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Where the grass is greenest

It’s hard to believe but this lovely Grade 2 listed Georgian house in Gloucestershire began as a little tied cottage in the 1600s.

“It was a two-up, two-down farmhouse and belonged to the nearby historic Chavenage Estate,” says Julia Cambray who lives here with her husband Robert and their three daughters plus Humphrey the dachshund. “Then the front was added in Georgian times and another part put on in the Victorian era.”

Now it is a seven bedroomed, three storey house set in eight acres with stables. It was exactly what Julie was looking for as she is the proud owner of six show ponies kept for her daughter Daisy’s eventing which takes them all over the country.

The family - which consists of Julie, Robert and the girls Jessica (now 27), Millie (24) and Daisy (12) - moved here from Buckinghamshire almost eight years ago after Robert retired from his career as a restaurateur. “We were looking for a house for ages and then one day I came without an appointment just to look at this one,” says Julie. “Even though I saw it from the back I fell in love with it and rang Robert to tell him at last I’d found somewhere! We both came along to see round it properly and he loved it too. It had such a warm friendly feeling and with its high ceilings and big windows it was filled with light. There were still plenty of old features too such as the servants’ bells and the old fireplaces; what makes it charming though is that the very oldest part - the core - looks quite different from the rest of it. It’s like having a cottage within a house as the windows and ceilings are lower and there are old rafters here and there.”

One quaint touch is there is a brass water tap fed by the garden well in the snug, which used to be the 17th century farmhouse. The  tap stands all by itself next to where the old range once stood and was probably put in during the 1700s; in those days it would have been the only running water in the house.

But life has not always been kind to Barton End Farmhouse because a generation ago a family dispute among the owners meant the place stood empty for years. In fact it fell into such a state of neglect that the roof caved in and damp set in with a vengeance. Finally it was put up for sale by auction and the next owners who bought the ivy-covered ruin spent ten years restoring it to the beautiful house it is today.

“So we didn’t need to do much at all,” says Julie. “We found a monstrosity of a boiler blocking an old brickwork fireplace in the breakfast room so we moved it into the boot room, opened up the fireplace and laid a new floor of reclaimed flagstones. We installed a new country-style kitchen (as Robert is very much a hands-on chef) with a four-door Aga and removed a huge and hideous black wooden “shelving with mirror” arrangement above the black stone fireplace in the dining room. It was one of those Victorian abominations which make you think of a funeral parlour. We also built a three bay garage outside, landscaped the gardens and laid a new drive. But apart from that we just redecorated using Farrow & Ball paints throughout.”

However life was not uneventful when the Cambrays first arrived. In the vanguard was Julie with small daughter Daisy and at night there was so much weird and mysterious banging on the outside walls and in the attic that Julie asked her odd job man to take a look at what could be causing it. His answer was that it was a long-dead owner objecting to the new arrivals.

“I’m afraid I don’t believe in anything like that,” says Julie, “but my girls do. Millie and Jessica have heard footsteps in the old part, where their bedrooms are, on countless occasions, the side door bell rings when no-one
is there and when Jessica was talking about hanging photographs one day an old painting just fell off the wall for no good reason making everyone jump.”

It seems that the previous owners also believed in ghostly visits from past owners as they told Julie that if the banging persisted she should stand in the hall and say loudly, “This is our house now! So please go away.”
Julie did and as far as she is concerned it worked, but the same cannot be said for Millie and Jessica.

With the beautiful Cotswold countryside all around offering so much space for Daisy’s ponies you would think the Cambrays would be here to stay. But sadly they are selling up and are emigrating to South Africa. “For health reasons we want to spend our winters in the sun and return to England in the summer so Daisy can continue with the eventing,” says Julie. “We have bought a four bedroomed cottage nearby but all the same it’s sad to leave such a very elegant house.”