Best of all worlds?
Ready to convert, newly-converted or newly-built: there is a barn you'd love to call home.
In many parts of the country, old agricultural barns are found not in isolated fields, but right in the centre of small rural villages. Consequently, those who buy former barns to convert and live in, often weren’t looking for either a self-build project or a new property: they just wanted a big, characterful house with plenty of neighbours.
Doesn’t the prospect of the conversion process deter all but the bravest buyers? Not if certain guardrails are in place, as Annabel Wakley, director at Chipping Campden, explains: “The trick is to take out the bulk of the uncertainty, in advance.”
Together, Annabel says, planning permission (where needed), a thorough survey, a credible quote from an experienced building company and a dash of local gossip, eliminate the bulk of the “known unknowns”, broadening the appeal of an unconverted barn to a far wider market. Reductions in running costs of big barn spaces, thanks to innovations such as ultra-efficient renewable energy systems and insulating glass, have widened the appeal still further, as has the more enlightened attitude of many planning departments towards enclosing connecting spaces between the main building and former outhouses. These have helped to address occasional compromises which arise in relation to adapting spaces to different uses.
Newly-converted barns
Brand new, completed conversions can’t have the bespoke touches that become possible when you, the buyer, are the developer, but they do have all of the other advantages – and you can have them, now. A good new barn conversion thus holds enormous appeal, having ‘all mod cons’ and bags of character.
Replacement barns
More often outside centres of population, we are seeing an increasing number of brand new houses which look remarkably like barn conversions, but which in fact have replaced a more recently built (usually 20th century) barn. Spectacularly spacious, these impressive houses might lack some of the gentle charm of converted traditional buildings, but there isn’t a compromise in sight.
