Old school

When John and Emma Sims-hilditch bought a Grade Ii-listed schoolhouse to convert into a spacious family home, they didn’t reckon on one unusual original feature… By Hannah Newton. Photographs by Claire Worthy

A former schoolhouse becomes a spacious home

ACQUIRING AN ELDERLY gentleman as part of your house-buying agreement can’t be very high on the list for most people’s new-home requirements. But for John Sims-hilditch and his wife, Emma, accepting a man called Cyril was part and parcel of the purchase of their Cotswold home.

They found the Grade Ii-listed former schoolhouse by accident. On the hunt for the perfect country cottage, John had been scouring back roads for many months, scoping out Cotswold villages and tiny hamlets. Both 24 at the time, he and Emma were expecting their first child when they discovered the derelict buildings that would become their family home.

‘We located the owners, but they didn’t want to sell, as Cyril was living in the next-door cottage; he was then 78 and the former caretaker of the schoolhouse and they wanted him to stay,’ says John. ‘We came to an agreement that

would allow Cyril to live there until the end of his days.’ Cyril went on to live for another 10 years and the family struck up a warm relationship with him; his door knocker and the ribbon for his key hang in the porch as a memento.

The property they bought comprised two 17th-century cottages, one occupied by Cyril and the other a vast open room with no ceiling. This space had once been the village school before it was sold to the church and elements of this history remain: for example, the outhouses, still with their ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ signs, have been repurposed as outdoor storage.

Keen to ensure the original architecture was maintained, John and Emma built a simple ceiling with exposed timbers and sunk the ground floor to provide extra height, as well as adding three bedrooms upstairs.

It was here, around the kitchen table, that John and his business partner, Giles Redman, began a new venture in 1996: the furniture, kitchen and homeware company Neptune. The first product they co-designed was a hammock, which was a huge success.

For her part, Emma started her own interior-design business in Cyril’s former front room, beginning by making curtains and furnishings. She was soon in demand among friends for interior inspiration and the seeds of her practice, Sims Hilditch, were firmly laid.

The cottages gradually evolved into one large house. Initially, the couple simply knocked a hole in the wall to connect the two original cottages. ‘Our budget was constrained,’ explains Emma. ‘We retained everything we could. Our maxim now is to always retain the old bits so that they become a beautiful feature.’

Over time, they bought the barn tucked behind the cottages, which they

Initially, John and Emma simply knocked a hole in the wall to connect the two original cottages

used to keep ponies and hay, so as the family grew (they now have three grown-up children) and the businesses expanded, it made sense to extend into it. In 2007, they began work on the task of connecting the buildings.

Most of the natural light flooded into the barn, rather than the original cottage, so they decided to relocate the kitchen there. For John, this was a seminal moment: Neptune had just launched a range of kitchen pieces that were designed to be adaptable and work as freestanding furniture in any room in the house. This was its first test. Luckily, it worked. ‘We literally picked up the kitchen and moved it into its new space at the heart of what had been the barn,’ says John.

With help from Mark Watson of WBF Architects in Bath, they restored the stone walls and moved the entrance from the front to the side, which created a central hall that connected all three parts together. From there flowed the need for a staircase; given that all the walls were at different angles, a spiral design was chosen to bring the spaces together.

In the years since, they have crafted a timeless interior scheme, using a mix of Farrow & Ball and Neptune paint colours, furniture of their own design and pieces bought at local antiques shops and found at flea markets abroad. Almost 30 years after they moved into their original cottage, the Simshilditches now have an elegant country home that feels spacious and modern, yet also rustic and full of character. In bringing together three buildings, they have created one cohesive whole that is far more than the sum of its parts.

‘I love the earthiness of it, the stone, the long history,’ says John. ‘When we first found it, we felt it had a warmth from having been a primary school. That feeling has endured all our lives.’ neptune.com; simshilditch.com

‘Our maxim now is to always retain the old bits so that they become a beautiful feature’

Celebrate the original features of the building Here, a bookcase was specially designed to make use of the great height in the former barn

Previous page The Cotswold former school, cottage and barn, now connected as one. Left A pair of George Smith armchairs sit opposite a Sims Hilditch sofa. Right, from top The kitchen at the heart of the old barn; the watercolours in the dining room are by the couple’s daughter, Daisy; the snug, painted in Neptune’s Fine Mahogany

Make a virtue of any external walls What had been the back wall of one of the cottages has become an internal wall in the kitchen, where its old stones add rustic appeal

Choose paint colours and techniques carefully Here, the Sims-hilditches used a 50:50 water-to-paint dilution on the wooden beams in the former schoolroomturned-bedroom to give them a soft wash of colour

Right John and Emma Sims-hilditch

Below The exposed stone walls were originally exterior.