Hill Farm

Context plan

The house at Hill Farm in Langley, Warwickshire has existed since the fifteenth century and the medieval oak frame of the original hall house is still largely intact despite significant alterations and additions that have taken place throughout the centuries that have followed.

View from main entrance

The project aims to fully refurbish the farmhouse, reversing a confusing array of uncoordinated twentieth-century alterations, and to create more living accommodation for the owners by making better use of good quality nineteenth-century additions including a barn, a dairy and a granary.

In addition a new single-storey link building is proposed as a modern oak-framed garden pavilion, connecting and separating the medieval house and the nineteenth-century barn.

Development history: 15th century hall house

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Aerial view

Hill Farm

Project dates

2022–

Use

Residential

Type

Refurbishment and addition

Status

Current

Gross internal area

580 m²

Client

Private

Structural engineer

Davies Maguire

In addition a new single-storey link building is proposed as a modern oak-framed garden pavilion, connecting and separating the medieval house and the nineteenth-century barn.

Selected projects

House for Two Artists

Notting Hill Garden House

Blackheath Garden Studio

Sevenoaks Visitors’ Centre

About

Nick Hill Architects is an RIBA chartered architectural practice and design studio based in London founded in 2017.

Through a series of early built projects the practice has established a particular sensibility for the characterful use of materials; how they are combined and the care with which they are detailed – whether objects, room interiors, individual buildings or the public spaces in between.

Our design is led by thinking about how people experience objects, buildings or places. Charles Eames said the role of a designer is like that of a thoughtful host who always anticipates the needs of their guests. We hold this to be true not just for the practical or everyday, but for the poetic, the delightful, or what Louis Kahn called the ‘unmeasurable’.

At a time of climate crisis and rapid demographic change, we find ourselves designing for a future that is increasingly uncertain. In response we are committed to finding ways of making and repairing that are both resilient and adaptable, with an economy of means as a central tenet in all projects, no matter the size or budget.

People

Nick has twenty five years’ experience working in architectural practices in the UK and in Hong Kong.

For more than ten years he was an Associate Director at David Chipperfield’s office in London, leading a series of high profile projects including two acclaimed new public galleries, the Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire and Turner Contemporary in Margate, as well as the rebuild and refurbishment of Hotel Café Royal on Regent Street, and the realisation of a masterplan for the Royal Academy of Arts campus on Piccadilly.

From 2017 he worked as a consultant to Witherford Watson Mann Architects, drawing on his experience working with public galleries and historic buildings, he led their major refurbishment of The Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House until its completion in 2021. The project was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize 2023.

Nick has been an invited critic and guest lecturer at architecture schools across the UK and in 2013 and 2014 was a guest lecturer at the Graduate School of Design in Harvard. He has served on competition juries and in 2013 was chair of the RIBA Awards jury for the East England region. He is currently an examiner for Part 3 professional studies at the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

Team past and present