An award-winning timber frame home in Oxford has been built on an infill site in a disused quarry, requiring some clever thinking to provide privacy

WORDS LOUISE PARKIN

Nestled behind a row of 1960s terraced houses, this single-storey home is built on the site of a disused quarry, just inches from the quarry wall. The flat roofs are planted with sedum on one side and topped by single-ply membrane with solar PV panels on the other

PHOTOS TOM PILSTON

When vicar David Bird retired from a lifelong career with the church in 2019, he and his wife Jenny, a retired nurse, had to leave the London vicarage where they had lived for the past seven years and find their forever home. Keen to build, renovate or convert an existing property into an unusual home, their search encompassed a broad area spanning the Midlands and South East, eventually settling upon an awkward infill site in Oxford. “We had been looking for a plot or renovation opportunity for around four years, but we struggled to find anything in our price range that would provide the opportunity for us to create something a bit different, so we were delighted when we encountered our small infill plot, which is on brownfield land in an Oxford quarry and was more affordable than any other site we had seen,” says David Bird.

The site

The plot is located in Headington quarry, which was mined for limestone between the 14th and 18th centuries. Headington produced the stone used to build the Oxford colleges, and is now a conservation area. A row of disused, dilapidated 1960s garages occupied the land, tucked in between the quarry wall and a row of terraced houses. Two applications had been submitted by the previous owner, one for a two-storey house and another for a development of multiple houses, both of which were rejected. He approached Andrew Banks of Bicester-based architectural practice Banks Walmsley Architects, who conceived a design for an energy efficient single-storey home arranged in two adjoining pods, its windows facing away from neighbouring houses with small gardens.