Barnstorming businesses

The cows and threshing machines have gone but a diverse range of businesses is breathing new life into our derelict farm buildings

- ROSIE NICKERSON

With so many small farms struggling to survive, their outmoded barns and farm buildings often end up derelict and abandoned. I find it uplifting to come across any that have been repurposed as thriving barnyard businesses. In just one week, I visited a famous contemporary art gallery in an 18th-century tithe barn in Somerset and had lunch in its former cowsheds, now a trendy restaurant. Later that week, I dropped off my daughter at her drama school in a tiny Oxfordshire hamlet, its former barns and workshops no longer housing sheep and cattle but full of budding actors.

Then I popped up to Leicestershire to see the new retail park at Belvoir Castle in the former Engine Yard. Nearer to home, I collected some personalised pottery from an isolated converted milking parlor and its former cowsheds, where a kiln now operates seven days a week. I reflected on how popular and successful these barnyard businesses appear to be and how the buildings have been renovated in appealing and innovative ways.

The largest barnyard business to open in the past few years is the Engine Yard at Belvoir Castle, launched in September 2018. This is a stunning redevelopment of a derelict Victorian yard and its original workshop buildings, on a massive scale. The three-acre site comprises 12,000 square feet of retail space, with parking for 700 cars. It is the first retail village of its kind in the area and is the culmination of a vision the Duchess of Rutland had 18 years ago, when the buildings just below the castle first became vacant.