Extension · Axbridge
No. 05 of 20
A concrete and Doulting stone garden room behind a listed Georgian house, kept low so the old house still leads.
See the rear elevation
Helen wanted a room in the garden she could use all year, without the house feeling extended. The conservation officer wanted the back of a Grade II house left alone. The answer was in the garden wall: a room no taller than the wall, in stone and concrete that will look settled in ten years.
01
A long walled garden behind a cream-rendered Georgian house in the middle of Axbridge, inside the conservation area. The walls are older than the house. Nothing had been built in the garden for two hundred years, and the neighbours were keen it stayed that way.
02
We kept the roof below the garden wall and well below the first floor windows, so from the house and from next door you still see the old wall first. The conservation officer came to site three times. Consent came with one condition, a sample panel of the concrete, which we were going to make anyway.
03
The walls were cast against rough-sawn boards in two pours, with the Doulting stone laid by hand around them. Everything came in through the side passage in a barrow, because nothing bigger would fit. Nine months on site.
“The house still looks like the house. Then you go down the garden and there is this quiet stone room you never want to leave.”
Thank you. Isla or Rob will ring you within two working days.
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