Deepdene
Wood
Location | Dorking, Surrey
Scale | 3,150 sq.ft.
Bed / bath | 5 / 3
Completed | 2027 (expected)
We saw the potential to turn a substantial but unresolved house into a home that felt settled, generous and complete. Through a full refurbishment, two carefully placed rear additions, an oak-framed garden room and a detached garage, we have rebalanced the building around contemporary family life. We are particularly proud of how quietly the new architecture belongs, distinct enough to feel contemporary, but familiar enough to appear as though it was always meant to be there.
| THE BRIEF |
The house had presence, but not yet a clear sense of itself.
The existing building offered generous space and a strong underlying character, but its relationship with the garden and surrounding structures felt fragmented. The brief was not simply to add more accommodation. It was to make the whole property feel considered. Every intervention needed to improve daily life while bringing the house, its extensions, the garage and the landscape into one coherent architectural composition.
| A HOUSE COMPLETED |
The extensions occupy the gaps, rather than competing for attention.
Two single-storey infill extensions complete the spaces between the existing rear projections. This was a deliberately restrained move. It allowed us to create valuable new accommodation without adding another dominant form to the house. The additions sit beneath the established first floor, preserving the original scale and silhouette while giving the rear elevation a calmer rhythm and a more resolved sense of order.
| ONE MATERIAL FAMILY |
The new work belongs through repetition, not imitation.
Brick, clay roof tiles, dark-framed windows and timber are used consistently across the project. The materials are familiar to the existing house, but the new additions use them with greater simplicity and precision. This allows the contemporary work to remain legible without feeling separate. The architecture is held together by tone, texture and proportion rather than by attempting to reproduce the original building detail for detail.
| THE GARDEN PAVILION |
At the edge of the house, the architecture becomes lighter.
The oak-framed side extension is conceived as a garden pavilion rather than another piece of the masonry house. Its pitched roof, glazed gable and timber-clad walls create a softer and more informal space, closely connected to the landscape. The form remains grounded in the language of the main building, but its lighter construction marks a gradual transition from the solidity of the house to the openness of the garden.
| OPEN TO THE GARDEN |
We opened the ground floor without hollowing out the house.
Generous areas of glazing create a stronger relationship between the principal living spaces, the terrace and the garden. Above, the house retains the solidity and regular window pattern of the original building. This contrast gives the elevations a clear hierarchy: grounded and open at family level, more enclosed and private above. Light is drawn deeper into the plan, while the garden becomes part of the experience of moving through the house.
