Arts & Crafts Living

Sibhaven is a Grade ll listed house designed in 1899, the same year that Ebenezer Howard formed Garden City Association – an enabling organization within the Garden City Movement. Today, the house and its garden have come to epitomize the movement’s idea of a healthy, well-balanced and self-sufficient living on a small scale.

The site survived largely unchanged into the 21^st century, predominantly thanks to its Listing. By the time we were appointed in 2011, however, it had become fairly dilapidated and overgrown – before our clients, it was briefly occupied by a group of squatters.

The original design embraced an idea typical of the time of the owners and their servants living in the same building. Architecturally, however, their occupancy was carefully delineated. Secondary slip corridors lead off the central hall to the servant’s quarters, while tight, half-hidden loft stairs contrast the generous main staircase. We re-interpreted these and other listed features, incorporating them into the modern domestic environment free of such social obsessions.

The project developed gradually, needing planning and listed building permissions for each step of the way. With the exception of six months in the mid-2010s, the clients lived alongside the works. Initially, we made the structure stable and water-tight and reworked the principal areas of the house to make the place habitable for a family of five. We retrofitted and upgraded the building fabric, including overhauling and double-glazing the windows and adding thermal insulation to select walls. Outside, we replaced the 1970s garden walls and terracing and repaired other garden structures.

Five years into this process, we addressed the original service and servants’ areas – the scullery, pantry, boiler room and loft – redesigning and repurposing them into new bedrooms, bathrooms and study spaces. By selectively closing-off some and creating other modest openings, we created new modern spaces, bringing daylight into previously dark and underused areas. By re-using, re-shaping and re-locating the original features, such as the doors, stairs and elements of the roof structure, we retained the great majority of listed fabric and juxtaposed it with the new.