A stone manor, room by room

The project

The rehabilitation of a pre-1940s stone manor on a Douro vineyard: the granite kept, steel spanning where timber could not, and one new opening cut for the valley.

What we were responsible for

The manor on the same estate, on its own 3 836 m² of vineyard: stone walls, timber floor and roof structure, and a build date the record cannot fix — most likely before the 1940s. The work is a rehabilitation with only pointed demolitions, enough to clear the volumes without inventing new ones. The granite stays, in the main house and in the farm buildings around it, because it is the material the whole valley is made of. What changes is what was already replaced badly: the red-painted timber windows go, and aluminium in RAL 7039 goes in. The vine trained across the facade is kept, and so is the vineyard. Alongside the manor, and new, are the garages and the outdoor support structure, with a pool and a barbecue: everything the house needs that the house should not have to hold. Those are nearly finished; the manor’s interior is not.

What this does not include

The client is not named. This is the manor; the new house on the same estate is a separate commission with its own page. Nothing here is finished. The support building — garages, pool, barbecue — is close; the manor’s interior is not. What is published is the estate as it was found in 2021, the same estate in May 2026, the work in progress indoors, and one room that is done. The new house on the same estate is somewhere else on the land and is a separate commission, still in design. There is no photography of the completed house because there is no completed house yet. We would rather show that than wait.

Verified facts

The plot
3 836,15 m², mostly vineyard
Built
antes de 1940 most likely — the record does not fix it
Walls
alvenaria de pedra kept, in the house and the farm buildings
Demolitions
pontuais enough to clear the volumes, no more
Windows
RAL 7039 aluminium, replacing red-painted timber
Kept on the facade
1 vine, trained where it was
Built new alongside
4 garages, outdoor support structure, pool, barbecue — nearly finished

Images

The estate from the air in summer: the granite manor with its terracotta roofs around a courtyard, dry-stone walls stepping down through vines and orchard, and the Douro visible in the valley beyond. — July 2021, before anything was touched. Everything you see is what the project had to work with.

The same estate five years later: the granite buildings re-roofed, a new dark glazed support building beside them, new dry-stone retaining walls stepping down through replanted vines, and the valley opening out behind. — May 2026. What is new here is the support building — garages, pool and barbecue — and it is the only piece that does not pretend to be old.

The courtyard as found: granite buildings with terracotta roofs around a cobbled yard, a car parked on it, dry stone walls and mature trees behind. — Before. The stone is the reason there is a project at all.

A large room in the farm building as found: granite walls, a floor of beaten earth, and a roof carried on rough timber posts and beams. — Before. Beaten earth, timber posts, and a roof holding.

The same kind of space during the work: a grid of steel joists spanning between the granite walls at first-floor level, the old roof timbers still overhead and two workers below. — Steel spans where the timber could not. It lands on the stone, and adds nothing to it.

A room with new timber boards laid over the new structure, the granite walls left raw, three small windows and the old roof still open above. — The floor is new, the openings are the ones the house already had.

Brick partitions going up inside the stone shell under the original roof structure, pallets of block on the floor and a worker on a ladder. — The new walls are brick and stop short of the roof, so the two are told apart.

Red formwork panels set against the outside of the granite wall for a new concrete element, waterproofing at the base and a worker adjusting a prop. — What is new is poured against the stone, never into it.

An old vine trained over a new steel pergola beside the house, its trunk rising from the ground through freshly laid granite setts, with the vineyard terraces and the valley beyond. — The new steelwork was set around the vine, not where the vine was. Frame from a 360 capture at dusk, which is why the light is what it is.

The finished sitting room: a corner opened in full-height glass with two people seated looking out over vineyard terraces and the hills beyond, a timber ceiling above and a dark fireplace wall to the right. — The one new opening in the house, and what it was cut for.

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