So when the sad, uncared-for hulk of what had once been Pampisford’s village school came on the market in 2001, Brown, 57, bought it for £450,000 as a kind of history project.
“I remember the day before the sale, planning what I’d do to it,” he laughs. “I reckoned I’d bring it back to its former glory by putting in a few hours in the evenings and at weekends.” Those “few hours” became a three- year project for a team of 10 builders, costing Brown more than £350,000.
The Old School, dating from 1847, had been horribly defiled by its previous owners. Brown describes it as “a homage to Barry Bucknell”, television’s first DIY expert, who in the 1950s and 1960s implored viewers to cover up period features with Formica.
The building’s original symmetry had been ruined. Hardboard partitions had created poky new rooms, polystyrene tiles covered the walls and two-bar electric fires hummed from blocked fireplaces. Adjoining the main building was the old headmaster’s house, then a single, barn-like room.
Brown’s aim at the start of the project was ambitious. “I wanted to recapture the spirit of the school so that I’d be able to close my eyes and imagine all those little boys and girls being taught 150 years ago,” he says. “Yet I also wanted a comfortable home, not a museum.”
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It was a tough proposition, but Brown had an important ally: his son, Oliver Page, an architect based in Paris. “The 19th-century school’s front doors had been blocked up, and our key decision was to open them again,” Brown says. “By doing so, we created lots of different routes around the house. We also built a garden room near the kitchen at the back, which became the hub of the house, stimulating ground-floor circulation.”
Once work had commenced, Brown began his historical research. He found some gems of information about the school, including the comments of one Reverend Prior, who opined that education did “more harm than good”. The building work, too, yielded some choice finds: gymnastic equipment from the 1850s, found buried in the yard, and bottles of beer, doubtless left by a tippler of a caretaker, in the boiler room.
Today, the property is impressive. In the original school room, a 1960s false ceiling has been torn down to reveal the full, vaulted height of the room. There are lovely oak floorboards, with marks where desks were once fixed, walls of exposed brickwork, Victorian fireplaces and tall windows. All that’s missing is the smell of chalk dust.
Next door, the cloakroom is now a snug television room. At the back, there’s a kitchen/garden room, leading to the dining room. The headmaster’s house is now used by Brown’s wife, Caroline, 56, a textile designer, as her studio. Upstairs, there are four bedrooms, three with en-suite showers, and a bathroom.
Every piece of stone and flint has been treated and every floorboard has been polished to a shine. Brown has put reclaimed Georgian glass in the two front doors at a cost of £6,000. Outside, a conservation lamppost cost £1,200. He has even planted laurels in the garden because they were popular in the school’s glory days. Now he’s downsizing — passing on to someone else a genuine lesson in local history.
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The Old School at Pampisford in Cambridgeshire is for sale at £995,000 with Savills, 01223 347 147, www.savills.co.uk, and Redmayne, Arnold & Harris, 01223 323 130, www.rah.co.uk