Two 18th Century ruins in Somerset have been given a new life as contemporary luxury holiday homes using contemporary offsite construction techniques and a near-Passivhaus level of airtightness. The ruins of the limestone walls were rebuilt with lime mortar and restrained against the panelised timber structure – which was manufactured offsite and installed in a two-week period.

As well as reducing the construction programme, the offsite- system vastly improved the air tightness of the fabric and provided a suitable fixing substrate for the charred timber cladding; which housed within it discrete pockets for a ‘bat box’ maintaining a home for the local ecology.