Garden room extension on a listed property in London
Space to entertain was top of the agenda for extending this listed status Georgian property with a garden room.
Space to entertain and a contemporary style were top of the agenda for extending this listed status Georgian property with a garden room.
The owner of this traditional Georgian tea-caddy-style house in south London was faced with an interesting challenge. A huge fan of modernist design, Andrea Cox wanted a minimalist, contemporary extension, but tight conservation laws on these dollhouse-like properties (unique to this part of London) posed a serious threat. The solution: a garden room. Andrea could gain brownie points from the planners by removing poor-quality additions that had been fused on over the years, and channel all her modernist desires into a pavilion, separate from the house.
Andrea called in Charles Barclay Architects to help with the project, and started by joining together sections of the property that had previously been carved up into bedsits, and removing a Victorian extension at the back of the house, plus a poor-quality bungalow in the garden. The plan was to use an existing Sixties two-storey drive-through extension, making it slightly smaller (an extra attempt to woo the planners) and transforming it into a new entrance hall. They would then add a glass-box extension so dainty that you could read the original form of the house through it, before letting their hair down with the garden-room design.