peaceful meets playful

Surprising contrasts and the connection between inside and out are key in this cleverly reimagined family abode

- Claudia Baillie

Even before we started work, this house was totally spellbinding,’ says interior designer Roisin Lafferty. ‘You don’t normally find vaulted spaces in residential buildings and this had so much character. The owners Eric and Niamh knew straight away that they wanted to live here.’

Four years ago, when the couple bought it as part of a larger estate, the 18th-century coach house/paper mill was derelict. That’s when Roisin and the Kingston Lafferty team were brought on board to reimagine the property’s historic structure and transform it into a contemporary home.

Dilapidated archways were all that was left of the original building. The mismatch of granite and yellow brick was stripped of flaking render, restored and sealed, while architects were enlisted to create a new footprint, extending the property and adding much of the current first floor. ‘The extension is a modern design,’ says Roisin. ‘We could easily have made the interior industrial, but what we wanted was yin and yang, masculine and feminine, so it’s very much old meets new.’