Extending an 18th Century Cottage

"We actually moved house because of our daughter’s pony,” says Jeanne Pepper. “Tim and I had lived for 10 years in a modern four bedroom house on a small development, and decided to try and find somewhere with land so that we could keep the pony at home. We started looking in the summer of 2002 with very open minds, and viewed everything from a brand new house backing onto fields to a tumbledown farm with 10 acres. Both of us had been brought up in small villages where we knew everyone, and we wanted our children to enjoy the same kind of childhood within a close community.”

Some friends of the family were also house hunting, and told Jeanne and Tim about a property they had seen. The Peppers drove to look at the house from the outside, and discovered a sleepy village with one tiny pub which they had not even realised existed. The couple decided that this was where they wanted to live, and made unsuccessful attempts to purchase three different houses in the village. When a tumbledown cottage in an acre of overgrown garden came onto the market, they were keen to view it.

“The cottage had belonged to an old lady with lots of cats and a taste for very bright paint” says Tim. “It needed a new roof, floors and windows and was far too small for our needs, but we thought that we might be able to extend to the rear without spoiling the existing frontage. When we attended the auction the room was packed, but nobody bid for the cottage. It was withdrawn from the sale, and we decided to approach the auctioneers afterwards and made an offer of £175,000, which was accepted.”

Built in 1767, Croft House is within a Conservation Area on a long, narrow plot fronting the road, and had once been used by the lord of the manor as a coachman’s house, adjacent to the stables. All the lower corners were built from curved bricks, cut by hand, to prevent scratching the carriages as they passed.

When Tim and Jeanne first purchased the property there was a lounge and dining room on the ground floor with a single storey kitchen, boiler house, log store and outside WC added on at the rear. On the first floor were three bedrooms and a bathroom. The Peppers were assured by the planning officer that an extension would be acceptable, and bought the cottage without formal planning permission.

“Tim’s father has experience of design and build projects, and we asked him to help us with the plans for the cottage and liaise with the conservation officer,” says Jeanne. “We wanted quite an open layout, with a large living kitchen where everyone could spend time. By building a two storey extension to the rear of the house we were able to retain the existing lounge, dining room and bedrooms, enlarging the overall building from 120m2 to 214m2.”

“Our plan was to refurbish the cottage and then extend once we had moved in, and we worked like mad for four months to get the place habitable,” says Tim. “There was rot, condensation and woodworm — you name it, we had it. We needed to dig out all of the ground floors, and found that the terracotta tiles in the hallway were laid on sand — much to the children’s delight. They brought their buckets and spades and spent hours using it as a sandpit!”

Scaffolding was erected and the clay pantiles stripped by a roofing contractor. “We took the roof timbers off ourselves one Saturday morning, and a joiner then replaced the purlins,” Jeanne explains. “The roofer then came back and felted and tiled it with new Sandtoft County pantiles in Flanders Red. We also had to rebuild the chimneys at either end of the house.”

Low-maintenance timber sliding sash windows from Andersen were fitted as replacements for the out-of-character existing 1960s metal windows. A small square window facing south above the stairs has been replaced with a larger arched one which allows more light to enter this part of the house.

The Peppers found magnificent oak king post trusses in the attic that were barely visible through the old reed and lime plaster on the bedroom ceilings, and decided to expose these by raising the height of the ceilings in two of the bedrooms, which makes these rooms feel far more spacious. The cottage was rewired and plumbed and the solid brick external walls lined with insulated plasterboard.  

“We made a makeshift kitchen in the hallway and used the old kitchen as a utility room,” says Tim. “Everything was finished before we moved in, and carpets were laid so that we could live comfortably with the children while the extension was built. When we first moved in we took a couple of months off because we were exhausted, and used this time to try and tame the overgrown garden, orchard and paddock. I even bought Jeanne a chainsaw for her birthday!”

Planning permission was granted for a two storey extension, stepped down slightly from the cottage and constructed using reclaimed bricks with an inner skin of Celcon thin-joint blockwork. This system combines extra-large aircrete blocks with Celfix, a specially developed mortar, which allows the depth of the mortar to be reduced from l0mm to just 2mm, and increases the speed of construction. In addition to increasing the ease of installation, the thin-joint system improves thermal insulation and air-tightness of construction.

Tim and Jeanne were determined to build the blockwork themselves using subcontractors where necessary for the rest of the work. “We wanted to set the extension back slightly so that we didn’t lose the effect of the old curved bricks,” says Jeanne. “We actually managed to find the same Cheshire Old Mill bricks for the extension, which should age to match the cottage over time.”

The couple dug the footings and drains and poured the slab over the Easter holidays. They then built the inner skin of thin-joint blockwork in the evenings and at weekends, employing bricklayers to construct the outer leaf of reclaimed brickwork. “We watched the instruction video and found it absolutely brilliant because it is so quick to build,” Jeanne continues. “I've never laid blockwork before and Tim isn’t a hands-on builder, but it was so easy — although working in the evenings meant that we had to leap around in front of the PIR security lights at times so that we could see what we were doing!”

The new kitchen/living room has patio doors leading out into the garden and is bright and modern. Oak kitchen units have been fitted with granite worktops and solid European oak flooring is laid diagonally across the room, with exposed brickwork matching the exterior of the extension.

“As a family we tend to spend most of our time in this part of the house, and use the sitting room in the winter when we light a log fire,” says Tim. “It was hard work doing so much of the physical labour ourselves, and I don't think we realised how exhausted we were at the time, but we have all settled in well and both the children now have their ponies. You soon forget any hardship.”