A stone and timber pavilion that adds five rooms to a Cotswolds country house, on the site of a lost ballroom.
Stay, Coberley, UK
Cowley Manor, a 17th-century house in 55 acres of Cotswolds parkland, became a hotel in 1999 in what was De Matos Ryan’s first significant commission. Twenty-five years on, the practice returned with Dorothée Meilichzon of CHZON to add a pavilion of five guest rooms where a ballroom of 1900 once stood. Its arched openings and scalloped stone bays reinterpret R.A. Briggs’s Italianate frontage without copying it, so the pavilion reads as its own building while bookending the main house and terrace.
The materials carry the idea. The Cotswold stone was quarried three miles away, and inside, a frame of UK-grown Douglas fir is left on show, built from standard sizes with traditional carpentry so it looks like the way it is built. An off-white finish softens the timber into one calm tone. Arched doors open straight onto the Grade II* listed gardens, and a first-floor terrace looks out over the landscape.
Information
Address
Cowley
Cheltenham
Gloucestershire
GL53 9NL