The Barn Book

Fülszöveg

Living in a barn requires a sense of adventure
but once experienced it becomes an addictive
way of life. The Barn Book is an inspirational
tour of converted barns, stables, granaries and
cowsheds, tracked down in all corners of
England, Scotland and Wales. Now, in place of
cows, horses, fodder or hops, their new
occupants are people who have painstakingly
restored a vulnerable part of the British country-
side. Many owners are artists and architects
whose imaginations have been challenged by
the potential of a medieval monastic barn, a
Palladian stable block or towering hopkiln. As
well as being significant landmarks, the simple
architecture of traditional farm buildings gives a
picture of local history and agriculture that
distinguishes one region from the next - from
humble Scottish cowbyres to noble barns of
Cotswold stone or cladded Essex elm.
The growth in the scale of modern farming
has left a legacy of redundant barns and this
book shows that domestic... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Living in a barn requires a sense of adventure
but once experienced it becomes an addictive
way of life. The Barn Book is an inspirational
tour of converted barns, stables, granaries and
cowsheds, tracked down in all corners of
England, Scotland and Wales. Now, in place of
cows, horses, fodder or hops, their new
occupants are people who have painstakingly
restored a vulnerable part of the British country-
side. Many owners are artists and architects
whose imaginations have been challenged by
the potential of a medieval monastic barn, a
Palladian stable block or towering hopkiln. As
well as being significant landmarks, the simple
architecture of traditional farm buildings gives a
picture of local history and agriculture that
distinguishes one region from the next - from
humble Scottish cowbyres to noble barns of
Cotswold stone or cladded Essex elm.
The growth in the scale of modern farming
has left a legacy of redundant barns and this
book shows that domestic conversion, if
sensitively done, is a way to preserve their
future. All the buildings featured in this book
were once empty, threatened or derelict. Each
one has been salvaged by an imaginative
conversion that respects its agricultural past and
dominant architectural features - the character-
istic barn or stable doors, the unbroken sweep of
a tiled roof or striking network of beams.
The owners have created a variety of
comfortable, surprisingly practical homes; some
eccentric, some romantic, some conventional,
some simply voluminous. Yet each one is
contained in an unusual framework ranging
from a castellated stone barn in Wales, a
Northumbrian country house transformed from
an eighteenth-century granary, a Gothick
brewhouse in Somerset to a contemporary green
oak barn that blends unobtrusively into the
Devon landscape. Vissza