Courtyard Outdoor Kitchen

A small courtyard on the edge of a traditional Suffolk village, reworked to add an outdoor kitchen without losing the cottage character the owners loved.

The brief was to build two arched alcoves housing an outdoor kitchen and a pizza oven, set against the existing house wall, with paving extended to make room for a table. Sounds straightforward — but the bricks were the project. Hand-laid red brickwork in a soft Suffolk colour, with the arches turned in-situ over carefully made formers, every line tested and re-tested before mortar went near it.

The arches sit on a low brick wall that doubles as bench seating and screens the working side of the kitchen from the seating area. Sandstone paving extends across the courtyard, with tiled inserts inside the alcoves where heat and grease need to be wipe-clean.

The whole space now reads as though it grew out of the house rather than being added to it — exactly the test we set ourselves whenever we work alongside an old building.