Walled Courtyard

A small walled courtyard behind a Georgian townhouse in central Worcester. North-facing, paved entirely in old concrete slabs, and used mostly as a route between the house and the bins. The brief was to make it feel like another room.

We took the slabs up, laid a new York stone floor with a generous central inset, and rebuilt the boundary walls with a stepped lime-render coping. Climbers on three sides — jasmine, climbing hydrangea, an old rambling rose — and a single bench in oak. It catches an hour of evening sun in summer, and the owners now eat outside whenever they can.