This is a Grade II listed former village post office, a brick and tile hung cottage that once served as the local post office before part of the ground floor was converted to living space. It sits within a conservation area, with a Grade I listed church on the opposite side of the road, so its setting is as protected as the building itself.
The owners wanted to bring the house up to date and make it warmer and more efficient, without harming what makes it special. That meant quieter, better performing windows, a low carbon way of heating the house, and somewhere tidy to keep the heating oil, all handled in a way a listed building and its conservation area could accept.
The constraints were the heart of the job. Anything visible from the road had to respect the listed cottage and the church opposite, so the position and screening of the heat pump and the oil tank mattered just as much as their specification, and the secondary glazing had to improve the windows without changing how they look.
I prepared the drawing package for listed building consent and planning permission. The secondary glazing was detailed as discreet reveal fixed units, window by window, with the glazing bars lined up to the existing sashes. The air source heat pump was kept low against the house, the old oil tanks were replaced with a smaller bunded tank set away from the house behind new trellis screening, and the secondary glazing was chosen to be barely noticeable. I worked alongside a planning consultancy on the applications.
Listed building consent and planning permission were granted. I was then appointed again for a follow up retrospective application, to confirm a small change to the heat pump position and to add an electric vehicle charging point behind the existing garden wall, which was also granted. The result is a listed home that is warmer and easier to live in, with its character and its setting left intact.
The design
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The proposed front elevation. The building keeps the wide former shop windows at ground floor and the sash windows above, so its history as a village post office still reads in the street.
The secondary glazing was detailed window by window, as discreet reveal fixed units behind the existing sashes. The glazing bars were set to line up with the existing window bars so that the improvement is barely visible and the historic windows are kept.
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The proposed elevations showing where the air source heat pump sits. It is kept low against the building and screened, and the replacement oil tank was sited away from the house behind new trellis screening, so neither is seen from public view.
The proposed ground floor plan, showing where the internal heat pump cylinder and the external unit would go, worked into the existing rooms of the cottage with as little disturbance to the historic fabric as possible.
The finished building
