Georgian Farmhouse Style Dwellings, Suffolk | Project

Front view of georgian farmhouse style dwelling

Project Details

Client Private Client
Location Clopton, Suffolk
Size 325 sqm GIA
Sectors Living

The Dower Barns project represents (for Cannon Clarke Group) a departure from our usual contemporary design approach in an aesthetic sense. The developer client’s brief was for a pair of high-end 5 bedroom detached dwellings in a ‘Georgian farmhouse’ style.

The brief was to provide an alternative design pitch to the landowner for an already consented development site of 6, 3&4 bedroom dwellings by a previous bidder. Our client had identified that the original proposals did not fit their viability model in terms of demographic and demand. The site being a landlocked 0.5 hectare plot within a private estate some 0.7km from the nearest public road. Additionally, in very close proximity to the estate’s primary residence in the form of a Grade II Listed manor house, Clopton Hall.

In short, the 6 ‘family’ dwellings not benefiting from being in a sustainable location and totally reliant on private vehicle connections to local infrastructure. It is surprising that the 6 dwelling proposal were ever consented by the local planning authority in the first place. Our 2-no. dwelling scheme also offered the adjacent landowner the added protection of improved visual and acoustic amenity compared to the previous denser scheme.

Having established the quantum of accommodation required and the likely internal plan arrangements Cannon Clarke looked to faithfully reproduce the features and proportions of the Georgian farmhouse vernacular. Extensive research of local and national precedent revealed that there were many derivatives and exceptions to the Georgian proportion ‘rule book’. Cannon Clarke took their cue for external proportion as being more ‘Georgian than Georgian’ with an absolute faithful interpretation of the Fibonacci sequence, where the overall elevation proportion, roof ridge height, chimney height, window proportion and spacing of fenestration bays rigorously adhere to the sequence’s ‘mathematics’.

And therein lay the challenge, to ensure the internal layouts were not compromised given the fixed nature of the window sizes and positions. This also meant that floor to ceiling heights of 2.8m would be required and that the design would accordingly benefit from this proportional generosity.

Given the de-intensification of the proposals the opportunity was there to set the buildings far back within their site plots on an elevated bluff of land with panoramic views over the estate and a picturesque body of water, and in turn, the opportunity to provide a generous landscaped garden setting for each dwelling.

Part of the original barns complex was retained as a separate residential annex to one of the properties where the decorative brick and flint-work was to be retained and a more modern timber cladding palette proposed to reclad lesser quality façade elements.