Episode Information Yorkshire: The Wool Mill

Date Published:

12/06/2008

A derelict woollen mill in a Yorkshire village may not say 'modernist' to everyone. But Chris and Gill - who, fortunately, run their own specialist joinery business - saw it as the perfect opportunity to create a visionary home. They liked the traditional brick of the building and opted to keep the exterior virtually untouched. Inside, they would strip everything out and make a home of fluid spaces, based around an open-plan ground floor, an atrium and a galleried upper floor.

Budget And Build

The Cost

Cost of site 50,000
Estimated cost of build £150,000
Final cost £350,000
They began with restoration, repairing the exterior walls with traditional bricks and re-cycling the original slates on the new roof.

Then came the radical stage of their design - a giant custom-made steel framework fixed inside the building's shell. Like a great 3D noughts-and-crosses grid, it gave structural support and defined the internal spaces. The building would grow around this.

High-Tech But Not Stark

On the ground floor, the single vast living area was given a suggestion of divisions by the upright columns of the framework. Above, the central area - the atrium - was left open to the glass-paned roof, and bedrooms were built around the edge of the building, leading onto a galleried landing.

The architecture is modern and high-tech, but not stark. There are curved shapes and irregular spaces. High up in the atrium, a tubular shower unit juts from the wall like some weather-sculpted rock formation. The free-standing sink unit in the kitchen billows like a boat.

Industrial And Organic

Materials are a deliberate mixture of industrial and organic. Natural wood floors give a warm feel, while the steel frame is left exposed as a design feature. The kitchen mixes wood, chrome and polished black granite. And Chris and Gill built comfort into their plans: they installed underfloor heating and the many windows are double-glazed, conserving heat in winter.

Glass panes in the roof, also double glazed, provide a constant play of natural light, which pours into the atrium and picks out the details of the interior.

How Green?

This house is more than half way to being eco-friendly without even trying. By renovating an existing building, Gill and Chris are minimising the need for new materials.

Their meticulous restoration of old bricks and slates wins them green points and breathes new life into a piece of local architecture. And while they could have used more materials with green credentials (such as insulation and plaster), Chris and Gill have opted for energy-conserving double-glazing and underfloor heating.