One family made provision for protected bats in their new barn-style annexe
WORDS ALICE WESTGATE PHOTOGRAPHY CHRIS SNOOK
Having spent 20 years renovating their five-bedroom, 17th-century home, Sally Latto and James Brook turned their attention to a detached garage a few metres from the house, across a farm track. ‘It was an eyesore with white-rendered concrete walls and mock-Tudor timbers,’ says Sally. ‘We put off tackling it for years because of the expense.’
In 2019 a plan took shape to replace it with an outbuilding for extra living space. It would incorporate a home office for James, 53, who works in finance, a boot room with shower for their rugby-playing son, Joe, 18, and a games room for the whole family, including Poppy, 19.
‘It wasn’t long before ideas started to flow,’ says Sally. ‘We wanted a mezzanine looking out over the fields, a kitchen and a guest bedroom. The plan escalated quickly.’
Having admired a nearby home renovation, teaching assistant Sally, 53, got in touch with architect Sam Organ from the practice that had designed it. ‘Sam let our ideas run, then reigned us in,’ she says. ‘My main concern was the look of the new building, but he also focused on the practicalities of the design.’
Following the same footprint as the garage, the barn-style structure has a corrugated iron roof and black timber cladding. ‘The dark wood makes the whole thing disappear into the background,’ says Sam. ‘From the side it looks like an agricultural building, but the glass gable end is much more contemporary.’
During the planning stages, Sam had to make alterations to his original design. ‘Policy required the barn to be subservient to Sally and James’s house, which is quite low in the landscape,’ he says. ‘Reducing its height reassured the planners that it would be an ancillary building and not a separate home.’
Later a colony of rare and protected lesser horseshoe bats was found in the garage roof, requiring a bat survey and the subsequent addition of a pitched-roof bat roost to the plans – at a cost of £10,000. ‘Nature has done pretty well because around a quarter of the barn’s footprint is dedicated to bats,’ says Sam.
Sally and James’s planning consent came through in August 2019, subject to obtaining a bat licence from National Resources Wales, which they did in March 2020. The demolition and groundworks began soon after.
One further obstacle – the risk of flooding from a nearby stream – led to more unexpected
