Merrydown House in Dorset, UK by McLaren Excell.

Today we’re off to Dorset in the UK to take a look around Merrydown House, a monastic-style home that features the most exquisite materiality and detailing. Originally the local Victorian girls school, the layout of the space was quite austere with one large room, a single corridor and a series of dorm-like bedrooms and bathrooms – quite the challenging footprint to work with. The owners engaged McLaren Excell to strip the building bare and produce a solution that achieved several key goals: increase the sqm of the house, provide a more interesting set of spaces, take advantage of the building’s bones and add a second storey.

The resulting design is church-like in style, with a principal open plan living space, a bedroom, a study, two bathrooms and a double height kitchen on the ground floor, and two bedrooms and toilet on the new second storey. McLaren Excell reclaimed forgotten voids to achieve the addition of a second floor without disrespecting the building, including a one-metre space below the original ground floor and another one-metre space between the original low-hung ceilings and roof joists. Explaining the open plan layout, McLaren Excell share, “The house was never meant for day-to-day living and is intended to be used for holidays, weekends and short holiday rentals. The building is in the countryside and on a short break people typically tend to congregate in one focal space – so it was important that the kitchen and living room were tied together and formed the main room of the house.”

Related post: Ingersoll Road House by McLaren Excell.

Spatially, a highlight for us is the connection between the floors – particularly between the open plan living room on ground and the suspended bedrooms on level one. McLaren Excell exaplin, “[The synergy] was achieved by concealing the bedroom structure wherever possible and, where this was not possible, it was disguised by using painted steel sections that were indistinguishable from the existing timber roof structure. The result is a deceptively simple ‘ floating’ room that seems to defy logic and lends a wonderful sense of drama to the double-height kitchen.”

And now can we take a moment to absorb the materiality? Pure and restrained, the palette is in line with the church-like aesthetic and features birch plywood, concrete and brushed brass (can we give an Amen to that kitchen?!). All materials are honest, low cost, durable and left in their natural ‘as found’ state, adding to the simplicity and purity of the overall design. ‘Wood wool’ and concrete blocks form the support spine for level one, simultaneously creating a textured feature wall in the stairwell and intimate living space. We love the finer details in the bespoke joinery, which is all designed in-house by McLaren Excell and handmade locally. In all, another job aced by McLaren Excell – one hot weekender that we’d absolutely love to call our own.

Related post: Ingersoll Road House by McLaren Excell.

[Images courtesy of McLaren Excell.]