Letter from the Architect: ARC Padstow

ARC Padstow sits in the heart of Churchtown, St Issey — a small Cornish village with a rich and layered past. Originally an 18th-century manor house, the building has served as a mill, courthouse, and private home. Our aim in restoring it was to bring clarity back to that history, removing later interventions and letting the structure breathe again.

We began with the old mill, which once ran off a water source that entered the property from the east — near the current hot tub. The ground-floor bedroom and kitchen occupy the footprint of the original milling rooms, and if you look up, the old mill doors can still be seen on the first and second floors. We reinstated the historic rhythm of the facade by reopening and resizing window openings, and replaced all mill windows with timber sashes. The concrete roof tiles were removed and replaced with natural slate, and heating is now provided by a biomass boiler discreetly housed in the shed — ensuring the house runs without burning fossil fuel.

The adjacent dining room sits in what were once the stables. To make the new picture window usable as a garden door, we had to carefully lower the floor level of this space, subtly reshaping its proportions while preserving its historic character. This part of the house now connects directly to the kitchen and opens out onto the garden, creating a natural flow for communal meals and long afternoons. The kitchen ceiling was completely rebuilt using new structural timber, and the kitchen island was hand-tiled on site, every piece cut to shape.

From the dining space, the garden opens up — a sunlit, enclosed space ideal for outdoor eating, lounging, or simply enjoying the quiet of St Issey. The pizza oven and BBQ are clad in Cornish slate, and the hot tub sits roughly where the mill leat once entered the site.

Finally, the Georgian front of the house tells a story of growing prosperity. When the family made their fortune, they added this formal frontage with larger sash windows, a grand stair, and more refined rooms. The original courtroom occupied what is now the main lounge — a space we opened back up to its full width by removing more recent partitions. A bespoke sofa now anchors the room, inviting gathering and conversation beneath generous light.

This is a house shaped by centuries of working life, reimagined to host new kinds of togetherness. We hope you find it both grounding and inspiring.