BEST IN SHOW

A historic barn, previously home to prize-winning cattle, has been transformed for 21st-century living

- AMELIA THORPE

There’s a romance to returning to your roots, but real life can make it tricky to find that happy ending, as Polly and George Phillips know. They grew up in the Cotswolds and were itching to find a way back. ‘We met there, we love the area and consider it home,’ says Polly. But they were both working in Bath and finding time to property-hunt was tricky.

Then one afternoon, as they strolled through the farm owned by George’s family near Bibury, Gloucestershire, the solution – in all its mud-spattered glory – appeared. ‘We were mulling over the future of a ramshackle old grain store at the edge of the farmstead. It was built of Cotswold stone, set high above the village, with amazing views over the Coln Valley,’ explains Polly. ‘It had great potential.’