A Georgian reinvention

The ingenious integration of the polite and service rooms of a handsome 1790s villa has created a modern family home, as Jeremy Musson discovers

- Paul Whitbread

MAPLEWOOD GRANGE is a handsome late-Georgian house, well protected by a deep encircling grove of trees and set on a lime stone ridge south-west of Thornbury near Bristol. At first glance, the house appears to be all of one period, but closer inspection reveals that the late-Georgian villa was added to a smaller, stone-built farmhouse, which now reads as the service wing. Between 2015 and 2019, Marlwood Grange was carefully transformed by architects Biba Dow and Alun Jones, of Dow Jones Architects, in a scheme that has extended the family accommodation out into its adjoining outbuildings and yard. These changes have retained the character of existing principal rooms, at the same time as creating additional well-lit and flexible family spaces, as well as enhancing the overall appearance of the main house.

The house is mostly built of silvery-grey limestone that was almost certainly quarried on site. As is the case with quite a few houses in the area, the main elevations have been rendered to suggest a smooth, Bath-stone ashlar effect. In general, Marlwood Grange exemplifies the compact, double-pile, neoClassical house of the late-Georgian period, with a hipped, slated roof on four fronts, reminiscent of the works of John Nash. The interiors have the typical plan of good rectangular well-lit rooms—including a drawing room (Fig 5) and dining room (Fig 6)— arranged around an entrance hall, with the front door facing west. A stair to the first-floor bedrooms opens off the hall (Fig 4). This is the archetypal self-contained villa residence of the well-to-do merchant, professional or minor landed gentry of this period, with stables, barn, dairy and kitchen garden, all set within its own parkland.