Cotswold Retreat — A Paragraph 84 Home
Cotswold Retreat is an architect-designed Paragraph 84 dwelling, currently in planning in the Cotswolds National Landscape (formerly the Cotswolds AONB). The proposal is being progressed under paragraph 84(e) of the NPPF — the clause that grants permission for new isolated homes in the countryside only where the design is of truly outstanding quality and would significantly enhance its setting. It is one of the highest planning bars in the country, and one we have built the project around from day one.
Externally, natural materials
The Cotswolds vernacular question
The Cotswolds Design Code leans hard towards traditional Cotswold stone, pitched roofs, and a vernacular language that has been refined over four hundred years. A contemporary scheme on this kind of site is not the path of least resistance with a planning officer. It is the path that has to earn its permission.
We have been working closely with the local authority through pre-application engagement to make that case. The argument is straightforward: the Cotswolds vernacular was itself, in its time, a contemporary response to local stone, local craft, and local climate. Building a pastiche of it in 2025 honours none of those things. Building a contemporary house that responds to the same conditions — landscape, light, materials drawn from the locality, low-impact construction — continues the vernacular's logic rather than fossilising its appearance.#
Form, materials, and the long view
The composition is a series of organic, flowing volumes balanced by rational structural elements that ground the scheme. Lime render across curved walls. A timber-clad cylindrical wing. Locally sourced stone at the base. Sustainably grown timber framing. Materials that are local in origin, low-impact in carbon, and chosen to weather into the landscape rather than against it.
The site already had a mature oak and a natural pond. The building was designed to that — not over it. What sits on the plot enhances what was already there, which is the second half of the paragraph 84(e) test and the half that most schemes underweight.
Where the project stands
Cotswold Retreat is in planning. We are continuing the dialogue with the local authority and refining the application based on the feedback we receive. Paragraph 84(e) applications are scrutinised heavily, and approvals are deliberately scarce. That is the bar. It is the bar we set the project against from the first sketch.