Restoration
What has been done, and what was photographed while it was done
An old house is a long argument with water. This one has been winning it for some time.
Over the course of the present ownership, an exacting scheme of restoration and maintenance has been carried out: the tiled roofs of the traditional ranges completely renewed with integral warm roofs and full wall insulation throughout; chimneys rebuilt; underfloor heating laid through most of the ground floor of the main house and the studio annexe; solar panels and a solar thermal system installed; a kitchen made to measure.
Unusually, most of it was photographed as it happened, and the photographs were kept and labelled. What follows is a summary; the albums themselves — twenty pages of them — can be read in full on the papers page.
Roofs
The tiled roofs of the traditional barn ranges stripped back to the rafters and completely rebuilt with an integral warm roof and full wall insulation. Nine pages of photographs record the work from stripping to re-tiling.
Chimneys
Brick stacks taken down and rebuilt, repointed and re-flaunched, with new pots set. Photographed from the scaffold.
Underfloor heating
Floors lifted, insulation and pipework laid, and screed poured across most of the ground floor of the main house and the studio annexe — under slate flags that were taken up and put back.
Heating and solar
Oil-fired central heating with a solar thermal pump station in the roof space, and photovoltaic panels on the south slope of the roof.
The kitchen
Drawn out by a joiner as an elevation before it was built: dressers, drawer banks and the recess for the Aga, all in solid wood, with granite over.
The front door
A plank-and-muntin oak door under a segmental brick arch, cut from an oak grown on the place. Labelled, in the album, simply “home-grown front door”.
Warm roofs
Why it matters
A warm roof puts the insulation above the rafters rather than between them. It keeps the structural timbers inside the heated envelope, where they stay dry and at an even temperature, and it removes the cold bridges and condensation risk that come with insulating at ceiling level.
It is the more expensive way to re-roof a range of traditional buildings, and the reason the barns here are usable rooms rather than cold stores. Combined with full wall insulation, it is what makes a Winter Study possible in a Victorian cart shed.
Services and infrastructure
Behind the scenes, the house runs on its own arrangements, and they have been documented as carefully as the building work.
| Water | Private supply, drawn from a collection chamber and piped deep beneath the drive, through two treatment systems — one in the house utility room, one serving the barn range and cottage — with filtration, ultraviolet sterilisation, a variable boost pump and holding tanks. |
|---|---|
| Drainage | Private drainage. The septic tank, manholes and foulwater runs have been drawn out by hand, correcting an error on the council's own plan. |
| Heating | Oil-fired central heating with separate fuel runs to the house and the wing, a solar thermal pump station, and underfloor heating over most of the ground floor. |
| Electricity | Mains supply, with distribution boards serving the house, the cottage and the barn range and stables. Solar panels. |
| Telephone and data | A house telephone exchange in the roof space, with extensions run out to the barns and, by armoured cable up the streambed, to the summer house. |
The full schematics — water runs, treatment plant, drainage and foulwater lines, distribution boards and controls — are held with the papers rather than published here. They locate stopcocks, meters and tanks, which is not information that belongs on the open web for a house at the end of a quiet lane.
Still to be done
No house of this age is ever quite finished, and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise. The energy performance of both dwellings has room to improve — the house is rated E, with a potential of C; the cottage G, with a potential of D. Both figures are set out in full on the particulars page.