Ferrum House

Title: Ferrum House

Location: Bruton, Somerset, UK

Client: Andrew Pennock & Dana Anderson

Date: 2013

Ferrum House was developed as a study in how a contemporary dwelling might inhabit a dense, irregular site within a historic townscape. The project utilises a flexible modular system, allowing the house to respond precisely to the constraints of an infill site while maintaining spatial clarity and strong environmental performance.

The house occupies the footprint of a former garage and petrol repair site within Bruton, located adjacent to an old bacon factory now converted into flats. This setting — layered with industrial, commercial, and residential histories — informed an approach that avoided pastiche, instead working carefully with scale, massing, and alignment to sit comfortably between older structures and more recent buildings.

Set back from the street line, the building is organised as a series of clear block forms that echo the long wall of the former bacon factory. The primary façades address the surrounding context through proportion and restraint, while the main fenestration is located to the rear, ensuring privacy from the street and opening the house to light, garden, and views toward the nearby church.

Constructed using structurally insulated panels, the 220 square metre house achieves high levels of insulation and low energy use. Material choices are deliberately restrained and expressive of process: a charred timber‑clad ground floor extends across the site from west to east, forming a grounded base into which the building sits. Above, the upper two floors are wrapped in Corten steel, creating the impression of a steel volume resting upon a timber plinth, with the northern end projecting slightly to mark the entrance.

The contrast between timber and weathering steel allows the house to take on a varied and natural colouring over time, reflecting both material ageing and the changing conditions of the town. While unapologetically contemporary in form, the building engages its context through scale, alignment, and careful detailing rather than stylistic reference.

Award citation — Somerset Building Preservation Trust

“It is a convincingly modern house that offers no traditional details or signals to declare itself in the context of old Bruton, yet sits comfortably between a series of beautiful historic buildings and more recent structures by virtue of its form and scale. The quality of design achieves a well‑resolved interior with consistent and thorough detailing throughout, exploiting light, views, and a strong environmental performance to create a house that is both distinctive and highly livable.”

Photographs Louis Porter