Grade II Listed Farmhouse — Full Restoration, Oak-Framed Garden Room & Courtyard.

The brief split cleanly in two. First, undo decades of unsympathetic additions and patch repairs so the listed sandstone farmhouse reads as it should: clean coursed stone, sound roofs, tidy rainwater goods, honest brick boundary walls. Second, give the family a genuinely modern room to live in — glazed, south-facing, opening straight onto a terrace with views out over the fields.

Working on a listed building means every decision is a conservation decision. We agreed the approach up front: no cementitious repointing over historic stone, salvage and re-use wherever a material could be saved, and any new work — the oak frame, the terracing, the courtyard — designed to sit quietly alongside the original rather than imitate it.

The rear of the property had accumulated a run of lean-to outbuildings under a corrugated asbestos-cement roof, pitched hard against the historic boundary wall and shedding water straight into the stonework. That was the first thing to go — removed under controlled conditions, with the boundary wall propped and protected throughout.

Behind it we found exactly what we expected: saturated masonry, blown pointing and a damp path where water had been tracking for years. Stripping the additions gave the walls their first chance to dry out and gave us clean access to every elevation before repair work began.

Part-way through the courtyard groundworks the machine bucket dropped through into a void. Work stopped. What we had uncovered was a hand-laid brick well shaft — perfectly circular, corbelled at the head, still holding water — that had been capped and buried under the old yard, almost certainly for generations.

On a listed property a find like this is an opportunity, not a problem. We recorded it, made the shaft safe, and rather than backfilling it we rebuilt the well head by hand: a new circular brick surround in reclaimed stock bricks with a radial soldier-course cope, and a bespoke curved steel grille fabricated to cover the opening safely while keeping the shaft visible.

It is now the centrepiece of the courtyard. A feature nobody designed — the house handed it to us, and we gave it back.

The rear of the site fell away sharply, so the new terrace needed structure before it needed surfacing. We built tiered retaining walls and a wide flight of brick garden steps in reclaimed bricks matched to the historic boundary wall, laid to gauge and pointed to suit the surrounding fabric rather than the bricks alone.

Elsewhere the existing boundary and terrace walls were cut out and repaired where frost and the old lean-to roof had done their damage, with salvaged bricks re-used course for course. The intent throughout was that new brickwork should be indistinguishable in character from the old, without pretending to be it.

The single contemporary intervention is the garden room: a full-height green-oak frame with a glazed gable, structural oak posts and beams, and oak-framed doors opening onto the terrace. It sits against the brick gable end so it reads clearly as an addition of its own time — exactly what conservation guidance asks for.

The frame is hand-cut and pegged, with the glazing units set directly into the oak so the sightlines stay slender and the view stays uninterrupted. From inside, the gable frames open countryside; from outside, the oak silvers gently year on year and settles into the brick and stone around it.

The tired, mossy forecourt and weed-grown yard were dug out entirely. In their place we laid a reclaimed cobble and sett courtyard around the restored well, with sett borders picking out the edges and the entrance, and a warm gravel drive threaded with riven stepping stones running up to the oak porch.

At the rear, a large porcelain terrace steps down to the garden with a brick-on-edge border and gravel margin, opening onto the field views beyond. Raised sleeper beds and structured planting soften the whole scheme without ever crowding the elevations.

Handed over as one coherent property: sound roofs, repaired sandstone and brickwork, a light-filled oak-framed room, a courtyard built around a well nobody knew was there, and grounds that finally do the house justice.

Heritage work is the part of our trade we are proudest of. It asks for patience, for the right materials, and for tradespeople who know when to intervene and when to leave well alone — and it is why owners of listed buildings across Worcestershire come to JRC.