coombes : everitt Your Home Award-winning modern twist brings 18th century cottage into the light

Award-winning modern twist brings 18th century cottage into the light

The brief

The owners of this traditional 18th century cottage approached us with three key requests – to create a large open plan living space, to bring more natural light into the property and to improve the connection between the house and the garden.

Key challenges

The site is located in a conservation area, so the alterations had to be sympathetic to its surroundings. With several other properties situated to the south, the opportunities to bring more daylight into the existing cottage through the addition of windows were very limited. The garden sat at a higher level to the side of the house and sloped significantly uphill, which made it difficult to use.

Our solution

We created a relatively modest two storey extension linked to the original property via a magnificent double-storey glazed section, which floods both with natural light.

Positioning the extension at a 90-degree angle to the cottage has created a natural flow from the old property and out into the garden. By adding just one room per floor, we were able to reconfigure the original property and create a much more spacious home.

We incorporated details such as a secret gutter and the metal-clad, floor-to-ceiling bay window to achieve a crisp and contemporary feel – marrying the old and the new.

The natural topography means that the lawn is almost level with the master bedroom upstairs, where the projecting bay window visually extends the bedroom out into the garden and opens up previously unobserved views of the countryside beyond.

“They were engaging and had some good ideas that resonated with what we were trying to achieve.

"They set themselves apart through their approach.

"They listened and understood the sort of property we were trying to create and the style we liked. They came up with something quite different from what we'd seen from other architects.”