Hendre Boeth
The walled garden house

Powys, Mid-Wales

On the Welsh–Shropshire borders, where the Vyrnwy meanders past hedge-lined fields and the foothills of the Berwyn range rise to the north, a new house is quietly settling into the landscape.

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Commissioned as an understated country home with sustainability at its heart, Hendre Boeth takes its cues less from the grand country residence than from the working farmsteads that have shaped this valley for generations.

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Rather than a single dominant volume, the house is broken into a family of smaller buildings, each shaped by its use and its relationship to the courtyards it helps define. Stone walls, lime-rendered gables and weathered timber gather around sheltered yards in the manner of the surrounding farmsteads — providing protection from the prevailing westerlies, framing long views toward the rolling hills, and establishing a quiet hierarchy from the public arrival courtyard through to the private garden beyond.

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The materials carry this hierarchy. The main living wing is the "core" building: stone courtyard walls, lime render coloured with natural pigment, a natural slate roof, and deep oak eaves with generous areas of glazing. A glazed connection draws the eye through to a contrasting secondary volume — treated as a converted barn, with a robust brick plinth, vertical timber cladding above and a standing-seam metal roof. The garage is more agricultural still, its corrugated roof completing the small settlement.

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At the heart of the plan, a lightweight timber-and-glass kitchen and dining area opens onto a south-facing walled garden. Rooms are oriented to the path of the sun; courtyards are positioned to catch shelter and frame the wider valley.

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Designed to Passive House principles, the home combines high levels of insulation, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, photovoltaics with battery storage, and a sedum green roof to the link. External louvres, deep overhangs and open rainwater collectors temper sun and water through the seasons, while a focused lighting strategy protects the dark skies above.

The result is a home that feels quietly rooted in vernacular.