A Courtyard Winter Garden Linking a Manor House to its Converted Stables

The site was a courtyard sitting between a grand main house and a set of beautifully converted stables. The brief was to link the two, and to make the link somewhere people would actually want to spend time, with the gardens and the valley below in full view.

A thermally broken aluminium frame carries large spans of glazing on slim profiles. The roof runs on a reverse pitch, which creates a striking silhouette against the buildings either side and, more practically, opens up the internal headroom. Motorised sliding roof vents handle ventilation in difficult weather, and motorised external awnings to the roof and front gable keep the room cool through the height of summer.

Bi-folding doors on the front and rear elevations open the space to both the courtyard and the garden, so it works for entertaining on a warm evening and as a sheltered retreat in the colder months. Floor-to-ceiling fixed glass panels frame the panoramic views, keeping the valley as the constant backdrop of the room.

The aluminium was finished in a soft matt grey, chosen as a subtle nod to the existing exterior details on the adjacent buildings. LED downlights are integrated directly into the structural roof spars, so by night the geometry of the structure is picked out without a single intrusive fitting.

It reads less as an extension than as a connection: a light-filled room that makes two separate buildings behave like one house.