HILLTOP HIDEAWAY

After a countrywide search, James and Raffaella Fooks-Bale were charmed by this tumbledown cottage in Wales, which they transformed into the most perfectly imperfect escape

Taking on a remote cottage as a restoration project required James and Raffaella Fooks-Bale to adopt a unique approach. Built as a farm homestead 400 years ago, the house sits proudly near the top of a slope in the Cambrian Mountains and is reached by a winding track that only agile sheep and skilful drivers can navigate. They soon realised that assembling all the necessary building materials on site would take ingenuity and determination. The ethos for the design of the cottage came from the upland location. Its remoteness and landscape all fed into how the house would look and feel. Many of the building materials came from what was already there such as wood from the old pigsty and clay pipes found in the garden and their aged, weather-worn finishes lend character to the renovation. Anything that was fit for reuse was embraced, resulting in sensitive additions that sit happily within their surroundings.