Conservatory

When we bought the farm nearly 20 years ago, the house was almost derelict. We reroofed, replastered, rewired, replumbed, put in new windows, etc. etc. But the only real change we made was to add a conservatory.

This area was the working end of the farmhouse. It was where the milk was brought into the boiler room (the room that is now our "snug" with the big chimney behind the conservatory) where the milk was scalded, and then taken into the dairy (now our kitchen, still with Victorian chequerboard red and black tiles, to the left). There were lean-to buildings for coal, wood and tools, and a well in the centre. It was a dark and dank space, completely transformed by having a glass structure built around it.

I sometimes wonder why we bothered to do up the farmhouse as we live in the conservatory. In the winter we bring in the various citrus plants that we have grown from pips of fruit eaten on trips around the world. You can just see a couple of oranges on the small tree on the left, which weren't ripe enough when I last made marmalade.

The cheeses that were made in the dairy were stored in an attic room above the dairy, which is now our guest bedroom. It wasn't plastered and had no ceiling. The floorboards were rotten both from the cheeses and from the chickens that lived up there at one point!

We don't make cheese any more. When we moved here there were 5 dairy herds in the village. Today there is only one and it is struggling.