Northly Farm is a historic farmstead in South Gloucestershire less than a mile from the River Severn. The farmhouse itself is ‘locally listed’ due to its characteristically compact proportions, alongside modest architectural features which elevate its polite character - evidenced by its symmetrical double fronted elevation, and scalloped ‘wings’. Northly Villa’s diminutive proportions yet formal composition describe the sensibilities of the aspirational 1800’s farmsteader. A walled garden connects the house to a collection of characterful outbuildings, creating a protected and domesticated island of garden within a wider site of rewilded paddocks and native hedgerows.

In 2020 Connolly Wellingham were appointed to assist the clients with a strategic masterplan for the site; improving access, expanding stabling facilities, exploring opportunities for on-site renewable energy, and modernising the family home.

The residential aspect includes a comprehensive retrofit of the 19th Century stone farmhouse, with new insulation to roof, walls and floor, completed with new high performance windows and doors, an air source heat pump and mechanical heat-recovery full-house ventilation system. The repaired and refurbished farmhouse is complemented with a new open plan kitchen and living area, housed in a super-insulated timber-framed extension to the north. The balance of these two blocks is used in a number of ways; as a diagram they help organise the more open ‘living quarters’ of the extension (kitchen, dining, living), with the more private rooms of the farmhouse (bedrooms, snug, and studies). Their arrangement also encloses ‘kitchen garden’, reinforcing the domesticity of the space against the backdrop of the wider expanse of the smallholding. Views between and through the blocks frame views across the flat estuarine landscape.

Planning Permission was granted in April 2022, and construction completed in October 2023.

Cover image - ‘A line made by walking’ by Richard Long, 1967