A letter to our founding families · November 2026

Thank you for building this with us.

Hello, founding families.

Thank you for joining us, and for choosing to build this club together with us, before there was anything to see.

The more we listened to you, and the more we sat with our architect and design team, the clearer one thing became. Since we are starting again from the ground up, we need more than a list of rooms. We need a philosophy: an idea strong enough to shape every space and every way we spend time together.

Ours rests on four pillars: calm, curiosity, creativity and courage. On this page you will see how your ideas, from the family kitchen to the tree houses, the co-working space to the film studio, have found their place under them.

With warmth, Ida, and the team at The Bury

Our philosophy

A place where parents can rest, become beginners again, and children watch them dare.

  1. 01CalmRest is where courage begins.
  2. 02CuriosityAsking the question.
  3. 03CreativityMaking something in answer.
  4. 04CourageShowing the attempt.
For our first 100 families

The Bury is for life.

You joined before there was anything to see, and that took trust. Your membership doesn’t end when your children turn 12. As they grow, they’ll find more independence here, and you’ll keep your place to work, rest and learn. We’re building this together, for the long term.

Concept film

A first glimpse of a day at The Bury: the library, the garden, the lake, the kitchen, and the stars at night.

Everything The Bury will offer

The whole house, in one place.

Here is everything we are planning. Items marked New are ideas your answers have added, and you’ll find them under the four pillars further down.

For children, 0 to 12

  • Indoor and outdoor soft play
  • The crash gym
  • Pay-as-you-go crèche and kids club
  • Kids’ classes and enrichment
  • Holiday and seasonal programmes

For parents

  • Co-working, with quiet call pockets and meeting rooms
  • Gym, fitness and wellness
  • Studio classes, including yoga and Pilates with Mali Yoga
  • Lakeside sauna, cold dips and spa New
  • Nail and hair salon
  • Workshops and a course calendar
  • First attempts: new skills for parents New

Food and drink

  • A café and bakery with Nena Baker, with ordering to your desk
  • Zini Pizza and the family restaurant
  • The family kitchen, with cooking classes for families New

For the whole family

  • The library, at the heart of the house New
  • The sculpture and film set studio New
  • The astronomy rooftop New
  • The organic eco-culture garden, with hens New
  • Tree houses New
  • The lake, with kayaks and lakeside activities
  • 4.7 acres of grounds and outdoor rooms
  • E-bike nature tours New
  • Seasonal events, celebrations, parties and private hire
  • Family photography

Membership extras

  • Grandparent add-on membership
  • Member guests
  • The free Bury app: booking, plus a marketplace for books, toys and pre-loved clothes
  • Easy arrivals: valet, pickup and a drive home, being explored

Later phases

  • The orangery pool
  • Overnight stays
  • A teen membership
01
Calm

Rest is where courage begins.

Nobody dares when they are exhausted. So before anything else, The Bury has to be a place where parents can breathe: work in peace, eat a meal while it’s still warm, and come back to their children ready to play.

Concept film

Co-working: work properly, stay close.

A quiet, calm place to get real work done, with call pockets and meeting rooms. It opens off the library, so when you close the laptop you are a few steps from your children, ready to reconnect.

We are still working out how quiet each corner should be, and how close is close enough. Tell us what a good working day here looks like for you.

A light-filled café and lounge with long work tables, armchairs and soft lampsThe vision

The café

Coffee, lunch and something sweet from Nena Baker. Order to your desk while you work, or grab a seat by the window.

Adults gathered around a long bar and lounge under string lights and plants in the eveningThe vision

A relaxing meal, at last

Children head to the pay-as-you-go crèche or the central activity area, and you enjoy dinner. Pop over to feed them when they need you, then come back to your own plate.

Concept render of barrel saunas and a hot tub on a deck beside the lake at duskConcept render

Lakeside wellness New

A lakeside sauna and cold dips, which so many of you asked for, plus a spa. Warm up, cool down, and leave lighter than you came.

Also under calm
  • Nail and hair salon. A quiet hour for you, in the same building as everything else.
  • Family photography. Real moments, captured without the stress of a studio.
  • Birthday parties and family celebrations, hosted for you, so you can actually enjoy the day.
A smiling woman stepping out of a car as a driver holds the door at sunsetThe vision

Easy arrivals, easy goodbyes

We are exploring valet parking, a pickup service and a comfortable drive home after a long evening, so arriving and leaving never becomes the hard part.

02
Curiosity

Why a library sits at the heart of the house.

We chose the library as the connective tissue of The Bury: the room you walk into first, and the thread that links every other space. It won’t be one quiet room. It will have quiet corners, chatty corners and playful corners, so very different moods can live side by side.

