Benjamin Wells - Hearth House

Surrey Hills, England

Hearth House is an extensive retrofit of a 1950s country house, transforming the existing building through a considered reduction in floor area, rather than needless expansion. Several disjointed existing extensions have been stitched back into the original two-storey house, joined through the creation of a new dining hall that opens up to the surrounding wildflower gardens and pastoral farmlands. This timber-framed structure connects to the existing building around a central hearth - reinstated but reoriented to face the new room - one of many ways in which the project blurs the distinction between what we perceive as old or new.

The plan is organised as a set of offset rooms set around the central hearth, and the new timber hall opens up the knuckle between the original two-storey house and the one-storey extension to the North. The house steps down to meet the garden at various levels, allowing each room to have an intimate connection to the surrounding landscape. Private spaces are pushed to the edges of the plan, while the central kitchen and dining room become the stage for daily family life.

Welsh-grown Douglas Fir is used for the new structure, composed of two grids that pinwheel around a turned circular column. Timber offcuts are used in bespoke joinery throughout the house, with benches, wardrobes and shelving animating the spaces. The entire building is highly insulated, drastically reducing its heating demands, and rendered externally with a combination of smooth and roughcast finishes. This brings together new and old into a consistent, but layered, composition.

Winner at the AJ Retrofit and Reuse Awards 2025