Chantry Cottage
A run-down stone cottage on a tight site in a rural Cotswold town: the brief was very open - to create a building with unique architectural quality, light, airy, modern yet in keeping with its surroundings, with Mediterranean openness, courtyards and water, for family and many visitors. The main criteria was quality of design.
A curved two-story extension now links to the old cottage with a sweeping glazed canopy over an airy entrance hall and balcony leading to the Viking bedroom with a unique ceiling like an inverted boat, and masses of storage hidden in the curve.
A huge kitchen opens through eightfold doors to a private green courtyard for inside-outside living. A disused barn on the other side has become a delightful guest suite with home cinema and a minuscule covered courtyard tucked behind. This links seamlessly through a further walled garden and pool.
Chantry Cottage is modern, with high insulation, condensing boiler, underfloor heating, therefore easy to maintain, yet the reclaimed elements - stone angels, carved lintels, monastery doors - framed within timeless materials of stone, wood, glass and copper with a restrained colour palette give a balance of old and new, as if it had grown here.
This building was shortlisted for the RIBA Downland Award
