A Grade II listed home. A rebuilt garden wall, and an orangery off the music room.
The consented orangery against the rear of the listed house. An enhanced photograph of the approved scheme: consent is granted and the owners are taking it forward, so it is not built yet.
Two linked consents on one Grade II listed Regency home, run back to back: a garden wall, then an orangery.
On a listed building the protection reaches the curtilage, so even the garden wall needed consent.
The owners live in one half of a handsome Regency house, divided into two homes a century ago. They had bought part of the garden next door and wanted to make the most of it: first by enclosing the enlarged garden with a wall in keeping with the house, then by opening the ground floor to it.
Both ideas sat on a listed building, so nothing could happen without consent, and on a house of this quality the bar for protecting historic fabric is high.
About a year, and two separate listed building processes run back to back on the same house, each with its own heritage justification and drawings.
Listing reaches all the way to the garden wall.
A listed building's protection extends to its curtilage, so a new boundary wall needed consent in its own right. One misjudged detail could have turned a domestic project into a refusal on a protected home.
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Three things had to hold at once: historic fabric protected, the alteration kept reversible, and a new wall with foundations designed around mature trees and agreed with the neighbour.
Because the house is Grade II listed, the protection extends to its curtilage, so even a new boundary wall needed its own listed building consent. It also needed brick piers and foundations designed around the mature trees on the plot, and an agreement with the neighbour whose garden land had been bought. None of that is unusual work in isolation. On a protected building it all becomes a heritage matter, because the council will treat it as one.
The orangery was more delicate again. Adding a garden room to the back of a listed Regency house means opening the wall between the existing room and the new space, and that is where historic fabric is lost. An opening too wide, or a material out of character, could have drawn an objection and turned a straightforward domestic project into a refusal.
The conservation authority asked that the new opening be kept to double-door width, so that less original fabric was removed and the change stayed reversible. We refined the design to suit and made the heritage case for it, aligning the opening with the doors of the orangery itself. Consent followed. The wall was granted in April 2024 and built over the summer; the orangery and the internal alterations were granted that December. The garden is enclosed and in use, and the consent for a brighter ground floor is in hand for the owners to build out.
One practice designed both phases and ran both consents on the same protected house, so the heritage argument stayed consistent across them.
Reclaimed brick, coping and a timber door, all secured by condition and signed off.
Traditionally detailed, so a new room reads quietly against a Regency rear elevation.
The conservation authority was on side at each step, and neither application drew an objection.
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