Hartdene Barns

Location: Edenbridge

Brick Manufacturer: Michelmersh Brick Holdings PLC

Brick Name: Selected Darks

Architect: Nissen Richards Studio

Brickwork Contractor: Surrey Heritage Brick & Stonework Limited

The Kent-Sussex border is a landscape shaped by centuries of agriculture: wooded, undulating, and marked by the barns and outbuildings that still punctuate it. Hartdene Barns sits within 40 acres of this countryside, in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty near Hartfield and Cowden, on a site where a cluster of farm buildings once stood. Nine new homes now occupy those same footprints. The task was to ensure they felt like they had always been there.

Nissen Richards Studio inherited an earlier planning permission requiring the new homes to follow the original building footprints. Rather than treat this as a restriction, the practice used it as a starting point. The varied roof profiles that result, curved and pitched in forms recalling Dutch barns, dairies and hay stores, give the nine houses a coherent ensemble quality without tipping into pastiche. Together these silhouettes establish a grouping that reads as settled within its landscape, each building distinct but clearly part of the same family.

The homes range from three to six bedrooms, each with its own garden and allotment. One incorporates a pond formed from a wartime bomb crater, a quiet reminder that this land carries a longer history than its current use might suggest. Landscaping across the site has been designed with native planting to support local wildlife, reinforcing the connection between the development and its surroundings rather than working against it.

Freshfield Lane Selected Darks were chosen to anchor an external palette alongside charred spruce cladding and black standing-seam zinc roofing. The depth of tone in the brick does precisely what was needed here: it places the buildings within the wooded landscape without straining for effect. Against the darkness of the cladding and roofline, the brickwork provides warmth and material weight, stopping the elevations from reading as uniformly cold or industrial. Cladding patterns vary across the facades to articulate entrances and reduce the apparent scale of the larger buildings. The brickwork holds steady beneath, providing the consistent base from which the rest of the composition works.

Generous areas of glazing have been positioned to frame long views across fields and forest, while smaller openings face shared spaces between homes to maintain privacy. The relationship between openness and enclosure has been carefully managed throughout, giving each house a clear sense of orientation within the wider site.

The revised plans were resubmitted to amend the original permission, with Nissen Richards Studio demonstrating how the footprints of the former farm could accommodate a genuinely contemporary approach without compromising the character of the AONB. What has been built is not a reconstruction of what stood here before, nor a development that turns its back on its context. It occupies a more considered position: rooted in the agricultural history of the site, built with materials chosen for their ability to age well within this landscape, and designed with enough care in the details to hold up to close inspection.