Missing Link

- Rachel Leedham

Alison Nicholls is the first to admit that she and her husband, James, made some mistakes when they embarked on building a new home in the Suffolk countryside 15 years ago. ‘There was originally a Sixties bungalow on the four-acre plot, which we decided to demolish, but we were faced with tight planning rules,’ Alison explains. ‘The design was a compromise as it needed to look like a farmhouse attached to barn-type dwellings. We also had to excavate at the back of the house to gain a full second storey while keeping the roof height the same.’

What the couple and their architect devised was a large, horseshoe-shaped layout that wrapped around a courtyard. ‘When we finally moved in, in 2006, we quickly realised that we were only really using one wing of the house, where the kitchen was situated,’ recalls Alison, who has three grown-up daughters from a former marriage, as well as a 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte, with James. ‘We had a large playroom and study but because it was at the opposite end of the house to the kitchen, the girls never went there,’ she adds.