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Cowan Architects recently oversaw the design, planning and sensitive conversion of the Cart Barn at Hendall Manor to provide a spacious studio style, open plan suite, to add additional accommodation to this stunning Sussex wedding and events venue. The former 19th Century cart barn featuring existing Wealden sandstone walls, a timber frame, and a clay tiled roof, required extensive repair to preserve its historic fabric.

The concept was to carefully repair the Barn and then create an open plan guest suite as a ‘box within a box’, allowing the historic fabric to be retained and reverted back to in the future if necessary. A large guest suite now occupies the main space with the existing timber roof joists spanning through a vaulted ceiling with a store, plant room and a bathroom to the north side. Bat access tiles and boxes facilitate roosting provision for bats.

The exterior of the intervention features dark timber cladding, appearing clearly visually deferent to the historic building and purposely set back from the barn’s face to disguise the modern intervention when the shutters and doors are closed. Opening the hinged section of cladding reveals the windows behind providing views from within over the High Weald beyond.