We're Seeking to Extend

Today, we have submitted a planning application to extend our accommodation.   What? I hear you cry.   Haven't you got enough space already?   Well, to adapt a well loved railway quote, "it's the wrong sort of space".

Magnificent though the tower and its existing annex are, there is only one permanent bedroom, some of it is unheated and much of it is uninsulated.

Family requirements plus my near-death experience in April forced a re-think.   We have plenty of space to expand into the area at the rear of the tower, alongside the annex, but the ground slopes steeply.   With architect Stuart Green we have been thinking hard about this and after months of thinking, drawing and meditating we have devised what we think is a super scheme to create what amounts to a bungalow on stilts at first floor level.

Here are the outside elevations:


From the north (Station Road) the extension is almost invisible because of the knoll.   From inside though, the sliding doors open onto a balcony which looks over the knoll towards Pen-y-Ghent on the horizon:

At the south end the view of the extension is mainly obscured by the new apartment block on the Sidings:

This is the rear elevation, facing east.   It has been designed to sit largely below the sight line of the dry stone garden wall:

And this is the 'front' of the extension, the bulk of which is behind the tower.   This part, which projects beyond the front (south) of the tower is largely hidden from public view by the tower itself and by the navvy hut.   Sightseers and photograpahers on the station approach drive and on the station itself will not see it but from inside the extension there will be views towards Lancashire and the Forest of Bowland to be appreciated from a balcony.

The drawings may give the impression of something that might somehow eclipse the tower.   The whole thing is of identical design to the existing (and much praised) rear annex.   The cladding is a muted grey, as are the window frames.   It is very carefully and deliberately hidden from public view and is subservient in appearance to the tower.

Below the extension is what we have called the undercroft - simply a sloping space from which will spring steel columns to support the extension.

When the planning application has been validated and put online I shall publish the link for the benefit of those among you who need to get a life.