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Alitex
Walk into Freya Swaffer’s Alitex greenhouse and you feel you have stepped back in time... even though is’s only 6 months old. Freya came to Alitex wanting to build a glass structure on the back of an unprepossessing garage at the end of her lovely raised garden at the rear of her Georgian town house in the centre of Arundel, West Sussex.
Several options for the structure were considered, including building a double glazed conservatory to be used as a studio for restoring and painting furniture for her and her husband Spencer’s antiques business in Arundel.
The project posed a few challenges due to height constraints of the garage wall. Also in order to keep in line with the height of the garage roof a low pitch was needed. As the greenhouse is almost square it also required additional structural support without compromising the aesthetics of the greenhouse.
The existing garage was of ugly 1960s construction, so the rear elevation was replaced with pale terracotta bricks, reclaimed from a 19th Century Kent farmhouse. Lime mortar added to the aged effect and was also used for the plinth walls of the greenhouse.
A doorway was built into the rear wall, framing huge iron and elm doors from a long-gone Provence farm, giving access to the garage where the plumbing and automated vent controls are housed.
Drawing on their antiques business, Spencer Swaffer Antiques (a work-renowned source on four floors in Arundel High Street), the Alitex greenhouse incorporated 150 year old iron grilles in the brick floors and a 300 hundred year old stone sink from Lancashire.