This medieval farmhouse near Maidstone was extended so skilfully at the near end that you can hardly see the join…
One kind of house I always find especially interesting is the attractive period dwelling that’s been extended in a thoroughly modern way. It needs homeowners with the taste and the motivation to ensure it’s done well, and skilful architects & builders to make it happen.
beautiful new oakwork matches & complements the 500-600 year old original timbering, and helps make this a classic farmhouse kitchen
A couple of examples spring immediately to mind. I was commissioned for PR coverage of a historic Kent farmhouse – I think it was at least 14thC, maybe older – with a beautiful new extension executed almost seamlessly, in matching brick and with perfectly crafted exposed oakwork inside. This extension was largely to house a new kitchen. From the outside, it’s hard to detect that the house is extended – this was probably a target in order to achieve planning permission, since I believe the house is Listed.
This imposing, handsome Georgian-style parsonage – built in the early 1840s – is not Listed, though it was mentioned by Pevsner as a noteworthy Gloucestershire building
And recently, Linear PR, representing specialist architectural practice Verity & Beverley of Tetbury, put me onto a commission they’d received to extend an early Victorian parsonage on the edge of the Cotswolds. I loved the house, and admired the incorporation of a strikingly modern extension at the rear, housing (again) a new kitchen.
V&B architect Rachael Kuczaj oversaw the project, working together with the owners whose own creativity and imagination contributed a great deal. Copper clad, the extension has a sedum grass roof – pleasing in itself, this roof is situated to provide an attractive foreground to anyone seated at the summerhouse in an elevated position behind the house.
Not pure but alloyed to deter verdigris, this copper cladding is handsome and practical.
My feature on The Parsonage appears in the April issue of Real Homes magazine.
Real Homes magazine has used my images & copy well, across seven pages.