

Antique frames, timber trusses

Two bedrooms sleep four, both under the vaulted thatch. One has an antique wooden bed frame, another a white bed with a bench at its foot and built-in cupboards, and an arched doorway connects through to the living area. Of the four bathrooms, one holds a freestanding roll-top bath beside a round window onto a courtyard and another a mosaic-tiled walk-in shower. There is an outdoor shower tucked into a fern-filled corner.

The plunge pool on stone

A round plunge pool sits on a stone terrace under loungers and a large umbrella. A long outdoor dining table runs down a covered patio with a pizza oven at one end, and wicker chairs stand against a stone accent wall. French doors open the house onto all of it.

Bowden Park Road outward

This is a quiet residential island, and the Armstrong Road causeway is how you get onto it. Steenbok Nature Reserve covers the island’s northern edge, free to walk at any hour. Our introduction to Leisure Isle sets out what there is to do here.

The right party

Two couples, or a family of four, who want thatch and a pizza oven rather than square footage.