RUSTIC REWORK

Caroline Hardy and Russell McCleave took this barn from abandoned farm building to cosy, country home

Although this building has been well used by several generations of Suffolk farmers, Caroline Hardy and Russell McCleave are the first people actually to live in it. ‘It’s odd to think that before us, the most recent inhabitants were cattle and tractors,’ says Russell. When the couple bought the property near Bury St Edmunds, it was in a raw, unmodernised state. ‘It was a shell of a building really, with soil on the ground and hessian sackcloth tacked over the doorways,’ says Caroline. But this was exactly what they wanted: ‘It was our opportunity to create a home from scratch,’ says Russell.

The structure is full of beautiful fragments of the barn’s working past. ‘The brick and flint walls are typical of the Suffolk vernacular and we love the character of the beams and posts,’ says Caroline. A series of old farm hooks that are designed to hang off a beam have also been cleaned up and put back in place.