RIBA House of the Year 2024 shortlist: The Hall

We've lived in this lane for over 35 years. It's true to say we've driven past the house lots of times and it was really elegant and really pretty and there was a sort of slight mystery to it. We always said if it ever ever came up for sale we'd love to buy it. The hall sits just outside an area in Outstanding Natural Beauty on the foothills of the Kent South Downs. The brief for the house was really about maintaining a real simplicity to this dwelling and restoring the property rather than necessarily or hardly changing it. We wanted to create a comfortable home and in particular we wanted to create space for our family totaling 19 now. They don't all come at the same time necessarily, not to stay overnight anyway. When we took ownership we rushed in only to find chipboard floors, wallpaper over cracks, crumbling timbers and found the house to be in a much more sorry state than we would ever envisage this property to be in. We had to strip the building all the way back to its bare bones at the beginning. We spent an enormous amount of time at a heli bar stitching the property back together to try and reassure it for the next 100 years before then kind of bringing in our interiors over the top of that. Having seen the amount of support the building's been given, the building is going to be lasting hundreds of years more. When dealing with a building of this type, anything above grade two star listed building, Historic England become involved in that process of the design. Surprisingly we overcame those hurdles in expanding the footprint of the house and restoring all the barns. The extension in particular is informed by the history of the house. We were very conscious to to not place an extension in an area where historically there hadn't been any footprint. To the north there was a series of 1960s additions. We reinterpreted these structures, removed them and then that is where we created this new addition. I think the family room is a successful space and trying to have something that is sensitive and a continuation of the language of the house. I love the elegance of the height of the room. I love the light that pours in from the three sides. It's just a really cozy room even though it's big and the other thing I love is the back-to-back wood burner that it shares with the room next door. When we originally submitted for planning we had two existing dormers on the front of the house and we always wanted to have a third to try and create a new bathroom to a bedroom at the top floor of the house. As soon as the house was stripped back we found evidence of a dormer window on the top floor and that third dormer is really a revelation to the second floor. That view down looks over the avenue lines and the access driveway and allows that space to really become part of that second floor where it previously would have been tucked away. We moved the kitchen which was actually in a really dark north part of the house previously and we moved it into what I felt was the heart of the original house. It sits on the eastern side with a renewed connection to the to the wall garden. I think Carol specified almost everything with cards and materials and traveled all over the UK choosing the right thing for the right place. We searched and searched. We were conscious of trying to find reclaimed bricks rather than new bricks. Bricks that had a resemblance to the house and a kind of tactility to it and then internally there was a lot of English oak used in the repairs of the house and also the barns. There was chipboard on the floor initially and we've replaced it with reclaimed timbers. The barns celebrate the old with the new in the form of the floors there being polished concrete and to really excel the timbers that you could see above you and show those off as the kind of main elements of the space. Carol and Gerry were really committed to trying to reintroduce sustainable practices in the changes they were going to do to the house and the barns. So one of the things we introduced was a new lake in the grounds of the property and within that lake we felt we could create and harness the energy from the water. What we introduced there was a water source heat pump so it sits at the bottom of the lake and it provides heating through pre-insulated pipework back to the house and then back to a plant room that redistributes that heat. I did have my own office space at the previous house but I have to say it's been upgraded folks. Gerry was looking for an office and Chris identified the long barn as we call it. I love the fact that I can see the lake that I love that I really enjoy spending time at work. We were six years building this property and the collaboration was absolutely essential. We weren't just connected on a professional level but we were connected personally and I think that was really rich for forging a really strong bond and creating something really special here. I really wanted to be heavily involved in the project and they allowed me to do that which was great. She could trust us and equally we could trust them to give us that level of respect. We really felt that that was at the end of the six years something to be truly celebrated that we all came through still talking to each other as well. Seeing the house at the very beginning to what we have now it feels a very rewarding process really to see that we've achieved a great project. I've just got a lovely feeling of satisfaction when I look around at everything that we've created helped to preserve here. I'm just really really happy. It's a challenge to come up with one word that describes something that I was so long in the making but I think for me it's home.