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Project Name: Cotswold Village House

Location: Gloucestershire, UK

Date Completed: December 2020

Interior Designer: Pippa Paton Design Limited

Architect: Pippa Paton Design Limited

Construction Company: Boom Construction

Photography: Ed Shepherd

The brief for Pippa Paton Design Limited was to create a modern country style family home with a light spacious feel reflecting natural colours and incorporating vintage pieces throughout. This Grade II Listed Cotswold village property, once a series of cottages, consisted of small, dark, low-ceilinged rooms on various levels, connected by long corridors required a complete renovation.

Pippa Paton Design Limited’s approach was to introduce new openings to enhance flow and simplify circulation, remove walls to reduce corridors and vault spaces to increase volume and light. The focus throughout was on exposing and enhancing historic materials such as flagstones, timber trusses and stone windows.

The central hub is now a large kitchen, dining and sitting area created by sinking concrete piles to support a two-metre extension and inserting floor-to-ceiling picture windows providing uninterrupted views over the valley. A new opening links the kitchen to the back hallway and a break between two islands in line with the door to main hallway allows easy access to rest of house. This space also now connects directly to the guest wing with sitting room, bedroom, bathroom and entrance hall, also accessed directly from outside.

The house now feels as if was intended to be a single house rather than a series of cottages, with the new design enabling the family to enjoy all the spaces whilst still feeling connected to each other. Where rooms are intended for evening use such as the family sitting room and the bar, depth and warmth have been retained through the use of rich, deep colours, such as in the bar with its claret-coloured walls The design has also provided a significantly enhanced connection between the house and its grounds both physically, with new openings allowing easier access to external spaces, and visually, such as the picture window providing spectacular views of thoroughbred horses in the paddocks across the valley.