How an eco-friendly interior designer transformed a former milking parlour into a multi-purpose space in the middle of the Pandemic

It takes imagination to turn a disused building into something with purpose. But turning a disused building into something with a purpose that’s entirely open-ended takes vision of a different sort.

Charlie Lovell had that vision.

In late 2019, his parents, who live on an old farm near Newbury, named Monksmead, were wondering what they could do with its former milking parlour, which had begun to crumble. In the decades since they sold the cattle that had trooped in and out every morning, the L-shaped structure had been used for storage, partitioned and fitted with a series of rough concrete floors of varying levels. Years of weather damage (and unglazed apertures) meant that parts of the roof were collapsing, the internal timbers turning to rot. The Lovells knew they had to do something, they just didn’t know what.

Happily, Charlie was in the perfect position to advise. An interior designer by training, he now runs — with his brother Harry — Youngman Lovell, a carbon-neutral, custom house-building business. He set about a plan in earnest and, when lockdown hit in early 2020 — by which time he had retreated to Monksmead from London — the wheels were in motion. However, where others might have come up with a design for a straightforward annexe, party barn or games room, Charlie decided on something altogether more ambiguous — a space that could be any of these things, but could also be simply an empty building, perfectly preserved.

Charlie spent much of his childhood at Monksmead. At that time, a stockman named Arthur Dollin had worked the farmland. Before the herds of Guernsey cattle had gone, the milking parlour had been Arthur’s domain. ‘He had the most extraordinary countryside knowledge,’ Charlie recalls, citing this connection to the environment as one of the key inspirations for his plans for the design. ‘In a world where we are increasingly disconnected from nature, and by extension ourselves, it is my belief that we should be creating places that reconnect us with our naturalness,’ he says. ‘As Leo Tolstoy put it: “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between humans and nature shall not be broken.” And so for me, the point of the building is just to keep it as honest as possible.’

That desire for honesty led every decision Charlie made when renewing the old milking parlour — which has, in the years since its completion, been used for everything from weddings and parties, to yoga classes and fashion photography shoots for the likes of Tatler and Barbour.

The designer worked hard to save as many of the original roof tiles as possible (he thinks he only had to source 10% new) and experimented with mixing natural renders made using the seams of clay that streak the soil at Monksmead. While there are windows now, as well as plumbing and electricity (with loos, a shower and a kitchen in the shorter branch of the L-shape, dubbed ‘Arthur’s Pass’ in homage), there is no insulation or central heating. The floor is as it was a hundred years ago, except for some ‘beautiful pockmarks made when we were jackhammering the concrete layers out’.

That ‘we’ is important, as Charlie is keen to stress how much of a collaborative project this was. ‘Lockdown was obviously a pretty crap time for many people, with lots of tradespeople having to just sit on their hands,’ he says. ‘And yet suddenly we had this project and we were able to reach out to people.’ As well as Charlie and his three brothers, there was Nick the bricklayer, Lee the bricklayer, Jack and his techno-loving, chain-smoking brother (welders who made all the window frames for each individually shaped aperture), Tom from DRS Construction, master craftsman Ben Rye, lighting designer Maxwell Barlow… The list goes on. Before long, Charlie had enlisted garden designer Tabi Jackson Gee into the ranks too. Charlie was introduced to Tabi by a mutual friend and taken by her sustainable and longevity-focused approach to landscape.

Convincing his parents, while in the middle of building works, to allocate yet more money towards an ostensibly unnecessary landscaping project could have been ‘a bit of a hard sell’ — especially as they were already indulging a number of what he calls his ‘architectural follies’, such as flint-embedded steps and walls with gently curved tops. However, Charlie’s clients, who are passionate about supporting young talent, trusted him implicitly.

They were right to.

Tabi says the plot, which the team had recently cleared of rampant Portuguese laurel, felt less like a domestic garden than a ‘pocket landscape’. She knew that what she created would only be in occasional use, that it might be the setting for events and photoshoots, that it had to require little to no maintenance and that, like the building, it needed to be in communion with its context. But beyond that, she was left to her own devices. Where some may have struggled with such an open brief, Tabi revelled in the opportunity to create an ‘in-between place, somewhere more non-garden than garden’. In search of an ‘organic, fluid’ composition, she looked to the plot’s surroundings, alighting on a giant oak tree that overlooks the site. In the curvilinear silhouette of one of its leaves, she found her layout, tracing its outline into a flowing arrangement of paths and beds.

The planting choices that followed were, in many ways, straightforward, informed by the clay soil and the fact that, beyond very occasional watering, the garden — where deer and rabbits are wont to nibble — would receive little day-to-day care. Now, reed and moor grasses and hardy perennials such as woodland sage, Mediterranean sea holly and dusky cranesbill join tough shrubs like rosemary and evergreen barberry to provide a steady, simple show of textures and tones that gently evolve throughout the year. In many ways, not having to think about the concerns that drive a more conventional garden — changing colours, the timings of bulbs, the placement of firepits and dining tables — was ‘incredibly creatively liberating’. At no point did Tabi find herself scratching her head, or butting up against her clients’ ideas; instead, the Lovells’ responsiveness to ideas was a great gift, allowing her to create something she is truly proud of. Given that Charlie’s parents have now enlisted her to work on the more formal gardens across the rest of Monksmead, and that Charlie has similarly employed Tabi to work on Youngman Lovell projects, it seems her clients are proud of what she has done here too.

Charlie believes that the old milking parlour’s transformation owes much to its timing; without lockdown and the sense of togetherness it made us all crave, it simply wouldn’t have happened — or at least not in the way it did. Ultimately, this sentiment underscores the sense of community, collaboration and environmental connection that runs through the building. But that is just one thread of this story. The potential of adaptive reuse is another, as is the importance of experimentation. Above all, however, the milking parlour speaks persuasively of possibility, that precious, intangible, hope-filled thing, something summed up perfectly by Charlie, when he says: ‘We live in a world where everything has to have a reason. People ask “Why, why, why?” And I think the answer is “Why not?”’