Hallsannery

“We were also very lucky to find some wonderful businesses right on our doorstep here in Bideford. We used local architects, Gale & Snowden who designed our quirky ‘pod’ en-suite wet rooms and have a great builder from just up the road called Bob, who played, and continues to play, a huge part. All of the soft furnishings were done painstakingly by Myra at Montage Interiors under the Pannier Market in Bideford and our carpets came from Bradworthy.

“Wherever possible, we bought local,” says Hannah, her eyes wandering to all corners of the house, reminiscing at the combined efforts put into making the house the glorious property it is today.

Not only was the focus on local, it was also on ‘green’. The installation of a wood pellet boiler in the cellar means the house now basks in a constant 20 degrees: “It is not like it was when I was a child,” says Hannah, “it could be freezing then.”

The house now has 11 impressive double bedrooms and sleeps 22 adults, plus four to six children, with the adjacent Coach House sleeping an additional eight. So far the result has been a huge hit with guests: “Since opening in April 2013, we have hosted 25 weddings and we are now fully booked at weekends until November. Christmas and New Year are obviously also proving popular.”
Hannah Evans, Client (extract from Devon Life Magazine interview November 2014)

Perched high on the hill one mile from ‘the little white town’ of Bideford and within 5 miles of the rugged beauty of the North Devon coast, Hallsannery is a late-Regency Period, Grade II Listed manor house.

Having been used for years as a field studies centre and offices, the once grand, formal rooms were a maze of cellular office spaces, subdivided by partition walls and labyrinthine corridors.

Handed down within the same family, the new owners approached Gale & Snowden with a brief to restore and celebrate Hallsannery’s former grandeur, establishing a venue for weddings, holidays, corporate meetings and events.

Gale & Snowden’s approach was to juxtapose the very best of the old with the best of the new; sympathetically revealing the original volumes of the rooms and diligently conserving historic features and details – plaster coving, original fireplaces, period joinery, built-in furnishings, a central sweeping staircase and its glazed lantern whilst rationalising the flow of internal circulation. The restoration also included skilfully introducing modern luxuries such as en-suite bathrooms, sometimes realised as discreet, self-contained ‘pods’ nestled within the largest of the rooms.

A new, large family kitchen designed for relaxed, communal dining now sits at the heart of the house replacing the former commercial kitchen which once served the field studies centre.

Gale & Snowden carried out a low-energy feasibility study with the proposals incorporating several measures to help increase internal comfort and the building’s energy efficiency, including:

  • Sealing unused chimneys to dramatically reduce air infiltration
  • Refurbishing and draught-proofing the existing timber sash windows
  • Replacing the huge oil-fired boiler with a wood pellet boiler system
  • Modifications to heating and hot water design
  • Inclusion of insulation to the ground floor construction

Builders

RCH Wilson

Hallsannery

www.hallsannery.co.uk

All photographs by Jon at Indigo Perspective

www.indigoperspective.com

  • Building
    Commercial
  • Location
    Bideford, North Devon
  • Client
    Private

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Building Biology

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Renewable Energy

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Landscape

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Future Climate

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