The Minister's Tudor-style barn

I love old barns turned into homes. We have already told about thembut I am always finding new and new examples of almost unbelievable transformations of old grain and animal shelters into vacation homes or dwellings. I think I have already told you about the nearly 300-year-old barn that I lived in for a week years ago in Germany, converted into a beautiful holiday home. And in France I lived at one time in an old converted barn, furnished and decorated with flea-market finds. It looked like a little medieval castle. But back to today's barn. It's a complex of Tudor-style buildings in Hampshire, England, which was at one time at the center of a scandal.

The house I want to present belongs to a lady politician, a former Secretary of State in the Department of Culture during the Cameron government. The lady was at one point in the middle of a scandal about buildings and overspending and had to resign. Beyond the scandal, however, remains this beautiful house, which cost £1.2m to transform.

In fact it is a complex of 3 buildings, all built of oak, in the Tudor style, on a property of almost half an acre. The main building has been converted into a beautiful family home with living room, dining room, 5 bedrooms and library.

Access to the first floor is via a wooden staircase and an impressive walkway made of old beams. As this is England, the fireplace has not been forgotten.

The adjacent building was converted into a guest house with a living room and bedroom.

The third building is basically a shed. Despite its simplicity, it was part of the cultural heritage and could be demolished. It has been converted into a kind of open garage that can accommodate a maximum of 3 cars.

The transformation of the old buildings was done trying to preserve as much as possible of the specific traditional elements. The exposed wooden beams, both horizontal and vertical, the brick fireplace area and the inevitable thick wooden beam above, have been combined with new elements in keeping with the style of the building. Where possible other elements of the barn have been saved. The wooden door in one of the bedrooms bears witness to this.

Old houses, barns and sheds have an authentic and natural charm. It's a shame to give them up easily. Moreover, dwellings made in such barns are often preferred to impersonal ones made of concrete slabs and glass.

(source: dailymail.co.uk)