No one aware of trends in the countryside can have failed to notice the very high prices which are being asked — and paid — for barns for conversion. Most people will also probably have seen some of the results as tumble-down ruins are restored, sometimes sympathetically, sometimes horrendously.
An in-depth study of the whole subject, from planning polices to design opportunites, has now been published by SAVE — A Future for Farm Buildings(*) by Gillian Darley. This comprehensive work illustrates the many different types of agricultural building to be found in Britain with a special section on tithe barns, “the cathedrals of agriculture”. It includes a survey of the many sympathetic uses to which barns have been successfully adapted — a cowshed in Dyfed which has become a traditional cheese factory, stock sheds in Clackmannanshire which now house a brewery, and a model farm on the Escot Estate in Devon that is now used for breeding ornamental fish. Some of the more successful schemes of re-use requiring minimal alteration have been bunkhouse barns and camphouse barns established with the help of the Countryside Commission in the Peak District and Yorkshire Dales.
The report calls for a coherent policy at both national and local level, and warns planning authorities of the dangers of providing “design guides” for residential conversion which tend to become blueprints for applications that it may be difficult subsequently to refuse.
Landowners and their agents are advised to:
- consider traditional farm buildings first and foremost as a potential resource within agriculture;
- think long-term: a quick capital return on a residential conversion may be less attractive than investment in conversion to light industrial or workshop space, paying dividends over an indefinite period;
- be wary of the developer who offers a sum for a redundant farm building, which then appears for sale with outline planning permission at a greatly increased price;
- remember the intangible benefits of a built landscape in good order if they hope to attract visitors to their farm or area;
- remember the importance of image in farm-based enterprise: cheese-making or a farm shop in traditional premises are far more appealing to tourists in such a setting than in the equivalent of a factory on a new industrial estate.
The report also illustrates good and bad examples of conversion to residential use and highlights the growing trade in dismantling barns for their building materials. It calls for the introduction of rural conversion areas and the means of giving greater protection to unlisted buildings and providing assistance for repairs and re-use along the lines of the successful townscheme urban conservation area grants operated by English Heritage.
(*) A Future for Farm Buildings is available from SAVE, 68 Battersea High Street, SW1. £8 inc p&p.
