Stanley Farm

This is Green Oak Architecture’s first commission for a Barn Conversion and involved both planning and detailed design. Collaboration between Architect, Carpenter, Client and Builder was vital to the success of the project and we hope you will agree we have done the building justice. The roof is slate, timber boarding fresh sawn oak, and joinery oak. For the side hung sash windows we adopted an elongated panel which we all agreed best suited the building.

Good detailing and specification such as the use of dry oak for the corner stops of the weatherboarding is essential for a really good finish. The decision to line the internal faces of the porch with timber boarding works well here and creates warmth and texture.

Oak frame screens were inserted into the wagon bays or ‘mid-streys, forming a glazed entrance porch. These were then direct glazed using a time proven system developed by specialist ‘frame glaziers’ and Oak framing companies over time, and which is trouble free and highly attractive solution to glazing fresh sawn oak frames where movement will occur. The cantilevered porch is an original feature.

Much of the timber in this frame has been re-used from another building, a common practice in historic timber framed barns. The main frame is oak, but much of the raftering utilises Pine scantlings with rough sawn pine sarking boards set over.

This staircase is modelled an earlier style of stair with ‘open strings’, profiled splats, and nicely moulded newel post caps all contributing to a really attractive piece of joinery. You can see the ‘plank and muntin’ wall through the ‘two centred’ Tudor arch.

The quatrefoil form is a simple but decorative device used for the baluster and is not difficult to execute. The mezzanine forms a library and snug, a place of quiet retreat. Getting enough height under the tie beams when inserting an upper floor is often a difficulty with barn conversions. Solutions to this problem can be expensive and involve a number of options: digging down to reduce the ground floor level inside the building, accessing the upper floors via an independent dedicated staircase, or even lifting the entire oak frame, something we have done on at least three occasions. In this case reducing the ground floor level was deemed the best solution but just at the mezzanine end of the building.

View from the mezzanine. In our view the most successful barn conversions maintain as much of the open volume of the original building as possible, and this is a good case in point. Note the use of a pale over-lining to the sarking boarding. We usually suggest using a black membrane here but whatever the choice, it is important to remember not to allow the silver foil of the insulation sheets to be visible.

The building is used as a cookery school, hence the open plan kitchen. We made the decision to glaze as much of the north elevation on the garden side as possible. We would have liked the slot of glazing to go all the way into the gable, but alas the planners did not agree.

We did however, achieve this on the south end of the building over the mezzanine, vital to ensure that space was well lit with natural light as much as possible. Again you will see the use of direct glazing where the double glazed units are retained against the outside of the frame with dry oak cappings.

Ground floor plan showing the steps down to the rooms beneath the mezzanine in bays 1 and 2.

First floor plan. As already stated in barn conversions less is definitely more. If you cannot retain the beauty of the open volume of space then best not to convert an existing barn and start afresh with a new oak frame.

The insulation of the envelope wraps around the outside of the oak frame to allow the expression of the frame itself which should quite rightly be centre stage. The plinth walls are insulated internally, always a difficult decision but often the only right answer. It is very difficult to avoid some level of cold bridging at the sills as you can see here. Dummy sprockets inserted over the insulation for an open eave style roof like the original building, the old rafter ends being cut off to avoid penetration through the envelope.

The insertion of the oak screen has been thoughtfully detailed and clashes between glazing cappings and weatherboarding avoided. We personally much prefer the screens of barn conversions to be formed with an oak frame and glazed as shown here, rather than insert a joinery screen, which can often look too scant and ill conceived. As with other of our buildings Andrew Waring Associates carried out the engineering and I must say did a first class job. Only those areas under the mezzanine where the levels were reduced required underpinning saving the client a lot of expenditure.