The Old Bakehouse pool extension — timber-clad gable, standing-seam zinc roof, warm Iroko soffit, and full-height glazing onto the terrace

Accessible residential extension · Haresfield, Gloucestershire

Designed for one person. Built for a family.

The brief was a swimming pool. The real brief was Emily — a young woman for whom water is therapy, freedom, and joy. The challenge was to design something clinical enough to meet her needs, beautiful enough to feel like a spa, and generous enough for the whole family to love.

Type

Accessible residential extension — indoor swimming pool

Role

Lead designer · planning · project management · build coordination

Scope

Removal of dilapidated conservatory; new pool hall, changing, shower & WC

Materials

Timber cladding · zinc roof · blue mosaic pool · herringbone limestone · Iroko · exposed steel

The brief

Every day should feel like a spa day.

Emily has cerebral palsy. She is 23 years old, and swimming — the specific conditions of being in water — provides therapeutic advantages that no other activity can replicate. At this stage of young adulthood, maintaining mobility and preventing long-term joint strain are genuine, daily priorities. Her parents came to me as a project manager to oversee the construction of a pool extension. The design documentation was already prepared.

I looked at those documents and saw a missed opportunity.

The existing scheme would have delivered a pool. What it wouldn’t have delivered — and what it needed to deliver — was a space that felt like Emily’s own. The instinct on these kinds of projects is to lean toward the clinical: accessible equipment, robust materials, functional specification. Those things matter. But they shouldn’t define the atmosphere. The objective was clear: every day Emily used that pool should feel like a spa day.

The family had two sons as well. The pool had to work for everyone — for swimming lengths, for family afternoons, for guests. And it had to stand as a piece of architecture in its own right: contemporary, carefully made, and in harmony with the original red brick house it was joining. I redesigned the scheme and took it through planning from scratch.

The terrace running along the full glazed front of the pool hall — standing-seam zinc roof, full-height sliding glazing, open countryside beyond — The terrace. Full-height glazing along the entire south elevation — open to the garden in summer, transparent in winter.

The new gable end — vertical timber cladding, standing-seam zinc roof, warm Iroko soffit, full-height glazed door onto the terrace — The gable. Timber, zinc, and Iroko soffit at the junction with the glazing.

Approach view — the original red brick house and new timber-clad extension in counterpoint — From the approach. Old brick and new timber — distinct languages, neither apologising for the other.

Iroko soffit wrapping the corner of the extension — the terrace and full-height glazing beyond, countryside in the distance — The Iroko soffit wraps the corner and continues inside. The same timber, inside and out.

Graphic view of the timber cladding against the dark render wall — vertical boards, louvred ventilation panels, herringbone brick foreground — Timber and render. The palette is quiet; the composition is deliberate.

The response

Clinical enough. Beautiful enough. Open enough.

The new pool hall sits where the conservatory once stood, but it reads as deliberate architecture rather than an afterthought. The form is a pitched volume clad in vertical timber, with a standing-seam zinc roof that echoes the pitch of the original house without copying its character. The two buildings meet at a glazed link that keeps the junction honest: you can see exactly where one ends and the other begins.

The pool hall is fully glazed on two sides. Sliding doors open the space directly onto a generous terrace, dissolving the boundary between inside and out on a summer afternoon. Above, the structure is expressed — a series of exposed steel trusses carry the roof, which lifts to an apex with skylights. The room reads upward, not inward.

Inside, the materials do the work. The pool is lined in deep blue mosaic tile, set against a full-height Iroko feature wall that runs the length of the gable. The floor is herringbone limestone — warm underfoot, non-slip, and refined. Changing, shower and WC accommodation sits adjacent, finished with the same care: bright green tile, timber detailing, wall-hung fittings.

The steel trusses do two jobs at once: they carry the roof and they carry the rails for Emily’s hoist. The rails were colour-matched to the trusses so the two read as a single composed element rather than a piece of equipment bolted to a structure. The space never reads as adapted; it reads as designed.

The pool interior wide — full-length pool, herringbone limestone surround, and full-height glazing open to the garden — The pool hall. Full-height glazing to the garden; the countryside sits at the end of every length.

The pool from the far end — blue mosaic tile, full-height Iroko feature wall, expressed steel trusses and roof skylights — From the far end. Iroko, blue mosaic, and the expressed steel structure above.

The pool gable end — trailing plants on the steel truss, terracotta door, poolside limestone surround — The truss carries the roof — and, in time, the plants that make the space feel alive.

Close detail — the full-height Iroko wall and the edge of the blue mosaic pool, light on the water — Iroko and mosaic. The two materials that define the interior.

The detail

Every room finished to the same standard.

The ancillary spaces — changing room, shower, WC — are not afterthoughts. They are part of the brief. A swim begins in a changing room and ends in a shower, and if those spaces feel institutional the spa atmosphere collapses the moment you step out of the water.

The changing corridor is tiled in bold green, with a herringbone limestone floor that continues from the pool hall. Joinery is terracotta — warm and deliberate. Wall-hung fittings keep the floor clear. The result is a sequence of spaces that build on each other: from the drama of the pool, through the character of the ancillary rooms, to the calm of the WC.

I managed every contractor who touched this building, from the structural engineers to the tilers. The standard was non-negotiable.

The garden with raised vegetable beds in the foreground — the glazed link and new extension beyond, the original house behind — The garden side. Raised beds, terracing, and the glazed link connecting old and new.

The terrace from the far end — zinc roof, full-height glazing, the pool visible inside — Along the terrace. The zinc roof cantilevers over the glazing; the pool sits just inside.

The full composition at dusk from the garden — the new pool hall and the original house together, warmly lit against the evening sky — Dusk from the garden. The full composition — old and new, warm and calm.

Dusk from the courtyard — the pool hall glowing from within, warm light through the full-height glazing, LED strip in the Iroko soffit — Dusk from the courtyard. The Iroko soffit catches the LED strip; the pool glows inside.

The gable end at dusk — timber cladding silhouetted, sunset colours reflected in the full-height glazing — The gable at dusk. Sunset in the glass; the pool hall warm within.

One of the happiest moments in my career was watching Emily use the pool for the first time.

To be involved in something that makes a genuine difference to someone’s quality of life — and to do it through the discipline of good design — is what this work is really for. The architecture served a human need. The photographs show a beautiful building. Both things are true, and neither is the whole story.

Discuss a project