NORTON

INFORMATION

The original brick and flint house was once two farmers’ cottages on the edge of Norton, a small hamlet in Hampshire. The plot has a one hundred metre south facing garden flanked by a country lane to the east; overlooking arable pastures and countryside to the west; and a collection of large agricultural buildings.

The original building was made up of a series of small, dark rooms which were a result of the traditional layout and architecture. The facades of the flint panels, framed with red brick, formed three gable ends - one of each facing the road, garden and fields. A small single storey extension faced the fields, the replacement of which offered great potential.

The brief was to create a two storey extension to provide a new kitchen, living and dining space and a master bedroom suite. The client wanted the new extension to have a load-bearing green oak structural frame that would be honest to traditional frame building techniques, including exposed corner bracing and pegs joints. Carpenter Oak were the chosen sub-contractors for this frame, which became an integral part of the project. We took on the oak frame as a found object, which was exposed internally and wrapped with floor, wall and ceiling linings which surround the frame and amplify it.

The new extension creates an additional gable end which steps forward into the garden and continuing the stepped facade of the existing house. The pitched roof extends down to the first floor plate to form an asymmetric elevation and a relationship to the adjacent barn buildings. The west facing elevation forms two overlapping gables of different sizes which establish a relationship to the large timber barns they face.

In order to create a strong visual connection to the garden, the whole of the new ground floor elevation is glazed and shaded from the sun by the projecting first floor gable, which forms a covered loggia area. The first floor interior is open to the ridge beam to create a tall bedroom space, exposing the oak frame which traces the outline of the existing flint gable wall and becomes part of the bedroom interior. Large openings look down the garden and across the open fields and to the west to capture the setting sun.

The new cladding materials of brick, flint and timber were selected as they are all found in the existing building fabric, although the tones of the materials were altered to be within a range of silver greys. These materials are used in a more abstract way in the new extension, in larger panels of single material such as the flint base wall, the large monolithic chimney and the cedar clad gable walls.

The original formal entrance to the house from the lane was not used regularly and this lead to the existing glazed rear entrance being reconsidered as the main entrance. This allowed the new extension to create a balanced plan either side of the new entrance and created a more intimate collection of rooms away from the public side of the building, with the now centrally placed living room becoming a snug area.

The first floor rooms are arranged as a master suite accessed through the dressing room, acting as a buffer to the rest of the house, with the ensuite accessed from the bedroom.

In addition to the extension described above, GDA produced a master plan for the whole site and secured planning consent for the removal of the existing garage and its repositioning to the northern edge of the site - creating more open space around the new entrance and improving views to the surrounding landscape.

The finished project has dramatically changed the existing house, providing a new central entrance to the property and dynamic, new, light and open spaces that offer a strong visual connection to the surrounding landscape.

Project Name: Norton
Project Description: House Extension & Refurbishment
Structural Engineer: Arup
Service Engineer: Milieu Consult Limited
Building Control: MLM
Client: Private
Size: 119m2