Whitworth is an award-winning practice of Chartered Architects and Chartered Building Surveyors. We provide a bespoke and comprehensive service from inception through to completion, offering flexibility over our involvement to align with our clients’ needs.
Discover how Whitworth Architects transformed a derelict Suffolk farmyard into a stunning new farmhouse, blending traditional materials with modern energy efficiency. This thoughtfully designed home reinterprets a lost barn, featuring open-plan living spaces with panoramic countryside views, high thermal performance and renewable energy solutions.
This project began with our clients seeking to construct a new farmhouse on the family farm so that they could live on site to efficiently manage the farm.
The site was in a very poor and dilapidated state, with just a few remaining old buildings of any value standing, but nothing substantial enough to convert into a dwelling alone.
Various options for a new farmhouse were considered, but it became evident that working with an existing building would be the most appropriate approach. There was documentary evidence that a former large barn, which had once been the centrepiece of the farm yard, had burned down. A smaller adjoining structure remained, although in very poor condition.
The proposals sought to construct a new ‘barn’ on the footprint of the original, whilst repairing the remaining element of the original complex, becoming a farm office, utility, external store and stable.
The house is designed to have open-plan, barn-like living accommodation at first floor level in order appreciate the views from the living space, even giving views over some of the grazing meadows for the cattle. The building is constructed using traditional materials that sit comfortably in their historic agricultural context.
The building has been constructed to achieve high levels of thermal performance and air tightness with an air source heat pump and underfloor heating. In addition, solar panels are fitted to the cart lodge garage roof, making it very energy efficient.
In 2023, Whitworth were approach by our client to sympathetically carry out the conversion of an existing 1980s garage, originally built to accommodate the previous owner’s Ferrari, to a new one-bedroom annexe accommodation.
Whitworth oversaw the restoration of the historic Martello Tower in Aldeburgh, the largest of its kind from the Napoleonic Wars.
Discover how this Grade II Listed brick barn was transformed into a stunning contemporary home while preserving its history. Featuring an open-plan living-kitchen space, a sleek glazed link to a new living room extension, and a carefully engineered cantilever staircase, the design blends modern style with original features.