01 · Residential

Rosewood Barn

A new house on the footprint of a timber barn that fell down in 2015.

Location: Chew Valley, Somerset
Type: New house
Floor area: 240 m²
Planning: 5 months
Build: 11 months
Completed: 2024

The house from the garden: a long gabled form in vertical larch boards, with a full-height glazed opening onto a timber deck — **Fig. 01** South side. The larch is untreated and has started to silver.

Brief

Live on the land they farm

The clients farm the fields around the site. The barn had stood empty for decades before its roof came down in a storm, and only part of the oak frame survived.

Approach

Same footprint, same height

The site is in the Green Belt, where a new house is only allowed if it replaces a building of the same size. Planning would accept the barn’s footprint and ridge height and nothing more, so the house is a barn: one long gabled volume with no dormers and nothing sticking out.

The surviving oak posts and beams were cleaned and put back in the living room. They carry no load. A glulam frame stands just inside them and does the structural work.

A tall window filling the gable end of a room under exposed rafters — **Fig. 02** Main bedroom under the east gable.

Old timber posts and beams in a long room with high tables and stools — **Fig. 03** Reused oak frame in the living room.

Outcome

Five months in planning, mostly on windows

The planning officer accepted the form early. Most of the five months went on agreeing the size of the openings, which ended up as the old cart doors on the south side and almost nothing on the north.

Next projectThe Maltings