Words Nell Card
Photography Finn Beales
Production Harry Cave

It’s not often that a building project ends with the architect attempting to headhunt the client, but Pen-y-Common is no ordinary project. The family home of photographer Finn Beales and arts director Clare Purcell has recently won a slew of RIBA awards, including Building of the Year. The renovation, in which Finn played a leading role, was described by jury members as having “the Goldilocks qualities of being neither too big nor too small, neither too formal nor too informal […] a sophisticated balance of prospect and retreat, light and dark.” Clare is equally admirable: “If Finn wanted to, he could take a different angle on his career for a bit,” she explains, with a glint of pride. Finn isn’t so sure: “I told our architect that I couldn’t possibly retrain at my age. His response was: ‘You wouldn’t have to retrain. All you need is a trained person to work with.’”

The couple had lived together in their cramped cottage at the top of a common on the edge of Hay-on-Wye for two decades. But, as their children – Harlan, 15, and Seren, 13 – grew, so too did their need for space. They enlisted the help of two Welsh architecture firms – Rural Office and Nidus Architects – who devised a single-storey extension that harnesses light and frames views of the unchanging landscape with all the creativity and care of, well, a photographer. “Light is my job, really,” says Finn. The build took place over two years, between January 2020 and Christmas Eve 2021. Now, though intrigued by the idea of a career change, both are acutely aware of the work entailed and the necessarily circuitous journey taken in order to produce something that is, in fairytale speak, “just right.”

Clare: “My grandfather was the canon of Worcester Cathedral in the 1960s, which meant that every time he stepped outside his front door, he was on duty. He was looking to find an utterly remote holiday home, where no one could disturb him. His search brought him to Hay-on-Wye where a local estate agent told him about a derelict cottage at the top of the common. There was no road – no track even – so he was given a grid reference. He walked up to the cottage with my grandmother and they agreed it was perfect.”

Finn: “The central part of the cottage probably dates from around the 1600s. I found a map of the area in the National Archives that would have been commissioned by the estate owner. It shows the cottage with surrounding outbuildings around a central courtyard. What’s interesting is that it was drawn in 3D, rather than 2D, and the fields are keyed so you can see exactly what was grown here at that time. At the top, it says ‘taken in August 1757.’ In the 18th century, this is probably the closest they got to a photograph…”

Clare: “Over the years, my dad and his siblings helped my grandparents restore the cottage, but in a very late 1960/early 1970s way. They laid lino floor tiles and bricked up all the fireplaces and there was an interesting kitchen/bathroom thing going on. My grandfather sold it to my dad the year I was born. We grew up in London, but we came here every year for family holidays.

“We all adored the cottage, but I had a particular love for it. Throughout school, I focused on finding a job that would enable me to live here with a pony and a dog. Then, when it came to university, I applied for rural resource management because it was the only degree with the word “rural” in the title.

“I spent my gap year alone here, which was quite spooky. It still had no track and there was no running water here for most of the summer – frogs would sometimes come out of the tap. In the winter, it was cold and damp with only one open fireplace that smoked like anything. Someone lent me their pony, which I kept in the garden and so, once a fortnight, I’d ride to the nearest phone box to ring my parents in London and tell them I was alright.

“In 1995, once I’d finished university, I moved in properly and ever since Finn arrived in 2001, it’s been an incredibly slow journey of gently pushing this place forwards.”

Finn: “Do you know the Julia Donaldson book, A Squash and a Squeeze? Well, as our kids grew, that’s how our house began to feel. And I found the winters particularly challenging in the old house – it was so dark. In the summer, it was incredible because we were outdoors all the time in this spectacular location, but in the colder months, the lack of light inside definitely made the days feel more of a slog.”

Clare: “Upstairs was challenging too – there was absolutely no storage space. The bedrooms are all in the roof and our room was essentially a corridor between the kids’ rooms, which was lovely when they were toddlers but became increasingly tricky as they got older.

“We didn’t want to ruin what we had by extending it, so – after several failed attempts at visualising what that might look like – we decided to put the house on the market. But we soon realised that there was nowhere quite like this. As the crow flies, we’re only about half a mile from the town. An old bridleway connects us to the common, so we can ride or cycle into Hay in no time; we don’t have to spend our lives driving the kids around. Also, we’re in a National Park surrounded by farmland, so no one else will ever build around here.”

Finn: “Eventually, some friends of ours suggested we contact Niall Maxwell of Rural Office with an overarching idea to create an open light-filled extension that references the pitched roof structure of the cottage. We wanted to keep the old part old, and the new part new. Both parts of the house would relate to each other in terms of their form and materials, but both would retain a distinct feel: the original part of the house would remain dark and low, and the new space would feel open and light – like you’re coming up for air.

“Rural Office’s drawings secured us planning permission. We then worked on refining the design with James Lingard of Nidus Architects, who helped us with decision-making throughout the build. It was a really collaborative effort in that respect.”

Finn: “The position of the windows were a huge consideration for us. When you have lovely views, it’s tempting to add massive windows everywhere, but actually a framed view changes depending on your position in the room – it is continuously revealing. As a photographer, I use an app to track exactly where the light will hit at any given point in the day or year and this proved incredibly useful when positioning openings. We decided to glaze the east and west elevations to capture golden light in the mornings and evenings. Elsewhere, on the south elevation, a white-washed wall acts as a big reflector, bouncing diffuse, midday light into the rooms. There’s also a giant skylight above the kitchen island. In the middle of the winter, the full moon floods the space, which is beautiful.”

Clare: “The old part of the house has hardly changed. It still has the original front door and the original bread oven. We’ve removed the gypsum plaster and repointed the stone with lime mortar. There’s a piano in there, an original built-in cupboard beside the fire and a little bureau which we use if we’re working from home. It’s a great room to retreat to in the winter because it heats up so quickly. And in the summer, it’s great because it stays incredibly cool.”

Finn: “We’ve used natural or reclaimed materials throughout because we wanted the new extension to talk to the old part of the house. We wanted texture and patina, so we have chosen materials that will change through use and eventually tell their own story.”

Clare: “Our furniture has accumulated gradually over 20 years. We’ve got the bottom half of a Welsh dresser that my parents bought in the 1970s, one-of-a-kind Welsh stick-back chairs, Welsh rugs and textiles that all just feel right in here. Our one extravagance was the kitchen island, which has been beautifully made by a local craftsman from a single piece of oak. The shadow gaps pick up the black of the slate work surface behind, which we used to have in the old house and now fits perfectly into the new space.”

Finn: “This place is built off the back of our lives and our journeys, really. Everything that has gone into it is a result of that experience. I think that’s what makes it so satisfying: we haven’t just bought a place – we’ve created it.”

Clare: “My American Indian star sign is a brown bear – a creature who enjoys plodding around the same patch of land. Of course, there are so many incredible places in the world, but I find it endlessly satisfying and enriching here. Every day, I notice something different, whether it’s the scent of honeysuckle in the evening or a new family of badgers. I’ll never tire of it. I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.”

Words Nell Card
Photography Finn Beales