Over the May holiday, I retreated to Devon, staying in Peter Zumthor’s Secular Retreat, aptly named for its serene isolation. Nestled deep within pastoral Devon, the house is enveloped by fields and farmland, an hour from the nearest town. At the edge of the wilderness, tall Californian pines mark its entrance—a legacy of the original 1940s cottage once sheltered here. When the client suggested felling the trees for an improved view, Zumthor, with characteristic resolve, refused.

The idea for Secular Retreat began in 2007, when Swiss-British writer Alain de Botton sought renowned architects to design British rural retreats. Zumthor initially declined, but on visiting Devon’s pastoral landscape, he was captivated. What followed was a decade-long saga, marked by delays over scale, cost, and exacting detail. Stone slabs for the interior were individually measured, quarried, cut, and fitted, with even a single broken piece resetting the design.

This retreat became the most prolonged project in de Botton’s series, yet the results are timeless. Zumthor quipped that, while he might have hurried, a building intended to last a century must be done right. As he put it, “No one wants to boast their house was built in record time.”