A period porch, conservation rooflights and a bespoke kitchen for a Cotswold cottage

The house

A Cotswold stone cottage with a stone tile roof and small-paned timber windows, in a village conservation area in the Cotswolds. In a village like this, every change to the outside of a house is seen in the context of the whole street, so the detail has to be right.

The brief

To reinstate a porch of the kind the cottage would once have had, to bring daylight into the roof space with new rooflights, and to rework the inside of the house, including a new bespoke kitchen.

The design

The porch is a small open gable over the front door, roofed in stone tiles to match the main roof and set on low stone walls, sized so that it sits comfortably below the first-floor windows and does not compete with the front of the house.

The rooflights are conservation rooflights: slim black steel frames fitted flush with the stone tiles, each with a single vertical glazing bar, so that they read as part of the roof rather than as modern additions.

Inside, we carried out internal alterations and designed a new bespoke kitchen for the cottage, working with its walls, openings and proportions rather than against them.

What we did

Why it worked

None of the changes is large, but in a conservation area small things are noticed. Matching the materials, keeping the porch modest and choosing rooflights that sit flush with the roof means the cottage looks as though it has always been this way.