Kingsmead House | Bishop's Stortford
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Kingsmead House is a single family dwelling in rural west Essex. Like a number of our projects, the client is a repeat customer. The client brief was to create the forever home that could offer both private space for the family as well as sufficient space to entertain and host large gatherings.
In response to the client brief, one of our initial suggestion was to split the ground floor layout into a public space towards the front and private family space to the rear. The existing house had a formal living room, a dining room and a kitchen/diner, all next to each other but separated by partition walls. This felt quite disjointed and did not meet the needs of our client. We decided to knock down the separating walls to create one large space for his family overlooking the large garden.
The bedrooms on the upper floor all sat within the steep slope of the tall pitched roof. We ran a number of studies on how to treat the front and the rear of the house, and came up with unique solution for each facade. At the front, we proposed a gable wall on the first floor sitting proud of the ground floor wall but still well within the original roof. This performed dual purpose - it created a welcome feature that made the front elevation better respond to the front driveway, as well as added ample room to accommodate two larger guest bedrooms with ensuites.
For the rear elevation, we designed a wide dormer, set in from the sides to maintain the original shape of the roof and its rural character. This intervention created large square bedrooms with ensuites and a walk-in- wardrobe for the principal bedroom.