Restore and relax

Andy and Sue Perrin have carefully converted a tumbledown stone barn in Devon, reinstating character through careful design

- Amy Reeves

Looking for a new adventure after a holiday on the south coast, Andy and Sue Perrin upped sticks and took on an incredible conversion of a stone barn in Devon. The resulting home is full to the brim with character and unique features that are true to the site as well as their ambitions to create modern, but not sterile, living spaces.

Andy, how did you find the project?

I’d been in the travel industry all my life and on leaving it, we started looking at a project for us to take on that we could get our teeth into and enjoy together. We lived near Guildford and visited Cornwall one Easter and thought, “This is it, this is the life”. So we began looking down in the South West for a cottage or a barn.

Our estate agent called to say there was a fabulous barn in Devon that was ripe for converting, but that the owner wouldn’t sell it without also including the house. We weren’t planning to relocate full time but once we saw both properties, we instantly fell in love with them. We also live with Sue’s dad so we had a conversation with him and he was up for the adventure, too.

What was the barn like when you first visited?

It is rare for a Devon stone barn to have windows anything like the size of this. There are five large apertures along the bottom and nine more on the upper floor so we did some digging in the local archives and we think the barn wasn’t built for livestock, but for making wool cloth, so natural light played a big part in the design. This meant we didn’t need permission for any new openings.