The Old Farmyard

The Old Farmyard, also known as Fairy's Lodge, is a traditional farmstead in open countryside, with old brick barns, mature planting, meadow and a natural pond. The challenge was how to bring new homes to a site like this without eroding the character that makes it worth keeping.

The design keeps the existing barns at the heart of the scheme, repaired and reworked alongside carefully placed new homes, so the whole place reads as a small cluster of buildings that has grown up over time. Phase 1, five homes, is now complete, and Phase 2 is under way.

Our client didn't want one house type repeated five times, so we designed the details plot by plot. The oak porches are the clearest example: each is drawn to suit the wall and roof pitch it meets, the curved truss is cut from a single piece of green oak, and every post sits on a stainless steel base in the brick plinth so the timber stays dry. Same details, same oak, but no two the same.

At Blackberry Barn the old brickwork and pantiles set the tone. The new work sits against them: black timber where the building needed to quieten down, glazing where it needed to open up, and oak where it is doing real work, as in the open cart lodge on its brick piers. Inside, the homes are kept plain and light; the character is already in the shell.