Gun Hill is a late 17th-century farm secluded among the marshlands of the North Norfolk Coast. The Dutch gables of its Queen Anne farmhouse reflecting the area’s ties to continental Europe via shipping routes in the 1600s.

P. Joseph conceived a renovation and extension which would understand and enhance the farmhouse’s historic identity, creating a modern country retreat anchored by a deep sense of place and vernacular materiality. The project recovers the farm’s connection with the surrounding landscape, fostering an immersive relationship with the vast skies and wild beauty of the setting.

The walled garden was used as an organising boundary for a new, low-lying extension that disappears in the distant views of the Norfolk landscape. The extension, which links to a restored cartshed and substantially increases the footprint of the property, was built using traditional building techniques and local materials, including bespoke bricks by Bulmer Brick & Tile to match the 17th-century originals, grounding the architecture in its setting and establishing visual and spatial cohesion between old and new.

We start backwards. We look at an old house and its history. We work out why the bricks were made the way they were and how they were made, what techniques were used at that time.