My Creative Cup of Tea

May 14, 2026

#MCCOTArchitecture {9}

The Old Sty

Tatworth

Somerset

United Kingdom

Old stone buildings are very precious treasures to cherish, celebrate, preserve and pass down to the future generations to come. They are History. A unique and priceless architectural heritage of ours that we have sometimes the opportunity to rethink and rebuild with deep respect and care.

It is always a real pleasure to come across architectural and virtuous projects, focused on adaptive reuse and conservation work, that demonstrate how modest and old structures, with depth and character, can be renewed with restraint and imagination.

In 2024, on behalf of the London-based studio London Atelier that he is the director of, talented and skilled architect and educator Pouya Zamanpour has fully renovated 'The Old Sty', a stone outbuilding located in the village of Tatworth in the British county of Somerset.

This former modest piggery, also used more recently as a small garage, has been turned into a contemporary 50-mq holiday home characterized by a brand new calm, precise and rooted-in-place layer. It is now a small building with a warm and materially refined interior and an historic envelope.

This project represents the first completed phase of a long-term master plan for a Grade II listed estate in Somerset. Its main purpose was to retain the building’s agricultural identity and rural character while enabling a functional, materially honest place to stay.

Zamanpour has made it a priority to maintain a legible relationship between old and new, introducing crafted, restrained interventions, and using light, proportion and material integrity to bring clarity to the interiors. Challenge beautifully achieved.

If externally, the stone walls and simple roof were only repaired with minimal intervention, inside thoughtful bespoke design has brought new life to the heritage fabric of rural estates and improved environmental performance.

As a new spatial strategy, an innovative and contemporary “house-in-house” approach has been chosen in order to preserve the perimeter stone walls in their entirety while giving the new interior its own architectural identity. The architect has designed a sculptural custom-made plywood volume that forms the kitchen, bathroom, ladder-stair, storage and a small mezzanine platform.