The development at Kemsing incorporated clusters of two, three and four houses, built on the old grounds of a country house in 1964 by a company called Peploe. They employed Fry, Drew & Partners who were one of the most highly-regarded architectural firms in the UK. Based in London, but working across the world, Fry, Drew & Partners were founded by Edwin Maxwell Fry (1899 – 1987) and Dame Jane Drew (1911 – 1996),  two of the most important figures in 20th-century British architecture. This scheme is relatively modest in scale compared to much of their work.

As with much of the best British architecture of the 1960s, the Scandinavian influence of Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen, and others is particularly strong at the Kemsing scheme, not only with the brick and timber palette of the houses but also in the layout of the individual properties. Efforts were made to make the scheme as naturalistic and intimate as possible, with many of the original trees kept in place and houses situated where they would be most private. Winding paths, as opposed to wide walkways, were laid down and the intention by Fry, Drew & Partners was to create a setting with a rural character.

A contemporary edition of House & Garden featured the Kemsing houses as a cover story, with the magazine’s in-house team furnishing the interiors for an extensive photoshoot. The journalist, Olive Sullivan, describes the houses as “more Scandinavian than English” and describes the architect’s “aim to reproduce that sense of seclusion found in earlier… country farmhouses”.