A look at how Sessile Oak's innovative Garden Theatre Stage at Larch Cottage Nurseries, runner-up Carpenters Fellowship Contemporary Oak Frame of the Year Award 2026, was designed and built.
We were approached by Larch Cottage Nurseries, for whom we had built two oak frames previously: a three-storey extension and a road-front store. This new commission was to design and build a theatre stage frame to mark the garden centre’s 40th anniversary and provide a venue for regular concerts and performances.
An initial site visit determined a footprint of 5m width x 4m depth and maximum height of 3.8m to work within. As ideas developed, so emerged a brief that the stage back should be 'masculine' whilst the stage front 'feminine', with a unique architectural theme in keeping with the naturally curved shapes of the surrounding trees, shrubs, lawns and paths.
The design was refined over many cups of tea, excellent cake, much head scratching and plotting on graph paper with a pair of compasses. It evolved to incorporate just over half a perfect circle formed by a pair of arching braces and collar as the ‘feminine’ stage front, contrasting with ‘masculine’ gothic arches in the stage back plotted from significant points of the front frame as fulcrums to create a hint of a Tolkienesque 'elvish' theme.
A frontal canopy reaching out to a point at its apex to add shelter to the stage front, with additional wind braces placed to draw the eye upward and outwards from the curves below to encourage the illusion of a sharper peak, was balanced at the back by a pair of crossing curved struts within the diamond atop the arches to be glazed with Dalle de verre.
The timbers for the large curves were something of a challenge to source since their deflection had to be constant
The stage back chords were laid out and jointed with their arches, which were already cut and shaved to their finished curves.
Where pieces crossed one another in the centre, the draw of their pegs was lessened in favour of angled dovetail pegging.
The side and roof timbers were shaped very much as standard with the same precise attention to proportion and symmetry as the front and back frames. The minimal sections of the principal rafters called for closer than usual tolerances for the socketed halved joints of the purlins and wind brace housings over and around the recessed arch brace and collar joints of the front frame, to retain as much residual section throughout as possible.
We travelled to the Carpenters Fellowship annual three-day gathering, this year at The Earth Trust near Oxford. We were delighted to be named runner-up in the Contemporary class of the Oak Frame of the Year Awards for the theatre stage, and to be featured in the forthcoming edition of The Mortice and Tenon magazine.
We designed and built the three-storey extension at Larch Cottage Nurseries more than a decade ago, comprising a massive 16.2 tonnes of structural oak, all crafted by hand using traditional carpentry tools.
We returned to design and build a green oak framed open-sided storage shed at roadside.
Our timbers are from sustainably managed and certified woodlands, sourced through well-established and reputable suppliers. This is essential for the continuing stewardship and survival of oak and mixed broadleaved woodlands, as well as the preservation of their habitats and wildlife.
Our Sunnymede Barn workshop has hosted to more than fifty oak frame projects since it was built and can enclose structures of a moderate size.
Some parts of large projects too big to fit in the workshop are still made outdoors in the elements.
A brief look at some traditional carpentry hand tools we use in our workshop.
You can find more oak framed building projects we've designed and crafted over the last two decades in our Gallery.
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