A Period Victorian Conservatory in North Yorkshire

This large period residence in Pateley Bridge had the usual problem of a house its age: a compartmentalised kitchen with a solid wall between it and the garden. The brief was to open it up and give the family a single bright living and dining hub with direct access to the terrace.

The structure is a Victorian lean-to with linear wings either side of a dramatic multi-faceted central bay. The wings hold a lounge area next to the kitchen workspace, while the faceted projection works as a dedicated dining zone, wrapped in glass on five sides with a panoramic view across the terrace and the Yorkshire landscape beyond. Above it, the roof rises into an elaborate timber lantern, which lifts the head height, adds real volume and moves geometric shadows across the dining table through the day.

It is built in sapele hardwood, hand-painted in multiple coats of microporous architectural white. The brushed finish leaves a low sheen that catches changing daylight without the glare of a sprayed or plastic surface, and it reads crisply against the weathered gritstone of the house. Slender custom-moulded glazing bars set up a tight vertical rhythm across the glass. The ridge carries fleur-de-lis cresting capped with pointed spike finials, and the ironmongery is heavyweight cast iron, cold to the touch and properly mechanical to operate.

Structurally, opening the kitchen wall meant supporting the storeys above on twin parallel steel beams pad-stoned into the load-bearing masonry. Intersecting a sloping lean-to roof with a faceted lantern without creating water traps took custom lead-dressed valley flashings over a reinforced timber kerb. The site slopes, so the footprint was excavated to match internal floor levels and a hidden land-drainage network laid in, allowing a flush weather-rated threshold under the French doors.

The dwarf walls are locally quarried gritstone, hand-dressed and pointed to match the host house, so the base looks like it has always been there. Underfloor heating warms the stone floor underfoot, and argon-filled low-emissivity glazing with solar-control roof glass keeps the room usable in both directions. Thirteen weeks on site.