I
n the picturesque East Midlands market town of Uppingham, architect Richard Norwood was presented with a small but mighty challenge. Delighted to be asked to design a new home for a local long-standing client, James Sellicks, founder and owner of a chain of estate agents, Richard approached the tight, town centre site his client had found with some trepidation. “It was a former builders’ yard, nestled down a tight traditional side street in the centre of Uppingham, ichard explains. The fi rst thing we had to bear in mind was the limited access. This was not a lovely, green vacant site. There were lots of surrounding buildings, adjoining landowners, neighbouring structures, and it was on the edge of the town centre conservation area with several listed buildings in the vicinity.” Part of the yard had once been used as an undertaker’s, and there was even an empty coffi n standing up in the corner of a brick-built garage, joining a whole collection of dilapidated buildings with timber additions and steel corrugated roofs. “There were some stone walls, but there was no ecology, nothing green; this was certainly a challenge to turn into a dwelling, but we also wanted to respect the history of the yard,” says Richard.
The new home is named Dorman’s Yard; the Dorman family had been well-known builders and part of the non-conformist religious movement in Uppingham during the 19th century.
As the site had a number of structures on it, it appeared smaller than it turned out to be, ichard recalls My fi rst thought was, how are we going to get a building on this?’” As an architect, it’s only when you get the measured survey and work of the footprints of buildings that are going to be demolished that you start to see things, and what is possible. But the buildings, and the mixture of materials they showed, did give me the initial inspiration for the industrial barn style I felt suited the situation.”
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The materials palette took inspiration from the local vernacular
The site had a frontage width of 22 metres and tapered to a depth of 26 metres. “It would always be a challenging design in terms of highways, privacy and light, so we quickly arrived at an L-shaped building form which maximised a reasonable courtyard garden,” Richard says. “It was a jigsaw puzzle.” The garden, designed by Second Nature
Gardens, based in Kibworth, Leicestershire, has become both a focal point of the house and an oasis in this elegant urban setting. It’s easily accessible from the house via full-height Crittall-style glazed doors in the kitchen and living room.
As founder and owner of Leaf Architecture & Design in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, Richard had known his client for two decades. He had worked with him on his former property at Billesdon Manor in a village near Uppingham, and a smaller canalside property nearby. “We have a good understanding of each other,” he says. “And Leaf Architecture’s speciality is that we try to strive for bespoke one-off houses, and we work a lot with listed buildings. This project was absolutely our specialism; a bespoke house for an individual private client on a challenging site.” Another recent Leaf Architecture project, Grade II-listed Smeeton House, at Smeeton Westerby in Leicestershire, completed in November 2025, also showcases the practice’s approach. Acquired by Richard’s clients in “an incredibly poor state of condition”, the property, dating
HIGH POINT
“Learning that my client had appointed a great builder in Adam Weafer to build this long-awaited project – after securing planning permission the second time – and fi nally seeing the building start on site.”
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