All Hush: 'The Only Sounds at Night Are the Hootings of the Owls'

Summary

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THIRTEEN years ago, company director John Barnsley, 61, bought Southfield House, a wreck of a farmhouse in Sandford St Martin (right), Oxfordshire, a few miles from Charlbury station, for Pounds 265,000. "As an asthmatic I needed a weekend place outside London where the air was less polluted," he says. "The house was cheap because it was being sold without the surrounding farmland; barns had been sold off separately. The uncertainty had blighted the property.

John and his partner, dressage rider, James Mackenzie, 50, set about restoring the house, which had no electricity on the upper floors and let in rain through the roof. "We redesigned the house ourselves though when we bought the adjoining barn we hired an architect to interpret our ideas for the planners," explains John. The resulting L-shaped house has a lovely drawing room open to the rafters and a long library-cum-study full of books.

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All Hush: 'The Only Sounds at Night Are the Hootings of the Owls'

"It is so quiet here," John ad...

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