Orchard Street
Refurbishment and extension of a listed cottage
The building is one of a row of 13 grade II listed cottages in a small street within the Central Cambridge conservation area. The houses, first built around 1825, have a gault brick ground floor with a central front door with painted plaster pilasters and a shaped metal hood; these, together with the prominent, tiled mansard roofs, give the terrace its distinctive character. These were built as workers’ cottages and are simple in layout, with a squarish room to each side of a central hallway and stair at both ground and first floor levels. The cottages have small railed gardens to the front, and enclosed courtyards to the rear. While originally very modest, given their location and rarity these properties are now highly desirable.
Working within significant spatial constraints to produce an elegant and understated design which is a joy to live in.
This project, for a newly retired couple, overhauled the entire house. A single storey garage and flat-roofed extension at the rear were demolished, and a new single-storey, pitch-roofed rear extension constructed to form a new living room, together with a smaller, flat-roofed rear extension and other internal alterations to form a new kitchen, storage spaces and bathrooms.
The project involved rethinking the layout of the house, leading to the relocation of the kitchen into the new flat-roofed extension, where it forms the rear part of a new kitchen diner. The new living room extension has a spacious, vaulted ceiling and large, sliding-folding doors opening out into the rear courtyard, which functions as an external room, thus making the most of the limited space available
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