Adjacent to Thursley Common, the new house has been designed to reflect the style and materials of a traditional gambrel roofed rural barn with black stained horizontal timber cladding and a plain clay tile roof. The overhanging eaves, brick plinth and zinc finish to the rainwater goods all help maintain this rural feel.

For more timber frame homes by BWP Architects please click here.

Sir Peter Wakefield’s family had been trying to obtain planning permission for a new house on a plot of land to the rear of their home for some 20 years and in 2002 the project passed to one of Sir Peter’s sons who approached Leigh Brooks after a recommendation by another of his clients.

Following an initial design period of some nine months and numerous consultations with the local planning authority consent was finally obtained for a new four storey ‘Georgian’ style town house.

To maximise the potential of the site the house occupies a basement which covers the entire site and contains the master bedroom suite and ancillary accommodation. This provided the main contractors with a logistical nightmare due to the extremely narrow approach to the site and the lack of any working space around the site – the solution was to form the basement in three stages, backfilling the earth into the previously formed basement sections to allow the mechanical digger to move around site to form the next section of basement and then finally digging it all out again into waiting lorries on turn-around once the whole basement had been formed (and backfilled). The fourth floor is contained within the roof structure itself – steel framed to ensure that a single open space is achieved.

To the rear a courtyard terrace is built over the master bedroom ensuite with a stone staircase leading down to a lightwell to the rear of the property. This lightwell, glazed on three sides with opening French windows, throw light into both the master bedroom and the ensuite bathroom while maintaining privacy.
To ensure attention to historic detailing the sliding sash windows, conservatory with finely detailed lambs tongue mouldings, a hand carved and bracketed door canopy and front door itself are all bespoke for this project with joiners working from full size working drawings provided by the architects.

London Stock bricks with stone detailing and natural slate roofing complete the elevations.

The project was completed in December 2006 for a construction cost of around £450,000.

The initial design work and planning application was carried out for a private client looking to develop a piece of vacant land they owned.

Once planning permission was obtained the land was sold to Charlotte Homes (Southern) Ltd to progress the scheme to construction and we were not retained as the project architects.

The introduction of the small front ‘garden’ and railings and the general lack of detail given to the stonework is an excellent example of how the architect’s design can be watered down if they are not involved post-planning. While the overall appearance and massing of the houses may relate to the planning permission we feel that the final result has lost much of the finesse we had hoped for.

A comparison between the photograph of the front against the design drawings clearly shows this. The large stone joints, the incorrect mortar colour, the use of smaller pieces of stone, the missing mouldings etc from the stonework and the placing of the windows to the front face of the brickwork, the lacking of detailing to the eaves and soffits all contribute to the significant reduction in the final quality of the build.

Completed September 2007