During the middle of the 1900’s The Cotswold Park Estate became a working dairy and all of the farm buildings were used for this purpose.
In the late 70’s the last cow was milked and the dairy stopped. The barns were then not used as the main house was rented out to non-farming tenants and the land became just sheep grazing.
The barns are listed buildings and at the turn of the century there were murmurs that the barns needed work done to them and fairly soon.
Our plan was hatched, planning achieved on our first attempt and in 2012 the diggers moved in.
The first job was to reinstate the original farm track that wound its way across the beautiful parkland to the lane just above the main drive.
This took 4 long months through a terrible winter of heavy snow and rain.
Once we had reached the Barns the renovation could start to take place.
The obligatory hideous portacabins and portaloos arrived and our amazing team of builders got underway.
The spring and summer of 2013 were not kind to us. It seemed to rain everyday, but everyone persevered through it all.
The Hay Barn was first to be worked on - We found old photos of the building with its original roof (one end of it had no roof when we started) and brick by brick and stone by stone the stonemasons got to work.
From 2 old sheds we have created 4 beautiful bedrooms.
The focus was the moved to the Diary - A long building with a concrete trough down one side, and a hideous asbestos corrugated roof to add to our problems.
The roof came off, the floor was dug out and over the next few months a building containing 6 ensuite bedrooms and a large sitting room was formed.
Whilst this was going on the very pretty old byre was gently restored to being the stunning building that is our conference room now. This building has been restored to it former glory and beyond. Every stone and shape bought back to how it should be.
