Richard Ball has converted a Victorian farm workshop, adding a single-storey extension that provides a light-filled contrast to the characterful original building

WORDS VICTORIA JENKINS PHOTOS LISA LODWIG

The new extension is clad in reclaimed red brick from an old pub

Richard Ball spotted an old farm workshop in Warwickshire when he was idly browsing the internet one evening. It was a single-skin red brick building dating from the 1890s, and when he came to view it, he saw the concrete floor and wooden mezzanine that was still storing long-abandoned old tools.

The big lure was that it came with planning permission for a conversion and extension to create a three-bedroom dwelling. As he had always wanted to undertake a major project, he bought it, financing the move using a self build mortgage from the Hanley Building Society. “It had attracted a lot of interest but it was too small to make a family home”, he says. “It had a roof, there was water and an electricity supply – but nothing else. It wasn’t at all habitable.”

At some point, the workshop had acquired two names: one was the Old Dairy and the other the Old Schoolhouse. There was even an old-fashioned metal ‘children playing’ sign on one of the external walls. “My neighbour, who is now in his eighties, grew up in the farmhouse next to the workshop and he remembers that sign there even when he was boy”, says Richard. “But as far as I know it’s only ever been a workshop.” Both buildings were part of a wider historic estate, of which the main house (a stately home) had been converted into 11 apartments in 2000.