BOOMING BARNS
Tracks down some of the best conversions on the market
If you were to visit Martin and Claire Goodwin on a hot summer’s day and sit with them and their children Finn, eight, and Tilda, five, on the deck overhanging their wild pond, you would feel close to natural wilderness. The ancient timbers of a 17th-century barn, gaunt and scarred, stand sentinel behind them. Now their home, the barn’s original openings have been replaced with fully glazed walls. They bought Hadmans Place Barn in Smarden, Kent, as a wreck in 2007 and moved there from East Dulwich, London, to give their children a country upbringing. Martin works in music and commercial video postproduction and Claire is a jewellery designer and silversmith. For them, a Grade II listed barn with planning permission offered a chance to be creative. “There aren’t many opportunities to create interesting spaces. I had been thinking about something more industrial, perhaps a loft or a factory,” says Martin. However, he relished juxtaposing simple clean lines and polished concrete flooring with the old timbers. “The best thing to do with a barn is let it speak for itself, rather than try to turn it into a cottage.” Now on the lookout for another restoration project, they have put their barn on the market with Savills for £965,000 (01580 720161, savills. co.uk). “We have the building bug,” he says. The Goodwins managed to preserve the rural nature of the setting along with a lovely sense of history at Hadmans Place, but barn conversions can sometimes transform beauties into beasts. We are likely to see more of them since the Government introduced new permitted development rights to encourage rural enterprise, build more housing and tackle the problem of redundant agricultural buildings. The new relaxed rules came into force in April. “We have had quite a few inquiries from people wondering what to do with their barns,” says Paul Cressy, rural adviser at Savills in Exeter. “We aren’t quite sure how it is going to work yet, as there are conditions and hoops to jump through,” he says. The rights allow for 460 sq m of outbuildings to be changed to residential use. If the planning authorities don’t respond within 56 days, the permission goes through automatically, though this doesn’t apply in National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty or with barns listed as being of architectural or historical importance. The National Farmers Union (NFU) hailed the move as “exciting”, as it meant farmers would be able to capitalise on their assets more easily. “This is about putting trust in farmers to do the right thing for their buildings,” says David Collier, the NFU’s chief rural affairs adviser. But the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) is worried that the remaining barns that are not listed or scheduled as ancient monuments will now rapidly be converted. “We have seen vast numbers of conversions already,” says Matthew Slocombe, the SPAB director. “Sometimes they are done sympathetically, but it always involves major building work. “People try to make them like houses with too many doors and windows.” The key is to keep the look of the barn simple, and to maintain its unassuming monumental quality. “They are vernacular buildings, products of the landscape in which they sit, built with materials from the land. If we lose all of them it will be like the extinction of a species,” says Slocombe. The problem is that historic barns – sometimes the size of cathedrals – can be expensive to maintain, so a different use can give them a new life. Alison Cameron-Dewdney lives on a small farmstead on Dartmoor, and has a charming granite barn about 150yds from her house. “It is about 200 years old,” she says. “I felt that something needed to be done about it because otherwise it would fall down. My daughter was quite interested in living in it.” She realised that the planners would feel protective of any building in the National Park, so she went to a local architect who was familiar with the process and invited him to visit. They seemed sympathetic. Eventually Alison got permission to turn it into a two-bedroom house but she never carried it through A barn conversion always costs more than you think. Is it too close to theworking farm or the farmhouse itself? You still need to get building regulations approval, and have transport, highways, landcontamination and flood-risk checks done. Is it on mains drainage, water supply, electricity and sewerage? as her daughter’s interest moved elsewhere. She is selling through Fowlers (01647 433595; fowlersonline. co.uk) in Chagford at £200,000. Alison believes it would cost about £100,000 to convert the barn. It has its own bore hole to supply water, an electricity supply and separate access via a farm gate across her fields. “Our design is very simple and it makes sure that the exterior is as unaffected as possible,” she says. “We have building regulations approval as well, but they only have one more year to run. It is so pretty it deserves to be made something of.”