WA Hare & Son, the North Yorkshire building and joinery contractor, has been declared a Master Builder Of The Year.

The firm, based at Kelfield, scooped the category for residential restoration, refurbishment and extension work on medium projects up to £300,000 in value in the Master Builder Of The Year awards at a celebratory lunch in London. Some of the finest builders in the country took part in the category but WA Hare & Son, which had already won the Yorkshire and Trent region heats, took the top prize.

Judges were impressed by the firm's substantial two-storey extension to a period country hall.

The five months' work involved complex architectural designs combined with very high technical specifications stretching the company's apprentice trained craftsmen to the limits of their skills.

WA Hare & Son, established in the 1870s, has developed a strong reputation for traditional and sympathetic restoration and extension work on listed and period properties, as well as imaginative barn conversions.

Nick Hare, managing director, said: "The project represents a skilful and sympathetic extension to an historic hall near York, seamlessly joining the old with the new."

The project was designed and supervised by local architect Dr John Bailey, who lives in one of the company's barn conversions near Howden.