Extending a Listed Cottage

Retired builder John Madden rather miscalculated when he and his wife, Janet, decided to downsize from their four bedroom house in a village near Oxford and buy and restore a listed two bedroom stone cottage nearby. They ended up with a house half as big again. “Although it has a much smaller garden the house is now just over 300m2,” says John. “I am afraid the builder in me took over and the project just grew!”

Initially the Maddens thought the reverse would be the case. Having settled on a price of £220,000 – £105,000 below the asking price – by convincing the agent that they would not be allowed to extend the Grade II listed cottage, they met with their designer and two officials from the local planning department — one of them being the conservation officer.

“At first the conservation officer was adamant there could be no extension,” says John. However, when I pointed out that there could be room on the plot to build two terraced cottages in the rear garden, the attitude of his colleague, the planning officer, changed very rapidly. The biggest shift, though, came when I revealed what my research around the village had thrown up. I was able to show that at the rear of the cottage there used to be a large two storey cottagestyle building that was demolished in 1941.

“When he saw the evidence in front of him, the conservation officer realised that we had a very strong case,” John continues. “His attitude rapidly changed to one of commenting on the finer points of what we had in mind rather than the previous outright refusal to accept any extension. He had totally turned. It was quite stunning.”

Once the conservation officer had set out his new requirements, John and designer Jeremy Price set to work redesigning the scheme. The changes centred on the link between the old and the new. They had to alter the original scheme radically. Their first plan had been a straightforward extension with no link. “When it was made plain to us that the eventual scheme should make it very clear that the link was a separate structure, it was no imposition, but a solution that worked very well,” says Jeremy.

“The oak frame helped us to create a double-height space and we felt that it fitted in with the rural nature of the site and the original nature of the cottage.”

The link also did away with the old single storey flatroofed extension at the rear of the cottage, which was an eyesore and in very poor condition internally. “In fairness to the conservation officer, he was as keen as us to achieve this and to restore the interior of the cottage, most of which was in a very bad state,” says John. The conservation officer approved their plan to remove the sliding screen between the hall and the sitting room on the ground floor and to demolish the rear extension, to be replaced in part by the new hallway and two storey link. He also approved the scheme to recreate the inglenook fireplace in the sitting room.

However, instead of stone and thatch – John and Janet’s original concept – he wanted the new building to be timber clad, as another means of showing that the extension was a separate structure.

John and Janet were delighted with the decision to use oak frame. “It is quick to build and looks magnificent,” declares John. “There is nothing like oak for the sort of exposed soaring roof we wanted upstairs, with mezzanine sleeping platforms in two of the three bedrooms.”

The oak framed first floor sits on a conventional blockwork ground floor. There are several reasons for this, the main one being the problem the Maddens encountered at the groundworks stage.

“[Oak frame] is quick to build and looks magnificent…There is nothing like oak for the sort of exposed soaring roof we wanted upstairs.” 

“The soil here is a rather unsatisfactory blue clay and sand,” explains John. “There were fears of shrinkage, and we also had to go down a long way on the north side – the deepest point of the dig – where we found ourselves only just above the water table. So we decided to play safe, and went with a concrete ring beam sitting on 16 mini-piles.”

From the outset John did a tremendous amount of the work himself. “After 25 years as a director of a contracting company, it was nice to get my hands dirty,” he says. “Through business contacts I hired some of the best tradesmen in this part of the country, particularly carpenter Brian Brown. However, running the job took seven days a week and tasks such as erecting the oak frame – where the suppliers could not meet with our schedule – were very demanding.”

John also did a lot of the carpentry and had a major hand in the three staircases. The construction of the one in the hall was very complicated because of the position of the first floor entry from the new building through the thick stone wall of the old. In the end they built a full-height newel post that meant they could get in the full number of treads required.

The two staircases up to the mezzanines in the upstairs bedrooms were also complicated, particularly the one in the slightly smaller room. There is no en suite here so they ended up with a rather complex ‘hanging’ arrangement as they didn’t want a central newel post. According to Jeremy, the staircase in the larger of the two bedrooms would probably not be permitted under building regulations nowadays because of the height of the building at this point. “Today the likelihood is that you would need an extra half hour of fire protection,” he says. “This might mean some form of escape window having to be constructed.”

“As far as I am concerned the main source of satisfaction is that, even after 40 years in the construction industry, I had not realised how much painstaking research in local records would pay off when it came to gaining planning permission,” says John. “However, it was even more satisfying to complete the job. All the way through I thought of our first house, which I built at the age of 25, shortly after we got married. At that stage I didn’t have the money to achieve what I really wanted to do and I was working long hours. This time I overspent hugely — but it was nice to have the money!”