RIVER HOUSE, HERTFORD

The owners of this house had had a specialist conservatory added to their house. This looked wonderful, and was marvelous for special occasions, but they soon found that the change in the micro-climate caused by all the glass was making it uncomfortably hot and bright in the day time, and depressingly gloomy and chilly at night.

They were keen to sort the house out in any event, as grandchildren were beginning to arrive at an impressive rate. Having had the house more or less to themselves for a few years, suddenly there were ten to breakfast.

We opened up the house internally, and moved the main bedroom away from the conservatory. We relocated the main entrance to the front, having reconfigured the staircase in a new oriel window which projected into the courtyard, and formed a huge hall so that so that 14 people could be fed at Christmas.

Eighteen months later we insulated and boarded off all the glass in the conservatory roof and broke through to the sitting room so that the whole space could be used as a single enormous room. We broke through the remaining rooms on the ground and moved the "office" out of the house altogether into its own space in the garden which we’d made by extending and adapting the rooms that had been originally built to accommodate the changing facilities and plant for the swimming pool.