New build · Mendip Hills
No. 01 of 20
A low house set into the spoil beside a disused limestone quarry, with a walled courtyard and a green roof that runs back into the hill.
See the drawings and section
Claire and Dev wanted to live with the quarry, not hide from it. From the lane you see a rebuilt drystone wall and a strip of meadow. Step through the gate and every room opens onto a sheltered courtyard, with the old quarry face as the fourth wall.
01
The plot was a scrubby shelf of spoil beside a quarry that closed in the 1950s, inside the Mendip Hills National Landscape. Nobody had built there because nobody thought they would be allowed to. We spent two months walking it, surveying the old face and the bats that roost in it.
02
Paragraph 84 allows a new house in open countryside only if the design is truly outstanding and improves its setting. We took the scheme to the Design Review Panel twice, rebuilt the drystone walls along the lane and replanted the spoil heap with limestone grassland. It was approved at the first committee.
03
Pearce and Hale cast the retaining walls against rough-sawn boards, so the concrete carries the grain of the larch above it. The glulam roof went up in four days. Twelve months from the first dig to the keys, and the sedum had flowered by the second summer.
“Isla drew the house around the old quarry wall instead of fighting it. The planners loved it, and so do we.”
Thank you. Isla or Rob will ring you within two working days.
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