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A stone manor, room by room

543.Paços de Gaiolo 02 · Rehabilitation of a stone manor · Marco de Canaveses, Douro valley · On site

The project

The rehabilitation of a stone manor most likely older than the 1940s 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. In the manor, the work is a rehabilitation with only pointed demolitions, enough to clear the volumes without adding any. 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.

Who built it

WALLNUT was responsible for the design. The construction was carried out by a contractor engaged under a separate contract.

What this does not include

This is the manor; the new house on the same estate is a separate commission with its own page. The work is not finished. What is published is the estate as it was found in 2021, the work in progress indoors, and one room that is done. There is no photography of the completed house because there is no completed house yet. We would rather show that than wait.

Verified facts

  • Licence granted, and altered again during the works
    February 2024 with an alteration approved in June 2025, while the site was open
  • The plot
    3 836,15 m², mostly vineyard
  • Built
    1940 before, most likely — the record does not fix it
  • Walls
    — stone masonry, kept in the house and the farm buildings
  • Demolitions
    — pointed only: 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

Credits

  • Construction
    Heberger Portuguesa, Lda

Images

The corner of the sitting room from inside: two planes of full-height glass meeting without a post, opening onto vineyard terraces and the hills across the valley.
The one new opening in the house, finished. Two planes of glass meet at the corner with nothing between them, which is the only way the vineyard reads as one piece and not as two views.
A finished sitting room under the timber roof, with a corner of full-height glazing onto the valley, low sofas, a round side table and a green rug.
The same room finished, with the roof above it and the corner taken out of the wall below.
The restored timber roof structure of the manor seen from directly below: dark beams radiating from a central hip over pale infill panels, with concealed cove lighting at the wall head.
The roof from below, restored and lit from a cove instead of from fittings hung off it. The radiating structure is the one that was already there — this is the room the whole project exists to make visible.
A window set deep in a dark granite wall, framing a vine trunk and the valley beyond.
An existing opening, kept at its own size. The wall is a metre thick, and that thickness is what turns a window into a frame.
An aerial view of a granite manor with tiled roofs among vines and woodland, with a river valley behind it.
July 2021, before anything was touched. Everything visible here is what the estate already had.
A granite wall with a vine growing along it, a stone trough at its foot and a terracotta-rendered outbuilding beside it.
Before. The stone, the vine and the trough are the reason there is a project at all — and all three are still there.
A white concrete stair rising against a wall of large granite blocks.
The rule of the whole job in one image: what is new is cast against the stone, touching it and never entering it.
Steel beams and columns inserted inside a granite shell, seating on the masonry, with the original timber roof structure above them.
The steel frame inside the stone. It carries the new floor so the granite carries only itself, which is the whole reason the walls could stay.

Other work

Reading note

On this page, 8 photographs of the work. We do not publish the client. No costs, prices or margins are published.

More of our work

Every project here is written up the same way: what we were responsible for, what we were not, and the measurements behind both.
Explore our projects

Want the design and the build under one contract?

On this one we were the designers and another contractor built it. Tell us where your site is, roughly how big, and when you need it working — we can carry both.
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