by hook or by cruck! - Fischer`s Baslow Hall

Cruck Barn Cottage
Restoration
by hook or by cruck!
From broken-down barn to a bijou escape for two
– Mike Smith discovers a Derbyshire grand design
T
he stage is set for a
getaway break in the
Peak District.
Accommodation for two
in an ancient cruck barn
has been made ready. A home-baked
carrot cake, a wheat loaf, eggs from
Chatsworth and a large bowl of
strawberries has been set out on the
table. The sheets have been changed on
the bed, which is set in a sort of
minstrel’s gallery that overlooks the
kitchen, dining and lounge area. A
music system, a television and a DVD
are at the ready for evening
entertainment; there is a Scandinavian
wood-burning stove to provide warmth
if the temperature falls and there is
garden furniture on the patio for use in
good weather, when the couple can
breathe in the clear air, look out over a
vast expanse of moorland and catch
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distant glimpses of the crooked spire of
Chesterfield’s church and the châteaulike outline of Bolsover’s castle.
Running close by the barn, there is one
of the many paths that criss-cross the
moors and, just a short drive away,
there are the show houses of
Chatsworth, Haddon and Hardwick.
These are the sort of seductive
qualities that lure people who want to
escape the pressures of everyday life to
holiday barns throughout the Peak
District, but visitors to this particular
country retreat, set high on the moors
above Barlow, would find it hard to
imagine the condition of Cruck Barn
Cottage just a year ago. At that time,
most of the windows of the building
had been blocked up; some of the walls
were caving in and others were caving
out; part of the roof had collapsed and
those sections that remained were
bowed and buckled. The doors were
hanging off their hinges, the stone floor
of the building was completely hidden
by a great pile of straw and rubbish that
had mulched into compost and the
barn was not fit to house animals, let
alone couples seeking accommodation
with all mod cons.
In the earliest years of its existence,
the building may well have provided
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Cruck being put in place
by hook or by cruck
The roof before restoration
Cruck being lifted
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accommodation for both humans and
animals. At that time, it would have
been much longer, with five cruck
beams, rather than the present two, and
it would have been divided into a small
living quarter, a hayloft and an animal
shelter. In the early 18th century, the
building was partially demolished and
some of its stone was used in the
construction of a more substantial
dwelling on adjacent land within the
boundaries of the farm. That newer
house, known as High Ashes Farm, is
the home of Max and Susan Fischer,
owners of Fischer’s, the celebrated hotel
and Michelin-starred restaurant at
Baslow Hall.
Since they acquired High Ashes Farm
in 2006, Max and Susan have
renovated the main house in a most
sensitive way. All the original features,
from mullioned, diamond-leaded
windows to stone-flagged floors, have
been retained, but a modern open-plan
staircase has been installed and a small
adjacent barn has been integrated into
the building and linked to it by an allglass atrium. The house is divided from
the extensive vegetable garden, which
provides much of the produce for
Fischer’s Restaurant, by a long wall that
was built by Max from a ready supply
of stone he had found in the cellar,
where it had been used to completely
block up the basement room, in which
a previous owner had feared to tread.
After the Fischers had completed the
renovation of the main house, the local
authority’s conservation officer was
keen for them to use their skills on the
A u g u s t 2011 127
The bedroom
large, half-collapsed barn that has now
become Cruck Barn Cottage, not only
because it was a listed building that was
at risk, but also because it merited
preservation as an example of an
ancient structure where the loadbearing members are naturally bent, or
‘crucked’, oak timbers. Crucked beams
come in many geometric forms, but
they are set in the shape of a trapezium
in this particular barn, which is
identified in an authoritative survey of
ancient buildings in North Derbyshire
and South Yorkshire as ‘typical of the
crucked buildings in this upland area’.
The Fischers knew that the
restoration of the cruck barn would
cost a great deal of money, which they
would need to recoup in some way. As
there was no planning permission for a
second permanent dwelling on their
farm, Max and Susan decided they
would make use of an existing
permission that would allow them to
convert the barn into holiday
accommodation that could hopefully
bring them some return on their
investment. Conversion plans were
drawn up by White Design of
128 A u g u s t 2011
Sheffield, who came up with a scheme
that involved the transformation of the
hayloft into a bedroom, which would
feature a glass-fronted balcony
overlooking the living area, and the
creation of an open-plan ground floor,
where clever use of the changing level
of the bedrock on which the barn
stands could be used to create a
separate kitchen space that would be
slightly raised above the lounge. The
roof would be restored with slates
extracted from the same local quarry
that had supplied the original roofing
material and new windows would be
installed within existing frames that
had long been blocked up.
Although Max employed Gerald
Swift as a builder, he kept costs down
by carrying out much of the labour
himself, with help from his sons, Neil
and Daniel. As the walls of the barn
were in danger of collapse, large
sections had to be dismantled before
they could be restored; the cruck
beams had to be taken out and
carefully stored for re-use, and the
interior had to be cleared of the
huge mound of ‘compost’ that had
accumulated over the centuries.
As the wall built from stones found
in the cellar of his house demonstrates,
Max is a great believer in re-using
materials. He constructed a base for the
barn’s wood-burner, which
supplements the underfloor heating,
from several large stones that were
found when the interior was cleared; he
made a huge flower-tub for the garden
by mounting an old iron cauldron –
once used for the brewing of beer – on
top of an old cheese press; he fitted a
former school gate at the entrance to
the patio and he illuminated the path
that runs alongside the barn with an
old Chesterfield street light that had
been acquired by Sebastian de Ferranti,
the pioneering electrical engineer, who
lived at Baslow Hall for many years.
Meanwhile Susan Fischer searched
the shops for furniture, fabrics and
fittings that were reasonable in price
but up-to-the-minute in form and
function. Thanks to her good eye for a
bargain and her impeccable taste in
interior design, the result is a state-ofthe-art kitchen and living, sleeping and
bathroom areas that are comfortable
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The lounge, kitchen and dining areas from the bedroom
Welcome treat
and contemporary. The interior walls
and the ceiling are painted in cool
white, but they are enlivened by some
fine works of art and by the exposed
wood of those beautifully restored
cruck beams. From start to finish, the
conversion was completed in just nine
months, at a cost of £200,000, but the
financial outlay, the back-breaking
labour and the exhaustive furniture
hunt should prove to be well worth the
effort, not only because the Fischers
have brought an ancient listed building
back to life, but also because they have
received back-to-back bookings for the
barn ever since it opened for business
in April of this year as a ‘stylish and
private retreat for two’.
For information about getaway
breaks at Cruck Barn Cottage, see
www.cruckbarncottagebarlow.co.uk
01246 583259.
d e r by s h i r e.g r e a t b r i t i s h l i f e.c o.u k
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