When people say they live in a barn conversion they usually mean one that is 200 years old, with oak beams, stone fireplaces and rustic charm, often in the Cotswolds. Luke and Klara Hawes are pioneering a new kind of barn conversion: a 1990s industrial farm shed, made from corrugated steel, near the Bernard Matthews turkey farms in Norfolk. This does not sound very glamorous, yet it could be the future — converting an industrial shed is the easiest way to gain permission to build a big new house in the countryside. You get enormous living space: the Hawes had 450 sq metres (4,850 sq ft) to play with, enough room that they were able to build a 15m x 3m indoor pool. And without the restrictions of a listed barn, you can really push the design envelope: the Hawes have built a house within a house, so the master suite has internal windows looking on to the pool and living room (“very Big Brother”, says Luke) and is reached via a glass bridge; the open-plan living area is three storeys high, with all glass walls, taking in farm fields and big Norfolk skies — hence the house’s name, Blue Sky Barn.
Their design could not be too experimental, however. It seems planners have now deemed 1990s farm sheds an important vernacular, and insisted the Hawes keep the steel beams and preserve the aesthetic. “Planners resist visual changes, they wanted us to keep it industrial and agricultural,” says Will Burges, the director of 31/44, the project architects (3144architects.com). “It wears its residential quality quite lightly. We like the level of disguise.”
The result is a façade that does not look particularly domestic. The front door is very discreet. There is a silo-type structure that houses a circular staircase. And there is barely any glass: the upstairs bedroom windows are hidden by a veil of vertical wood slats (louvres) that allow light in but retain privacy, and echo the stripes of the original shed’s corrugated steel. “The delivery drivers get confused — they are not sure if it’s a house and think they have the wrong place,” says Klara, 41.
If the drivers looked around, they might think they have stumbled across a holiday resort. In addition to the pool, the Hawes have built a golf green, a football pitch for their two sons, aged 8 and 11, and a Mediterranean garden filled with olive trees, palm trees, lavender and rosemary, which remarkably survive the Norfolk winters. They originally conceived of Blue Sky Barn as a holiday home when they bought the shed in 2016 for £290,000, along with 2.5 acres. Luke, 47, had grown up near by — the house is next to a listed church where his father was the priest, and when he heard the local farmer was selling the shed with permission for change of use he jumped at the chance.
When the project was finished in March 2020, they decided to swap their townhouse in Hammersmith, west London, for Blue Sky Barn and live there full-time, just in time for lockdown. “We wanted to feel like we are on holiday every day,” Luke says.
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After a year of living there, the holiday romance has not worn off. “During the half-term holidays in February, there was 2.5ft of snow outside and it was 30C in the pool,” Luke says. “It was lovely. We have been told by our sustainability consultants to keep the air in the pool area at the same temperature as the water. So it feels quite tropical. As soon as you walk into the space you start taking your clothes off.”
In many homes, indoor pools reek of chlorine — but not here, as the water is cleaned mainly with UV. Neither has the pool become a white elephant, as they often do. “The kids use it every day, as do we,” Luke says. “Whenever I get an hour in the day I do some lengths. It helps me relax. And in the Easter holidays, things were slightly chaotic with the kids off school, so we just chuck them in the pool, and that helps.”
“In the evening, we all end up in the pool,” Klara adds. “It is just something to do that is not watching telly.”
The pool dictated the design of the house, which is split down the middle: the living side on the left, the swimming side on the right. There is a front lobby area, with a glass window offering a tantalising glimpse of the pool. Once you pass into the enormous open-plan living area, the whole internal wall is glass, so the parents can keep an eye on the kids in the pool while they are in the kitchen or eating in the diner-style booth, tucked into a nook.
Nooks come in handy when you are trying to WFH in an open-plan layout during lockdown. Luckily the Hawes created a separate cinema room at the front of the house: one of their sons has used it for home schooling during the pandemic; the other son sits in the dining nook. “And I have reverted to receptionist-slash-security guard and put a table for me in the lobby,” says Luke, director at PriestmanGoode, a design company.
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Klara has been able to go into the Norwich office of her interior design firm (klarahawes.com) a few days a week but they also have a summer house, which they hope to make a home office once the broadband improves. “We are told full fibre is not far off,” Luke says.
Klara designed the interiors of Blue Sky Barn, keeping an industrial feel, with concrete-style floors made from porcelain tiles, plywood walls, a matt black fridge-freezer and dishwasher from Fisher and Paykel, and exposed glulam beams and concrete pillars. “Cotswolds-style cottages are lovely, but they are not us,” Klara says.
It does not feel too cold, in aesthetics or temperature. Wood wool ceiling panels, the texture of Weetabix, soften the acoustics. They don’t really have ceiling lights, instead relying on floor lamps and table lamps. “And when the pool lights come on at night it is really ambient and cosy,” Luke says.
A ground-source heat pump keeps things warm and the bills down — they now give energy back to the grid. A Stovax wood-burner tops up the heat as necessary. “It is awesome. In half an hour the whole triple-height space is warm,” Luke says. “If it gets stuffy, we have a 3 sq metre roof light that opens up.”
It doesn’t get too hot in the summer either, even with all that glass: there is a roof overhang on three sides that also gives them covered patios. The overhang was a happy accident. The original industrial barn had a 450 sq metre footprint. The planners said the Hawes could not exceed this amount of floor space, even if they built on two storeys. So, in order to create their four bedrooms upstairs, they subtracted 120 sq metres from the ground-level floorplan. This left the footprint with an indent, which became sheltered alfresco terraces. “You can stay dry sitting outside all year, except when you get horizontal rain,” Burges says.
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When they are not in the pool, Klara and Luke harvest abundant fruit and vegetables from the rich Norfolk farm soil: beetroot, leeks, garlic, onions, strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. “It’s the modern good life,” Klara says. “Both Luke and I grew up in villages. We had that outdoor lifestyle, the freedom that the boys did not have in London. We wanted them to have the same thing.”
So will many other families. “Industrial farm shed conversions are a small but growing niche market,” Burges says. “The irony is it is quite hard to get consent for a pretty little house, but people are suddenly realising you can get consent for a big house in a village this way. If a shed exists, planners can’t deny it exists. And there are lots of big sheds lying empty. These things offer enormous footprints for houses. They look familiar. They are on the edge of listed villages but you don’t really see them. They have a sort of stealthy quality. We quite like that. They are remarkably good to convert.”
So how do you get your hands on one? “Get to know the local farmers,” Luke advises. “Otherwise they will be snapped up.”
Get the look
• Pool and spa by Pool Design Ltd (pooldesignltd.com). Lined with pearlescent white mosaic tiles to create a pale-blue water colour. Water sanitised on a minimal-chlorine basis using UV light technology. EOS sun lounger by Matthew Hilton, £665, casefurniture.com
• Living room Larsen L-shaped sofa and Larsen day bed sofa, from £4,816, livingspaceuk.com
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• Kitchen Carl Hansen CH58 stools in black leather with soap-treated oak legs, £722, skandium.com. GANTlights concrete and oak feature pendant, £639, bombinate.com
