Owner/Client: Mark & Bridget Payton
Architect: Tim Hatton, Carve Architecture, York
Builder: Tom Rhodes and Sons
Alpha Cottage is a mid-sized Victorian terrace house – now greatly enhanced by a full-width back extension providing a generous family room – incorporating kitchen, dining room and living area. The building is very modest and simple, unobtrusive but remarkably characterful. The roof spans between the party walls leaving a top-lit slot against the original back wall of the house with its handsome door-case. The simple palette of materials – plaster, polished concrete, second hand bricks and timber and zinc roofing – is beautifully detailed inside and out. This has clearly been a hugely successful collaboration between client and architect, and provides an excellent model for contemporary extensions to traditional houses of this sort.