Sker House
Porthcawl
Situated in barren isolation on the South Wales coast, this Grade 1 Listed Building is one of the last great country houses in Wales to be rescued from ruin, following its compulsory purchase by the local authority. The house was subsequently sold to the Buildings at Risk Trust and who completed its repair and conversion, before selling it to a private owner.
Though the majority of the house was restored, the restoration preserves the partially collapsed wing at the west end as a part of its history, a new external gallery being inserted to link the various rooms within the ruin. Remnants of a beautifully decorated plaster frieze and timber ‘screen passage’ survived in the first floor Great Hall and which has now been restored in its entirety, together with some surviving
18th century ‘graffiti’.
DSA received RIBA awards in the categories of both Design and Conservation in 2004 rewarding the practice’s imaginative and dedicated approach to this project over the previous 15 years.