What’s the history behind the original building?
The building itself was a 1920s barn and stables owned by an English family. You used to be able to drive through the barn to get to the main house, which is now our neighbors’ home. There’s a second floor in the front part of the house where a fully functioning clock tower used to be, so it’s an interesting place.
It was never really lived in - it was more of a shell of a building but it still had so much character. As it hadn’t been a house before we felt like we had a bit of a creative license, however we still wanted to respect the history of the building.
What’s the inspiration behind the interior?
With it being such a large space, I wanted to go for a very natural aesthetic with lots of light coming in from all sides. The barn didn’t have many windows at all, so we were very fortunate that the Council allowed us to have a courtyard in the middle of the property. We kept the original pentagon shape of the barn, so the courtyard sits in the centre with all the rooms dotted around it.
We created glass corridors with crittall style doors and managed to achieve a beautiful flow of light into the house. It was lovely to have that outside feeling whilst being indoors. It also allows you to see the greenery of either the courtyard or the back garden from every room in the house which we really love.
A few ideas were floated around when it came to the kitchen as it was a very important room for my mum. At one point we were thinking about going for an industrial style, but we decided on a more traditional English feel which worked well with the the minimal farmhouse vibe throughout the rest of the house.