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There’s a Hatton Fields house securely hidden from the street behind towering cypresses and tall, thick, leafy hedges that create an impenetrable screen. Perhaps it’s the subliminal hint of rich mysteries beyond and within that beckon the visitor through the little-noticed iron gate where, in just a few footsteps, one discovers staid brickwork at the top of a widely-fanned stairway. Below this, a 40-foot by 25-foot brick patio is rendered ultra-private by a swaying chorus line of canopy trees.

Several gentle tiers below the patio, a 34-square-foot reflecting pool with water rippled by a low umbrella fountain is nothing less than mesmerizing. Beyond this, one is welcomed by a truly handsome home centered within the arch of a horseshoe configuration with two welcoming arms extending along the side of the pool. It’s a sophisticated concept: exquisitely understated, but with a sensible British sensibility. The expansive, gracious rooms are made modern with enormous wood-framed windows. Seen from the patio, the windows facing the pool and on the other side of the house allow straight-through views of Corona Ranch and Point Lobos. For a moment, one suspects it’s an illusion.

Thanks to the gracious mistress of the house, Anne Burleigh, wife of Monterey County Judge Bill Burleigh, this resplendent place is the setting for many dinners for the Music Society during the Bach Festival season. This music—played too beautifully to imagine—must truly soar if only to hold its own in a place whose beauty otherwise steals every scene.

Anne Burleigh has lived here a long time and has great appreciation for the home’s origins. “I was married to Houston Hannon for many years after the loss of his first wife, Virginia Blair Hannon,” Burleigh says. “She was an amazing tile artist and fortunately they built samples of her work into the house.” Burleigh refers to the Chagall-like tiled hearth in the formal library (one of five fireplaces) and different motifs in each of the five bathrooms. Of the six bedrooms, three of them are downstairs, where a huge, private two-bedroom apartment faces the back lawn and a dorm-sized guest room opens to the swimming pool.

By entering the main house (a mere 1.75 square foot less than 3,000) through the side door, one discovers a guest room, another bathroom, and a service room to the beautiful kitchen (full cherry wood in both), which includes a Sub-Zero and wonderful windows over deep sinks, all overlooking the formal rose garden. The breakfast room precedes a dignitaries’ dining room that faces Corona Ranch. It has a delightful door (to a wrap-around balcony) of leaded glass that spills prisms like diamonds across the floor.

A huge archway graciously introduces the dining room to the living room (13-foot ceilings, only slightly lower ones throughout), a magnificent space where massive, framed windows view the reflecting pool in front while those opposite overlook the full sweep of the views—each contributing to the illusion first observed from outside.

The master and the living room’s elegantly simple fireplaces share a chimney. There are two unexpected and delightful architectural canopies in the bedroom—one over the bed, and the other above the library area. The bed rests against a huge window that opens to Garland Park in the distance and casts sparkling reflections from the glistening swimming pool onto the ceiling. Views of the Corona Ranch hills fill another spectacular window along the room’s longest wall.

Burleigh’s property is a full acre imbued with a soulful kindness that belies both the granite-solid foundations and the lingering memory of dance-all-night parties hosted there. 

Price: $2,195,000.  3546 Lazarro, Hatten Fields, Carmel. Contact Bill Burleigh, Mid Coast Investments, 659-5956.