Conversion · Mendip Hills
No. 03 of 20
A collapsing cattle shed on the Mendip top, rebuilt as a family home on the same footprint, with the same roof pitch.
See the old and new elevations
Tom and Alice had walked past the old shed above Priddy for years before it came up for sale. Half the roof had gone and the frame was beyond saving. What the planners cared about was the shape it made against the skyline, so that is the one thing we kept exactly.
01
An open shed on the plateau above Priddy, 280 metres up in the Mendip Hills National Landscape. Rusted sheets, a sagging frame and a drystone wall that had held up better than the building. On a clear day you can see the Quantocks. On most days you can see the weather coming.
02
The planners would only accept a house if it read as the barn it replaced. We drew both side by side at the same scale: same footprint, same eaves, same 35 degree roof pitch. The charred larch faces the lane, and all the glass sits in the gable that looks away from it. Approved at the first committee.
03
The old frame came down board by board and the new one went up on a slab poured inside the old footprint. Pearce and Hale charred the larch in the yard, a few boards at a time. The family moved in fourteen months after we started.
“From the lane it still looks like a barn. Inside it is the best room we have ever stood in.”
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