'Catherine and Richard Samy's conversion of
an arresting, triple-height sixteenth-century framed barn was a game
of two halves. With a small but convenient flat in central London,
where they work and where their two daughters go to school, the Samys
had long been renting a house in Suffolk, by the coast, where they
like to spend the rest of their time. They finally decided they wanted
a place of their own and - having realized that getting permission
for a rural new-build by the coast was near-impossible - started
looking for a barn to convert.
'"We used to drive along a nearby road and see this huge tinny-topped
barn in the distance, across the fields," says Catherine Samy. "I
used to say to Richard that it looked like such a nice barn, but
we assumed it belonged to the house next door. Then we were in the
local town one day and Richard went into the estate agent and asked
if they had any agricultural buildings. He came running out and down
the street waving his this piece of paper and saying 'You won't believe
it!'".
'"We'd driven along this road so many times, noticing this huge barn
in the distance across the fields," Catherine explains. "It was
perfect but we assumed it belonged to the house next door to it.
One day Richard went into an estate agents and asked if they had
any agricultural buildings. Two minutes later he ran out waving this
piece of paper
and saying, 'You won't believe it!'"
'They went to take a look at the barn, which belonged to the local estate
and had most recently seen use as a base for a pony club, and found
a very bedraggled-looking building with a rusting corrugated-iron
roof, timbers hanging off and trees growing out of it. "I imagine
people took one look and said they wouldn't touch it with a bargepole,"
says Samy. "But when you went in through the old cart doors and looked
up it was like this huge upturned ship. It was just beautiful."
'Structurally the extraordinary listed frame was in good condition and
the Samy's surveyors also found that the barn was sitting on solid,
tudor brick footings, which suggested that a manor house might once
have stood on this site but when it was rebuilt near by the brick
pad was used to support the barn. The building itself has mostly
been used for storing crops, with two giant sets of doors to either
side of the barn to allow carts to pass right through as they dropped
off their loads. In Victorian times, one end of the barn had been
sectioned off with a timber partition wall and divided into two levels,
with animals below and a hay loft above.
'The building came with outline planning permission for not one, but two
homes - a division that could have wrecked the character of the building.
Having bought the barn, the Samys began working with the architect
Geoff Pyle of Pyle Boyd Architects and his associate Ben Kilburn
on a new scheme that would better preserve the unity and character
of the barn as one large, light, spacious and truly bespoke family
home.
'"The main thing we talked about was the way we wanted to live," says
Samy, "Geoff
was a good listener and every meeting was an inspiration because
he would give our thoughts
a twist and some stardust. We
went through how we envisaged using the space in terms of if being
somewhere that could be full of people but where you
could still find a space
to be on your own. The London flat is too small to entertain in so
we ask people to come up here for the weekend and it was important
that people could disappear, read their books and not worry about
anyone, or that they can be very much part of things if there's cooking
going on or whatever. It's that combination of sociable spaces
and being able to go off and be quiet somewhere."
'An overall plan for the conversion was conceived, but given their big
financial commitment the Samys decided to do the work in two phases.
Having restored the frame, recladded the barn and thatched the roof,
as it would once have been, they respected the Victorian
division and created a spacious kitchen/dining room downstairs. Upstairs
a master bedroom was added with its own mezzanine dressing room
making use of the high ceilings, with a semi-open bathroom
tucked below.
Beyond the partition they also created a guest bedroom on the ground
floor and a family sitting room above, which took them to the central
cart doors that were glazed from floor to eaves on either side. The
other half of the barn was completed six years later, by which time
Geoff Pyle was working on temporary secondment abroad and the baton
was passed to Ben Kilburn, now with Cullum and Nightingale, who project-managed
the completion. This time they added another guest room and children's
bedroom on the ground floor and a large dramatic main sitting room
above that, partially open ended to the central hallway/reception
area/lightwell in order to maximize the flow of light.
'"One of my main concerns in ending up with a barn was whether we
could get enough light through the space - because light is incredibly
important to us - without making the windows so obvious that it end
up making the barn look like a normal house," says Samy.
"But it has ended up as a space that is absolutely drenched with light,
even on quite dull days."
'Every possible solution has been used to create such an impressive level
of natural light. Two large and long rectangular skylights have
been sensitively incorporated in the roof at the rear of the house,
leaving the front of the steeply pitched thatched crown untouched.
The glazed lightwell formed within the cart doorways has been effectively
used to push light into surrounding parts of the house, feeding
the ground-floor guest rooms to either side through large internal
windows as well as the main, semi open-ended sitting room upstairs
and the family room opposite, which also has an internal window
and a glass door. The stairway and landing within the lightwell
hallway feature a glass balcony and balustrade to avoid breaking
up the light.
'In addition, there are a number of other windows throughout the building
that avoid typically domestic window patterns. Most beautiful
of all are the corner windows to the front of the barn, where
the transparency reveals some of the timber frame. Other small
arrow-slit windows are dotted through on different levels, while
there are also a number of hatches flush within the cedar timber
cladding that can be opened up to increase the flow of light
and air in summer.
'"The point of the corner windows was celebrating the frame so you get
a glimpse of the inner workings of how this thing stands up,"
says Samy. "And I love the way the arrow-slit windows - which
you don't really notice from outside - cut through the different
levels and give you these lovely slants of light and glimpsed
views."
'Light and layout alike have proved very successful. A good balance
between private and public space, openness and intimacy,
has been achieved by adopting an unconventional but commonsense
floor plan. With a triple-height space to play with in much
of the barn, placing most of the bedrooms and bathrooms on
the ground floor with the main living spaces above, taking
advantage of the high ceilings and the elevated views of
the surrounding countryside, was an inspired step.
'"We really are too conventional generally when it comes to
living space," says Samy. "We realized that if we were
going to use the rooms to their full drama and enjoy the
benefit of looking out across the fields then the automatic
place for the living room was upstairs. People came into
the empty half of the barn before it was done and said, 'You are going
to leave this open, aren't you?' But actually the roof was
so high up above that the proportions were wrong.
But we knew from being in our bedroom at the other end of the barn
that once you got to first-floor height the space was very
pleasing and you could use the ceiling height without it
being too daunting. And to have lost out on any of that would
have been too shameful."'
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