Rectory House is located in a small village within the South Downs National Park, West Sussex. Our client’s aspiration was to improve the entrance experience to the property – this aspect never being satisfactorily resolved when the old school building was converted into a residential home.

A generous new porch provides an appropriate transition space between the courtyard and main entrance hall. The setting required an extremely sensitive design approach, for which we drew inspiration from the detailing of the existing building. The new structure was formed in brick and stone, with handmade red brickwork framing roughly-hewn clunch stone walling with a plinth and traditional quoins.

Feature stones were precision cut by machine to perfectly match existing window details and to form entirely new elements, such as the arched surround to the porch entrance. The surround is designed to reflect the form and proportions of the existing elevation, and aligned on axis with the existing entrance door; subtly tying these elements together and one of a number of moves that help fuse the extension to the original building. The roof is pitched and tiled with red clay tiles, with a scalloped banding detail and dark roll-top ridge.