Tucked into the Welsh countryside, a Victorian farmhouse has been brought back to life with bold patterns and vibrant colours, art from near and far – and some surprisingly modern additions…
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WHO LIVES HERE Anthony Rees and David Thomas, gin distillers, with Llwyd their Cocker Spaniel
THE PROPERTY An early-Victorian farmhouse with contemporary additions, near the village of Talog in Carmarthenshire
if it hadn’t been for a chance visit to an antiques shop in Carmarthenshire, Anthony Rees and David Thomas might never have moved back to Wales. They’d both grown up there, but had been living in London for 30 years when, on a return visit to west Wales in 2011, they happened to visit Tim Bowen Antiques in Ferryside. The owner told them about a property he was selling – an 1850s picture-perfect coastal cottage. ‘It took us ten minutes to decide we should snap it up,’ Anthony says, ‘and within a month we were in.’
Four years later, by then retired from the corporate world, they craved a bigger house in a more remote location. Again they struck lucky: the first property on the first website they looked at was the house they ended up buying – an early-Victorian farmhouse outside the village of Talog, with eight acres of land. ‘I am from a farming background and I just knew this was “it”,’ Anthony remembers. ‘When I saw the coach house, the old Dutch barn and the two cowsheds, I didn’t even need to go inside.’
There was major work ahead as the property needed updating, but on the plus side nothing had been demolished or modernised. Today, one cowshed has been converted into a distillery where Anthony and David produce organic, handcrafted gin, a new business (Jin Talog) they launched in 2018. ‘It certainly helped us integrate into the community.’ The coach house stores tractors and trailers for their farm work – they have some rare-breed Balwen sheep as well as geese and ducks –
