Hatton Grange
Renovation & Additions in Charlottesville, VA
This house was a modest single-pile Virginia farmhouse at the center of an extensive holding of its original 500 acres. The house had previously acquired a sizable off-center wing to conform to the modern usage of the large family room/kitchen, leaving the center somewhat feeble. Rather than add another wing, we decided to double the house in the other direction and double the center part from a single room depth to two rooms deep, doubling the house’s main block instead of the entire plate. We added a new roof, entablature, and north facade. The roof has a gable to a hip roof with a surmounting balustrade perimeter and Chippendale railing at the top. The new block contains two bedrooms above, a living room and office below, and a theater and mudroom in the basement area reached by an English basement, which solves the grading and drainage issues and allows the basement to be utilized.
Hatton Grange
Process
Litchfield’s compact plan source is Robert Morris’s pattern book “Rural Architecture” of 1750. The main block – divided by that hallmark of the New England house, the great central chimney stack – is logically organized to accommodate the entrance hall, staircase, and powder room on one side of the hearth, the living room on the south, with the dining room and kitchen in the west wing and a guest bedroom and bathroom in the east.
