The Round House is described in Pevsner's THE BUILDINGS OF ENGLAND as:

"a striking house… with the type of modern organic plan more common across the Atlantic than in England. Circular, the curved living room with a hearth, the other rooms spiralling around it… Brick, with shallow-pitched roofs."

After designing this house as young architects, Peter Blundell Jones went on to become a noted architectural writer (and is now Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield) whilst Gillian Smith played a leading role in the celebrated practice of Fielden Clegg and Bradley.

Blundell-Jones himself has recently written an extensive description of the property:

"The Round House was as the retirement home of Geoffrey and Avis Blundell Jones who spent the rest of their lives there. It was built by employing bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and others directly, with the architects constantly on site and taking part. On completion it was published as an innovative project in Building Design, House and Garden and The Architectural Review.

The site was a cider orchard and was virgin ground, not built on previously. Beneath the topsoil was a hard shale, which provided a stable foundation and even yielded some walling stone. The house was placed towards the top end of the site to exploit the views across the Exe Valley and to get away from the main road, the ground being remodelled to produce a flat turning circle to north and flat areas of lawn to south, contained by retaining walls in massive stepped brickwork. The earth bank at the front greatly reduces road noise and leaves only tall vehicles visible. The drive was cut through from the hill road, and the drains run beneath it.

The main idea of the radial plan was to create an intimate room at the centre concentrating on the hearth, where there is a ten-seater built-in sofa, wonderfully cosy on winter nights. It is not a fully enclosed space but opens to a spreading room taking up two and a half of the ten segments and turning from west to south. The two parts of the living room are therefore like an ingle-nook coupled to a great bay window. The circle has three other advantages: the circulation is short and economical, the garden views and changing orientations of the beautiful secluded site are best exploited, and the circular perimeter allows the shortest length of exposed outside wall. Steps of level within the house follow the site, while also articulating the bedroom passage on the east side with a rise of four steps, and a drop to the lower living room of three steps including a built-in sofa facing the valley view. The retaining walls running outwards divide the garden into a series of outdoor rooms of contrasting character.

With clerestory lights in the central room and rooflights in the hall, passage and garage, there is excellent provision of daylight and sunlight throughout, and since the house is west facing there are wonderful sunsets. Opening windows are PH deluxe with cedar frames and single sliding glass sheets in PVC tracks, a high performace Canadian design; all other windows except the small bullseye’s have sealed double glazed units, as do the rooflights. The external walls were built with a class B engineering brick outer leaf and thermalite inner, but have also been cavity filled. The ten degree pitched roof has a timber structure and three layers of insulation: 50mm woodwool structure, 100mm glass fibre in the cavity and a 25 mm polyeurethane layer beneath the skin.

The garden was beautifully developed by Avis Blundell Jones and includes a number of fine trees as well as a wide range of shrubs."