Open House: life in a contemporary barn conversion in Somerset
Our ‘Open House’ series takes us behind the front doors of some of the homes we sell for a look at how the lives of their owners have been enriched by living in the space. Here, we take a look at Matthew and Suzy’s contemporary barn conversion in Somerset, currently for sale – check out the listing here.
Suzy: “We lived in a flat in central London, then central Bath before moving to Springfield Barn. We’d never dreamt of moving to the countryside, nor knew anyone who had lived in the country and were quite surprised when we were excited by the barn.”
Matthew: “Everywhere we’d ever lived before was modernist and post-war! We’d lived in The Barbican, then ‘Highgate New Town’ – or The Whittington Estate – by Peter Tabori, then St George’s Fields, which is a little-known stepped-section modernist estate in Marble Arch next to Hyde Park, and then we’d moved to central Bath, just behind the Royal Crescent, into a 1951 flat that was built on a bomb site. These were all markedly urban so a move to the countryside was uncharted territory for us.
“I can recall Suzy idly looking at listings online and coming across the house. She showed me and I recognised where it was as I’d recently dropped Sir Richard MacCormac (he used to live nearby with his partner Jocasta Innes), back home, just around the corner in a converted chapel about a fortnight earlier, and recalled thinking how beautifully remote it felt, even though it was only a few miles from Bath.
“So, we got in the car and went and had a look and Suzy’s first experience of the lanes approaching it was identical to mine: this feels like a world away from the city.”
Suzy: “When we got inside we couldn’t work out the floorplans that were published with the listing and it’s that unusualness that intrigued us. There is also a humility to the barn, which was a former cowshed, and, from the road, it’s quite an introverted building in that it’s quite blank but then opens up to the landscape at the back.”
Matthew: “I thought it was odd when we first came here – in a good way! It had been on the market for a while and was completely empty. Consequently, I think people had struggled to imagine how to use the space.
“It was quite self-effacing and from the street looked deceptively small but once inside you could see it had good ‘bones’. I was taken with its ‘dumbness’ – in a good way – because it’s just two steep-pitched roofed barns shoved together and cranked – I love it!
“The big barn has an 18th-century exposed rough-hewn oak frame which is clearly legible throughout and shows signs of wear’n’tear over its years, giving it a nice patina. It was converted, before we bought it, in the mid-1990s by inserting square-section solid oak elements that created the mezzanine floor, bedroom, and loft. The newer oak structure sits behind the original so it is legible and distinct with bolted connections and orthogonal geometry, set against the peg connected wobbly-edged original.
“The barn has triple ceiling heights, which mean we can fit a very tall Christmas tree in and one of my favourite memories here is dressing it without a stepladder, as standing on the half-landing means you can reach it all with ease to hang baubles!”
Suzy: “We made some changes when we moved in and set out to achieve a space that would be a joy to live in, both spatially and emotionally. We removed a lot of cast-iron railings (the previous owner was an ironwork craftsman), sanded the floors, removed carpets, applied a brighter colour scheme and installed a woodburning stove to be the focal point of the living room.
“The intention was to soften the space, dissolve the
internal boundaries and reduce contrasting colours, and I think we achieved something
that is comfortable and gives us room to ‘be’.”
Matthew: “Yes, and I think the key moves we made were
about removing, rather than adding, although the biggest internal alteration is
the birch-faced plywood shelves/desk/fold-out bed unit I designed for the
mezzanine.
“I drew this up and a friend who has a workshop called Ooma Design, who manufactured and fitted it, improving it as he went. It was designed to house my collection of Casabella magazines, an Italian architecture journal, which is a large square format, which then drove all the other dimensions. It also reuses the fold-out bed mechanism from an old sofa-bed, so incorporating this and making the end result into a single seamless element was a nice challenge.”
Suzy: “The other challenge here was planting the
garden, which took three years to dig and develop. I wanted to bring the plants
right up to the windows of the house, so you feel an immediate connection with
them.
“The outside space was hard-paving and turf – on top of what
was a dairy yard so, although we are in the country, there was no deep earth
for us to dig into. I excavated garden beds mostly by hand and, in effect, the
garden is mostly a series of large containers. It was important to me that
these were at ground level, rather than putting in raised beds as creating a
connection between the living space and the earth was the main aim.
“The plants we’ve chosen are mainly rosemary, lavender,
roses, alliums and umbellifers of various types: fennel, achilleas, ammi, cow
parsley, which the lanes by the house are full of, so it was nice to bring this
into the garden.”
Matthew: “I like being in the kitchen and just
popping out to get herbs to cook with – I will never tire of a permanent supply
of rosemary right by the door!
“Or sitting at a desk in the garden bedroom with the doors
fully open is great too, so that I am working right up against the plants and
the pool, especially if Suzy’s pottering about in the garden too.”
Suzy: “Yes, my labours have paid off, as now the house feels like it’s a living thing. Sitting out very early in the morning with a cup of tea in the midst of the rosemary and lavender is really grounding and beautiful.”
Matthew: “There are three sets of doors which open
out on to the garden which give a really nice, intimate, relationship to the
plants. And even when these are closed Suzy’s planting forms the fourth wall of
most spaces.
“I also really like how the roof light above the mezzanine brings top-light in and serves to provide a marker of the time of day by tracing a parallelogram across the space. And there’s an amusing relationship with the lane where only those on horseback can see in, so once in a while a helmet-clad head bobs past!”
Suzy “The local area is great and our favourite places include Whiterow Farm Shop, from which fish and chips is a must on a Friday night. Frome is fantastic for all sorts of things: the monthly market is really fun; Black Swan Arts has a great café; The River House café does amazing French Toast; Rye Bakery has the best bread and Farleigh Road Farm Shop is super and just five minutes away. Bruton is close too, for the Hauser & Wirth gallery and At The Chapel restaurant.”
Matthew: “I teach at the University of Bath, where I like going to Magalleria, an independent magazine store. And we’ve bought lots of small things like plates and bedding from the Danish brand Hay, in Bath too.
“We’re moving on to give Suzy more space to create an even
nicer, bigger garden. We probably won’t go very far – we love Bruton and Frome
so still being orientated around these would be great.”
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