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Fred Lonsdale, generally known as ‘Old Fred’, was a very nice man. He had lived for a long time, with his wife, Elizabeth, in a big house on the outskirts of a seaside town. Fred and Elizabeth’s three children had all grown up and moved to houses of their own and, now that there was just the two of them, the family home was far too big; it was time to move.
Fred and Elizabeth searched for a suitable house to move to for a long time and found nothing that they liked. On one house hunting expedition, however, they found a group of dilapidated, derelict and, in parts, decidedly dangerous old farm buildings. They both realised immediately that these buildings could be made into the sort of place they were looking for; the main building, two old barns joined together, would make a perfect house, and the other buildings could be converted into Fred’s workshop and garage. One or two of the other buildings were so dilapidated that they would have to be demolished.
Fred said, “There’s one good thing about that, love, the timber, the stone, the bricks and tiles will come in handy when we are rebuilding the main parts.”
“Don’t you start planning yet, Fred;” she cautioned, “we haven’t bought the place, we don’t even know if it’s for sale; we might not be able to afford it if it is, and we do buy it, the rebuilding will cost a fortune; but you’re right, it would be just perfect.”
To cut a long story short, they were able to buy, what was quite simply, the farm yard and a decent size piece of land that would allow them to have a big garden and a paddock.
Getting planning permission was another matter. Fred spent a lot of time with the Chief Planning Officer at the Town Hall and did a lot of research. He was very surprised and delighted to discover that the smaller part of the double barn was, originally, a medieval Hall House, built in the early years of the fifteenth century and, although it had been covered in weatherboarding, the main structure was very much as it had been nearly six hundred years ago. Fred found out that this had been the original farm house until, sometime in the seventeenth century, when a new one had been built a short distance away.
This discovery was very exciting; it posed several problems about the rebuilding but it also allowed the planning department to give Fred permission to convert it back into a house, they also agreed that the adjoining, other half of the barn could be converted as well. The town museum and the people interested in local history were all very excited and found old maps and references to this Hall House, going back over the centuries.
The renovation work was going to be an enormous task and would certainly be expensive and take a long time. Fred and Liz talked about it for a long time, “Are you sure you are up to it, Fred, you must remember that you aren’t as young as you used to be, I don’t want you taking on more than you can handle.”
“Don’t worry about that, Old Thing,” he reassured her. “It’s just the sort of challenge I need; I think we should start off by tidying the place up, knock down the bits we don’t want and then concentrate on the Hall House, we’ll rebuild that, do some repairs on the building that is going to be the workshop, and them move in. We can then do the rest at our leisure.”
“Leisure,” Liz replied, “in these past forty years, Fred, the only leisure you have been interested in is work.”
Fred and Liz decided to invest their saving in the conversion and not sell their house before buying the farmyard, they were sure that the house would sell quite easily and it would be more sensible to keep it until they were ready to move. “I reckon that we can get the new place ready in six months, and now’s not the best time to sell, we’ll wait until the spring, and, as things are going at the moment, the house will be worth quite a bit more in a few months time.”
“Sounds good to me,” Liz replied, “I don’t fancy living on a building site with no proper kitchen and things; do you think that six months is enough?”
“Yep, we’ll get the outside work done before Christmas, providing the weather is okay; we should be able to move in by March.”
Fred designed the conversion to suit their plans, the Hall House was just over nine metres long, and about six metres wide and, originally, had been a single open space, open to the roof, with a small intermediate floor at one end. Fred planned to return the building to its original form. The downstairs would be a hall, straight up to the rafters, about six metres square. The remaining three and a half metres would be a kitchen with room for a table. Above this part, on the first floor, would be a bedroom and an ‘en suite’ bathroom.
Fred explained, “That will do us for a year, Old Thing; when we have the second part finished, we will be in the lap of luxury, our bedroom and en suite will become a guest room, we will have three or four bedrooms in the new part, and a bigger kitchen, a breakfast room, a dining room, downstairs loo and shower room, two bathrooms upstairs.”
“What about the first kitchen, Fred?”
Fred continued, “We’ll get rid of that, it will become a study, library or an office, call it what you will, it will be my office, for the computer and things, my books, you know.”
“It all sounds very good to me Fred, are you sure you will be able to do it?” Liz asked.
“Yes love,” he replied, “I’m looking forward to it, can’t wait to get started.”
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