London practice Tuckey Design Studio has converted the Grade II-listed The Wool Hall in Somerset, UK, into a home and recording studio that celebrates its history as an “outlet for craft and musical production”.
Tuckey Design Studio aimed to renovate and unify the site in a way that would celebrate the 16th-century building in Beckington, which was once the centre of Somerset’s wool trade.
The building had numerous piecemeal alterations and extensions over the years and in the 1980s was converted into a recording studio by pop band Tears for Fears, after which it was used by many famous artists including Annie Lennox, The Smiths and Van Morrison.
“The Wool Hall has been an outlet for craft, residencies, and musical production throughout its lifetime – this rich heritage lives on in the buildings new guise as a family home and private recording studio,” the studio told Dezeen.
“The project was threefold, a restoration, a retrofit and an adaptive reuse,” it continued.
“We had plenty of creative freedom on due to its state of deterioration and lack of architectural merit – the challenge was to make these venerable opposites distinct in their own right but complimentary as part of the same family home.”
The entrance to the home sits behind the original 16th-century frontage of The Wool Hall, where a large archway underneath a stone staircase frames the home’s more contemporary timber and glass entrance.
This route into the home, organised along the building’s original z-shaped wall, has been opened-up to create sight-lines from the old fabric into the new, beginning with a triple-height stairwell that leads up to the bedrooms.
The living, dining and kitchen areas sit within the thick masonry walls of the original building, which have been newly insulated with cork and finished in a lime render.
“The interior has been reimagined with sight lines introduced throughout the property to make the interior transitions more considerate,” said the studio.
“Diagonal views either side reveal the snug in the new extension and courtyard on the left, and kitchen/living room and original arched threshold of the wool hall on the right,” it continued.
In the more contemporary spaces at the back of the home, many elements were stripped back, with suspended ceilings removed and large glazed openings made in the walls to create a better connection with a rear courtyard.
Where elements needed to be retained, such as the terracotta roof of the 1980s extension, Tuckey Design Studio chose to highlight these features, recladding the extension in a matching cladding of red-stained timber.
“The reinterpreted rear facade, both new and remodelled, reconnects the building to its rural setting, unafraid to have its own character but very much respectful of the original hall from which it extrudes,” said the studio.
“New materials were added with their own patina alongside the existing assemblage, and to complement materials that existed but no one initially valued.”
Tuckey Design Studio, previously known as Jonathan Tuckey Design, has offices in London and Switzerland and specialises in the adaptive reuse of existing structures.
Previous projects by the studio include a home in Lake Como that was built around the concrete structure of an abandoned villa, and the refurbishment of a home in a converted chapel in Devon.
The photography is by James Brittain.
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