The Vicarage
Service
Large additions to a listed building
Location
Romsey, Hampshire
Year
2020 - 2022
Design Team
Crafted Architects
Susanne Boswell Garden Design
With the historic Romsey Abbey as an extension to its garden, this project extends the architectural heritage of Romsey with significant additions, creating an inspiring and meaningful transformation into a family home.
Originally the “vicarage” to Romsey Abbey, this three storey town house had been occupied by a bank for decades before our client purchased it to convert it back to the grand house it once was. The ground floor and parts of the upper floors had been laid waste by the commercial occupier and one flight of the staircase had been demolished. We assessed whether to recreate the original or introduce a contemporary version (in steel and glass); the character of the original building was sufficiently strong to require an exact copy of the original, drawn by us and constructed in oak by Salisbury Joinery.
The reception rooms had little character having been previously morphed into one continuous space and from this we created new spaces linked with a defining corridor of recessed doors and panelling leading from the front reception room through an intimate dining space to the rear kitchen – a very large light-filled room overlooking the newly planted garden (designed and executed by Susanne Boswell Garden Design).
The third “feature” that occupies this new rear façade is the orangery – which we designed to evoke the glasshouses of the C19th with many vertical bars subdividing the glass panes and with a splayed mullion section giving depth and further emphasising the verticality of the design. This has been made in Sapele and the doors in Accoya by SB Joinery of Stockbridge.
We took the proportions of the original upper floor windows and extended them to even greater scale on the ground floor to produce the new sashes to the extended kitchen. The loggia columns, although of substantial size in brick, were structurally shown to require an internal steel frame, designed by AWA Structural Engineers.
