Little Stud Barn

We are Dave & Jill and this is the history of this site.

The Little Stud Barn 'to be' is a barn in one of our fields.

We bought the host property Little Stud Farm at auction as a semi derelict house with 5 acres, it was a redundant intensive pig rearing unit that had up to 2,000 pigs.  3 acres were covered in pig buildings.  The house had been empty for a couple of years and most of the windows were broken and any wiring eaten by rats.

Anyway, that was 20 years ago and 80% of the old pig buildings were knocked down and put to grass for my horses.

Unfortunately, the contractor knocking down the buildings got a bit carried away and knocked down 9 out of 10 of the high ceiling sheds.  When I arrived on site I managed to stop him from knocking down the last one.  We ended up with 260 m2 of buildings left, but most of them have pretty low roofs.

4 years ago I had a major accident and was in a wheelchair for 6 months.  Although I can now walk we decided that we should try and build our dream single storey house by converting the remaining buildings.

It took us 3 attempts and 2 years to get class Q planning.  Class Q rules are very strict and all dimensions and curtilage must be exactly adhered to and with the height restrictions this has meant that we only have 240 m2 of the 260 m2 full size and some of each of the south side rooms can only be utility space and not living.

The better news is that the floor levels are raised in the 5 south side areas so we can at least get these dug down which will help with insulation and UFH.

This is what it looks like at the moment, from the North West.  I've realised that I don't have a direct shot on this PC, I will find one later.

Building itself will start next year because at the moment we are in the process of a Phase 2 contamination survey with gas monitors.  The gas has to be monitored for 3 months with a visit every fortnight. We have had 2 so far.  Once that is finished then a report will be produced and sent to the LPA.  Depending on what the report says we can then commence (don't forget CIL) or carry out remediation steps.

As we are literally self building with help of experts where necessary this is likely to take a number of years to complete.

I am hoping to post to this blog weekly once we are underway.