The Servants Cottage

Once a seventeenth century servants house, the cottage had been refurbished in the early 2000s with synthetic finishes and stripped of its texture. Our work became one of careful unpicking, removing the layers that dulled its character and allowing the modest structure beneath to reemerge.

Within thirty square metres every surface mattered. Plastic floors were lifted to reveal old pine boards, hollow plasterboard walls were replaced with lime, and the proportions of windows and thresholds were returned to their quiet irregular rhythm.

The project was an exercise in repair through subtraction, finding atmosphere not through addition but through honesty of material and restraint of gesture. What remains is a small house with a renewed stillness where history is felt rather than displayed.