Grove Cottage is located in the medieval core of Lavenham in Suffolk and was formerly the gardener’s cottage to The Grove, a substantial Georgian fronted property. Detached and double fronted, the cottage enjoyed good ceiling heights and street presence yet, at only one room deep, was too small for its new owners, a Chelsea Medal winning garden designer and her husband. The brief therefore was to extend, reconfigure and update the property to provide a new design studio / occasional bedroom and open plan dining living and kitchen areas to the ground floor with two ensuite bedrooms upstairs.

The strategy was to demolish an old free standing garage to the side of the house and extend to almost the full length of the garden with a new single storey wing, fully glazed onto a new courtyard garden, framed by the extension, the original house and the low flank wall of the neighbouring property. The glazing was in a steel framed system which was carried into a new bay window to the living area thereby uniting the extension and the original cottage.

Inside walls were removed and the staircase rotated to create a flowing interior whose focus is always the flourishing garden.