Rural: Old barns show the way to gracious living

How excellent to discover buildings in the country that the owners have converted to modern use - without provoking poisonous rows about planning.

Rural development now stirs up such furious argument that it is a positive pleasure to hit on a project of which everybody seems to approve. I refer to the transformation of a Victorian barn in the hamlet of Yanworth, 600ft up in the Cotswolds west of Cirencester. All over the country redundant barns are being converted, but most of them are being turned into houses or flats, and are yielding owners and developers handsome profits.

The one in Yanworth is different, for it has become the offices of the Stowell Park estate, which belongs to the Vestey family. The conversion cost pounds 159,000, and, apart from a grant of pounds 22,000 contributed by the Rural Development Commission, funds for the building came entirely from income earned by the farming enterprise.

The barn dates from 1860, and although its thick stone walls were still in good shape, as was most of the tiled roof, inside it was a wreck. Having started life as a stable for working horses, with a hay-loft above the stalls, it had become a grain-store but had then fallen into disuse, its innards a maze of pipework and concrete-block structures.

Enter Prue Smith, a Wiltshire-based architect specialising in conservation. The old building had only one window. She gave it nine, all double-glazed, copying their design from that of the single original. As a result, the inside of the barn has become both light and quiet. Fittings and furniture - bookshelves and filing cabinets as well as desks - are beautifully made from pale American oak, which increases the general impression of cleanliness and elegance.

The ground floor now houses the farm manager, the secretary, an accountant and the estate agent, who occupies what was the grain-drier's dust-box. There is also an office here for Lord Vestey. On the upper floor is a boardroom, which has a window in place of the hole through which a conveyor once hoisted grain.

Outside, the most imaginative feature is a long porch with a tiled roof supported on oak pillars carved out of trees from the estate. Better still, the look of the surrounding area has been greatly improved by removing a modern building, a large diesel tank and a regiment of farm machinery. Small wonder that the Cotswold District Council gave the project wholehearted approval, or that the imagination and style of the conversion have earned it an award from the Country Landowners Association.

A cynic might observe that a large estate should be well able to furnish itself with decent office accommodation. The agent, Tim Owen, agrees, but points out that farm incomes fluctuate wildly, and that the conversion was planned and executed in a time of relative plenty. In the past few months prices have fallen so sharply that a project of this size would look impossible today.

So, luck favoured the old barn. On the wall in the lobby, hard by the secretary's computer terminal and fax machine, there hangs a photograph of the Stowell farm staff at harvest in 1920 - as fine a collection of gaffers as you could wish to see, all gaiters and whiskers and floppy hats. The juxtaposition of ancient and modern acts as a poignant reminder of how times change, and of how enlightened estate owners move on.

Meanwhile, on the Petworth estate in Sussex, a similar but still more ambitious scheme is nearing completion. Lodge Farm Barns, an outlying group near the village of Lodsworth, were not merely obsolete, but falling down. In the words of the owner, Lord Egremont, "the only alternative to conversion was collapse".

Here the scheme for renovation did meet some opposition, from locals who walked in the area and enjoyed the picturesque, semi-ruined state of the old farmstead. Chichester District Council considered their objections, but took an enlightened view and granted planning permission. Now the decrepit buildings have been stylishly refurbished to provide 8,000 square feet of accommodation for the office staff of Sofa Workshop, the furniture distributor, which has taken a 15-year lease.

Together with rebuilding a bridge and resurfacing the 1,000-yard approach road, the work will cost nearly pounds 750,000. But it has produced a fine working environment for 40 people, in idyllic surroundings, and given the barns a new lease of life.

With fewer and fewer employed in farming, such schemes become ever more valuable. As Lord Egremont put it, "We simply must create opportunities for people to work in rural areas. Otherwise the idea of the country being a living entity will die."