This new end-of-terrace home is designed to complement its neighbours while delivering a modern take on retro living

WORDS SHARON SMITH

A bay area at the rear of the house creates more space for the dining area and enables a triple-aspect outlook

This new end-of-terrace home is designed to complement its neighbours while delivering a modern take on retro living

PHOTOS PETER SAVAGE

Asan architect, Lesley Cotton knows plenty about creating high-quality bespoke new homes – but she hadn’t envisaged doing this kind of project for herself.

Instead, her circuitous path to self building started with selling up her Victorian terraced house in Oxford, which didn’t have much scope for improvement, and taking on the renovation of a 1960s property. “What I like about 60s houses is their strong design parameters: put the car downstairs and live on the first floor, with an open staircase and wall-to-wall windows,” says Lesley. “It was cutting edge for the time.”

In 2013, she found what she was looking for in the form of a three-storey, three-bedroom end-of-terrace townhouse, with bags of potential to extend thanks to a big garden to the side and rear. It was located in a peaceful, tree-lined road in a village two miles outside of Oxford. “The owner had bought it new in 1967 and lived there until he died in 2012. It still had its integrated garage, so most of the ground floor was for the car,” says Lesley.

“I particularly loved the living room on the first floor, it was fantastic looking out of the windows onto the trees at the front.”

The ground floor entrance hall has a guest bedroom and shower room leading off from it, plus a short flight of hemlock steps up to the living areas

The blue, high-gloss kitchen units are from Howdens. The worktop and built-in shelves are both in sapele wood, chosen for its warm colour