Sable House, a charred timber family home in Nottinghamshire countryside

Sable House began with a family who already knew their plot intimately. They had lived for more than 20 years in a 1950s house on this green Nottinghamshire site, and local studio Allan Joyce Architects built the new five-bedroom home around their habits: where they walked, sat and looked out. Project architect Oliver Cradock says the aim was to "dissolve hard boundaries" between inside and out.

The house keeps roughly the old footprint but splits into two wings, a single-storey volume and a two-storey one, both clad in charred timber and framing front and rear courtyards. Flat roofs and deep overhangs keep it low in the landscape, with the smallest part facing open countryside. Those overhangs shelter walkways that double as routes around the house, so in warmer months the family can move between rooms through the garden.

Inside, a skylit living and dining space opens to the garden on three sides, with a snug off it and a guest room, study and utility at the far end. A sweeping stair under a circular skylight leads to four more bedrooms. Bricks salvaged from the old house form a plinth and garden walls, and the palette stays restrained: lime-wash walls, terrazzo tiles.

It's a private home, so one to admire in photographs, but a thoughtful example of rebuilding gently on a well-loved site.

Our summary of a story from Dezeen, published 13 October 2026. Read the original

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