Leigh House

Location: Hampstead, London

, UK

Status: Planning & LBC consented

Area: 168 m²/ 1810 ft²

Client: Upspace Ltd.

2023-25

Leigh House is one half of a Grade II listed pair of early nineteenth-century stucco villas facing the southern edge of Hampstead Heath: a prominent address within one of London's most carefully protected conservation areas. Years of subdivision had left the lower ground floor flat compromised, with low ceilings, cramped living spaces, and a poor connection to the substantial garden it alone enjoys.

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The proposals address this imbalance through two carefully considered interventions. A single-storey rear extension — rendered in stucco to echo the Regency character of the host building, with a hipped zinc roof and crisp aluminium-framed glazing — introduces light and volume without disturbing the principal elevations. At the far corner of the garden, a timber-clad garden room with a sedum roof settles quietly within the boundary walls, reading more as a piece of the garden than a building. Together, the two elements form a considered ensemble that recovers something of the house's original relationship between interior and landscape, without compromising the heritage asset that frames it.

Securing both listed building consent and conservation area approval required a careful and iterative pre-application dialogue with Camden, shaping a scheme that is contemporary in character but deeply attentive to its context.

Process

Concept design

Site & context

Drawings

213.

Leigh House

Year:

2023-25

Restrictions: Grade II listed, Conservation area


CF team: Oliver Cooke, Alec Crisp

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