Gabled oak-framed porch at Stourbridge, glazed and fully enclosed, with apex glazing, herringbone brick panels and a solid oak door with a diamond light

WEST MIDLANDS

Oak Garden Room, Garage & Porches — Canal-Side Country House, Stourbridge

(The Lockside Project)

Four oak structures across one property beside the canal at Stourbridge — an open garden room, a two-bay garage and porches to the house and the annexe — with oak bifolds, windows and doors carrying the same timber through every elevation.

Project Facts

Location: Stourbridge, West Midlands
Property: Nineteenth-Century Country House, Canal-Side
Scope: Architectural Oak Structures (open garden room, two-bay garage), Entrance Structures (glazed porch to the house, porch to the annexe), Architectural Timber Windows, Bespoke Door Sets (oak doors and bifolds)
Materials: Green oak frames to the garden room, the two-bay garage and both porches; oak windows, oak doors and oak bifold doors; handmade brick, clay tile roofs
Year completed: 2022

Architectural Context

A nineteenth-century country house at Stourbridge, standing beside the canal that gave the town its trade and the studio this project its name. The owners wanted several quite different things from oak across the whole property, and were right to treat each of them separately. One was a room to sit outside in — open to the garden, roofed but not enclosed. The other was an entrance: a porch that would keep the weather off properly and take the arrival seriously.

A room to sit outside in, open to the garden and roofed but not enclosed. An entrance porch that would keep the weather off properly. A two-bay garage. A second porch for the annexe. Those are different briefs, and the common mistake is to answer them with the same building four times over. An open garden room glazed in becomes a conservatory; an enclosed porch left open becomes a canopy that does nothing in a westerly. The decision that mattered was made before anything was drawn, and it was simply to let each structure be the thing it was for.

Both had to belong to the house rather than sit against it. Oak is unforgiving here: done well an oak frame reads as architecture, a structure with its own logic that settles against brick as though it grew there. Done badly it reads as rustic decoration applied to a wall. The elevations also had to carry through — a house with oak structures at either end and something else in its windows announces the join immediately.

Nineteenth-century canal-side country house at Stourbridge with oak bifold doors wrapping a single-storey wing under a clay tile roof and oak-framed gable glazing above — One property, one timber — the bifolds wrapping the wing, the gable glazing above, and the porch and garden room at either end of it.

Studio Response

The garden room is a green oak frame left open: posts, beams and braces jointed and pegged, roofed to match the house and deliberately not glazed. An open frame is the harder of the two to get right, because there is nothing to hide behind — every joint is visible from every angle and the structure is the entire architecture. It is also the one people enjoy most, because a roofed outdoor room gets used in weather a terrace does not.

The porch is the opposite decision, taken deliberately. It is a gabled oak frame, fully glazed and enclosed, with apex glazing carrying light into the frame and herringbone brick panels flanking the opening to tie it to the house. At its centre is a solid oak door with a single diamond light — a detail the studio keeps returning to, and one worth drawing properly, because a front door is the piece of joinery every visitor touches.

The garage was framed as two open bays, and the annexe was given a porch of its own in the same timber and the same detailing — a smaller building on the same site treated with the same seriousness rather than left to fend for itself with something bought in. Four oak structures on one property could easily have become four different ideas; keeping the sections, the joints and the finish consistent is what makes them read as one commission.

Oak was then carried through the rest of the elevations rather than stopped at the structures. Oak bifolds wrap the single-storey wing and fold back to open it to the garden; oak windows and doors run through the house above and around them. That consistency is what stops any of the oak reading as an add-on: by the time you reach the garden room or the garage, the timber has already been introduced, and the new work reads as the property continuing rather than as things attached to it.

Open green oak framed garden room at sunset, pegged posts and curved braces under a tiled roof, with a brick bar and wood-fired oven beneath it — And the garden room, left open — every joint visible from every angle, and nothing to hide behind.

Element Breakdown

Two oak structures for two different jobs, and oak carried through the elevations so neither reads as an addition:

Architectural Oak Joinery
Four oak structures and the windows, doors and bifolds between them — oak used here as the material the whole property is made of rather than as one specification among several.
Architectural Oak Structures
A green oak garden room frame left open rather than glazed — posts, beams and braces jointed and pegged, with nothing to hide behind, roofed to match the house so it reads as part of the building rather than as a garden structure.
Oak Garages
A two-bay oak framed garage on the same property, jointed and finished to match the garden room rather than treated as an outbuilding bought separately.
Oak Porches
Two oak porches — a gabled one to the house, glazed and fully enclosed with apex glazing and herringbone brick panels flanking the opening, and a second for the annexe in the same timber and detailing.
Oak Bifold Doors
Oak bifolds wrapping the single-storey wing and folding back to open it to the garden, in the same timber as the structures at either end of the house.
Oak Windows
Oak windows through the house and its gables, so the timber is already established by the time the eye reaches the garden room and the porch.
Oak Entrance Doors
A solid oak entrance door with a single diamond light, set at the centre of the glazed porch — the one piece of joinery on a house that every visitor puts a hand on.

The oak porch seen straight on, herringbone brick panels either side of a solid oak door with a diamond glazed light, glazing carried up into the gable — Herringbone brick either side, and the glazing taken up into the apex rather than stopped square beneath it.

Oak casement window with a moulded oak cill and a slate head, two lights divided by a central mullion, set in handmade brick — The same timber in the windows as in the structures — which is what stops any of it reading as an addition.

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