THE owner of a stone-built property on The Doward is proposing to remove all its 20th Century additions and replace them with more sympathetic modifications.

In the application to Herefordshire planners Nicholas Hampshire, acting on behalf of the owner, explains that the cottage has been extended and adapted numerous times throughout the last century, which have neither been sympathetic to the original property, nor consistently built to the highest quality.

He states that the owner plans on demolishing these addition and rebuilding on a near identical footprint, to create a family home that is more in keeping with the original property and the wider local aesthetic - particularly the detached houses that are characteristic of the Whitchurch and Doward areas.

The application states that historically there was an increased number of outbuildings on and adjacent to the site. During the early 1900s the property was known as both ‘Pricketts Farm’ or ‘Little Gockett’. It was then renamed as Middle Kiln House in 1904 but later dropping the ‘Middle’ part of the name.

Historical maps show a number of outbuildings, some of which were probably used for Kiln purposes, however there is no evidence of a kiln within the current stone cottage curtilage.

The applicant’s agent concludes that the existing property is an incoherent hotchpotch of architectural styles that would no longer be permitted adding: “There is now an opportunity to enhance the building with a more harmonious form that is consistent in an architectural language that exhibits local distinctiveness and architectural detailing.”

It is proposed to rationalise the materiality of the property so that the cottage is more stone focused, traditional in appearance, and more in keeping with the local vernacular.

The window openings will retain the proportions of the original stone property.

Comments can be made on the application, number P251905/FH via Herefordshire Council’s planning portal until July 29.