Renton Hall

Our project at Renton Hall rescues a 200-year old country manor that had been vacant and neglected for 10 years, along with its substantial walled garden which had been untended for a century. A new extension draws out new living spaces into the eastern garden areas, capturing sunlight and views, reaching out towards the walled garden and creating a conversational relationship with the existing building.

The interventions provided an architectural backdrop and framework for the client to begin the epic task of restoring the extensive derelict gardens. The architectural expression and character of the new extension hark to vernacular topologies of ancillary stables and garden outbuildings, consciously deferential to the grand manor.

The new spaces feel borrowed from the gardens, framed by a composition of massive lime-rendered masonry walls arranged in the landscape. Aside from these walls, the majority of the extension structure is hewn from sustainably-sourced British Douglas fir, which is echoed in the doors and opening windows, and complimented by external larch cladding and screens. Frameless glazing details were developed meticulously to express a lightness contrasting the mass of the new lime walls. A new roof of hand-pressed zinc sails over the extension.