To swap city life for country living, one family took on the reorganisation of a partially converted barn
WORDS JESSICA MAIRS PHOTOGRAPHY TOM FALLON
After living in London for 20 years, Katherine Clark and her partner Dan Bernstein, who have an eight-year-old son, and a daughter aged six, began to want a change of scenery. ‘I had an inkling that I’d like eventually to leave London to give our children a bit more space and freedom,’ says Katherine. ‘I grew up in rural Guernsey, so I want to give them a similar kind of childhood to mine in the countryside. Dan took some convincing because he was born and raised in Manchester and is more of a city boy.’
Designer and illustrator Katherine, 40, and Dan, 42, who is a creative director, concentrated their search on Suffolk, a county that Katherine’s parents moved to 15 years ago. Her father spotted a listing for a partially converted barn in a local newspaper, which the couple gave serious consideration to for six months before finally committing to the project.
‘It’s rare to find a project part-done, and it seemed a bit too good to be true,’ explains Katherine. A property developer ran out of money halfway through converting the steel-frame, curving-roof Dutch barn from a grain store into a trio of homes.
At 600sqm, the floorplan posed a conundrum about what to do with so much space, so the couple asked architects Simon Graham and Jonathan Duffett to come up with a scheme. ‘The scale of the building was too big for Dan and I to fathom how to divide it into rooms,’ says Katherine. Nevertheless, they came up with ideas for many aspects of the fitout. ‘I had quite strong opinions on what should go where, a colour palette in mind, and a set of materials I wanted to use,’ Katherine explains. ‘Dan then put together a briefing document outlining our need for a family-friendly home with an element of fun.’
The scope of the project saw their budget stretched to its limit. ‘We spread our money quite thinly to complete all the areas,’ Katherine adds. ‘Simon and Jonathan have a really nice way about them and were up for the challenge, even with the tight budget.’
The resulting layout includes a two-bedroom, self-contained area for guests on the ground floor. Completing this section first enabled the family to move on site in December 2020 to oversee the rest of the build.