  • Quiet corners. Silent reading nooks for children, and call pockets for parents.
  • Chatty corners. Long tables for talking, sharing a book, or meeting another family.
  • Playful corners. Low shelves, floor cushions and places where noise is welcome.
  • Two heights everywhere. What a child can reach, a child may touch.
  • Sightlines, not walls. A child can always find a parent’s face.

None of this is fixed. We are still finding the connections with our architect, and we would love your thoughts.

Concept film
Help us decide

Which library would let your children do more?

Look past how each one looks. Which would your children explore, climb, read and play in more freely? Reply and tell us.

Concept render of a classic, dark-wood library with tall shelves and a spiral stairConcept render
A. Classic and cosyDark timber, tall shelves and a spiral stair, rooted in the house’s 1712 history. Books mostly at adult height.
Concept render of a light, pale-wood library with a children's area and soft daylightConcept render
B. Light and openPale wood, soft daylight and low shelving, so children can choose their own books and roam freely.
Concept render of a family looking through a telescope on a rooftop terrace under a starry skyConcept render

The astronomy rooftop New

Telescopes, blankets and a clear Chilterns sky. Late nights spent naming the planets together.

Concept render of children planting in raised beds in a walled garden, with hens and rabbits nearbyConcept render

The organic eco-culture garden New

Raised beds where members grow their own fruit and veg, and children learn to look after the hens and collect the eggs.

03
Creativity

Make a mess, make something real.

Creativity is curiosity turned into something you can hold. These are the rooms where children and parents make things together, and show the work proudly, finished or not.

Concept render of children building a glowing miniature town of paper houses on a projected map tableConcept render
Made by our community New

The sculpture and film set studio, where children go all in.

Clay, scrap timber, paint, costumes, cameras and lights. A room where children build worlds, make a mess and tell their own stories.

We are lucky to have such a creative community. Among our founding families are artists, and friends who work on film sets, who want to help bring this room to life.

Concept render of families making pasta together in a large cookery school kitchen with a chefConcept render

The family kitchen New

Cooking classes where children and parents cook side by side, guided by a chef. Bread fails to rise, the soup is too salty, and everyone eats the result together anyway.

04
Courage

Children are born brave. We want to keep them that way.

Courage is trying before you’re sure. These are the places where children, and parents, do something a little bit scary, with a safe place to come back to afterwards.

Concept render of two tree houses joined by a rope bridge, with the house in the distanceConcept render

The tree houses New

Rope bridges, ladders and a lookout over the grounds. The first time across the bridge is a moment children remember.

Concept render of children and parents by the lake with kayaksConcept render

The lake

Kayaks and first paddles on our own private lake, for wild afternoons and slow ones.

Concept render of a swimming pool inside a glass orangeryConcept renderPhase two

The orangery pool

First strokes and first jumps under glass. Planned for our second phase.

A parent riding an electric cargo bike with two children on the back seatThe vision

E-bike nature tours New

Electric bikes to rent for guided rides through the woods and lanes of the Chilterns, including family bikes with seats for little ones.

For parents New

First attempts

A programme where adults try something new in front of their children: pottery, a first sauna dip, a song, a kayak. Children learn courage by watching us be beginners.

Growing up with you

A club families grow up in, not grow out of.

Toddlers start in soft play and the crèche. Older children move on to the film studio, the kitchen, the lake and the tree houses, with more independence each year. Parents keep a place to work, rest and learn, whatever their children’s ages.

Being designed

A teen membership

For around 12 to 16: more independence, plus junior mentor roles helping younger children discover the house.

Phase two

The orangery pool

Swimming under glass, all year round, clearly part of our second phase.

Later phase

Overnight stays

Rooms so families, and visiting grandparents, can stay over and wake up by the lake.

Updates

How it’s coming together.

  1. Four pillars, and a house shaped around them

    Calm joined curiosity, creativity and courage as our fourth pillar, because parents told us rest matters as much as growth. Every space on this page now sits under one of them.

  2. Building the app while the estate takes shape

    While the estate finds its final form, we are building the digital side of The Bury: a free app for parents to book spaces and classes, and a place to find books, toys and pre-loved clothes for your children. You will be the first to try it.

  3. Design philosophy shared

    We have shared the philosophy, and your ideas, with our architect. The library, family kitchen and co-working space are the first spaces being shaped.

  4. Your answers came in

    Founding families told us which spaces and services they would use most. Those answers now sit at the centre of the brief.

  5. A fresh start

    After the fire at the main house, work restarted with a new survey and, in many ways, a blank page to design on together.

Help us shape it

Tell us what we’ve missed.

Which library would your children do more in? What would make a working day here perfect? Is anything you hoped for missing from this page? Every reply is read, and many of the ideas above began as one.

Reply to our email, or write to us at

hellothebury@gmail.com