The Loggia

History

The great room had four west windows onto the best view on the property and, for a hundred and thirty years, no way to step out into it. Jules hung three pairs of French doors in the bays the 1920s had already altered — he would not cut an original opening — and roofed the whole west face in copper. Steel posts on a sandstone plinth, and no attempt whatsoever to look Victorian. It is the only thing he has added to this house that he is entirely unapologetic about.

Right now

The doors have been folded back since May. In the last hour of light the loggia and the great room read as one room forty feet deep, and nobody has worked out how to photograph it properly yet.

Objects

• The outside hearth

  Deep masonry in the south end wall, hearth at floor level, flue rising clear of the roofline. It faces the great room's fire through the open doors, which means on a cold evening there are two fires lit thirty feet apart in what is arguably the same room.