Landford Road

The Victorian ‘L’-shaped terraced house is so much a part of English cities that it’s tempting to think there’s a standard solution to extending these. That one with glass doors right across the back looks like the easy answer when the client’s brief seems fairly standard too—a big family kitchen. But it’s an architect’s role to question whether the obvious meets the real brief. Where, as here, the house isn’t wide enough for a dining table side by side with the kitchen, that ‘single big glass door’ solution results in the kitchen, dining table, and an awkwardly wide, shallow sitting area all in ‘line astern,’ followed beyond the doors by an outside table and terrace pushing deep into what remains of the garden. One of the things the owners most liked about this house (as well as the original stained glass and still-functioning servants’ bells) was the sheltered suntrap space between the rear wing and their neighbours’ side extension. So this is kept, still with access directly from the kitchen. Next to it, not behind, ‘somewhere for a sofa’ becomes a clearly defined ‘snug’ with a TV on the ‘extra’ wall and its own doors leading directly to the lawn. Designing clutter out of the ‘big space’ extends to a concealed pantry, and the residual half of the old dining room is now split into a full laundry and a real cloakroom. No coats in the hall! It’s structurally efficient and neighbour-friendly too. The offset wall supports the corner of the original back wing above. The small scale and low eaves on each side of the TV room gable, as well as focusing the space inside, minimise height on the boundary and bring morning sun to the interior.