03 / 11 Renovation & extension
Grafton Street
- Location
- Cambridge
- Project
- Renovation & extension
- Status
- Completed
- Year
- 2019
- House
- Victorian terrace
- Setting
- Kite Conservation Area
- Scope
- Wraparound & first-floor extensions · Full refurbishment
- Planning
- Consent secured
Making space for everyday life.
A Victorian terrace is transformed through a wraparound ground-floor extension, first-floor addition and comprehensive refurbishment.
Once-fragmented rooms become a connected kitchen, dining and living space. The scheme modernises the home while retaining its street-facing character within a conservation area.
Context
The existing house was a constrained Victorian terrace with fragmented rooms and little connection between the ground-floor living areas and the garden. Within a conservation area, with listed buildings nearby, the brief was to fully modernise the home while retaining its street-facing character.
Planning consent was secured for a full-width side and rear ground-floor extension, a first-floor extension and the reconfiguration of the retained house.
Architectural Strategy
The house is reorganised around a continuous ground-floor extension, creating a unified kitchen, living and dining space in place of the fragmented rear rooms. The retained front reception room becomes a snug, preserving the character of the original frontage.
Upstairs, the extension creates a new master bedroom with en-suite and an additional family bathroom. Significant structural work reconfigures key internal walls, alongside a complete rewire, re-plumb and fabric improvements throughout.
“The wraparound extension introduces a continuous band of natural light to the rear of the house.”
Light & Spatial Condition
The wraparound extension brings a continuous band of natural light to the rear of the house, and a fully glazed lean-to roof draws daylight deep into the kitchen and living space. Large openings re-establish a direct relationship with the garden, while the side extension corrects the previously narrow proportions of the ground floor.
Material & Detail
The extension is expressed as a restrained contemporary volume in quiet contrast to the Victorian fabric. Junctions between old and new are carefully controlled, with clean interfaces between masonry, new structure and enlarged openings.
