The Dovecote & Pigeon Cottage

When Emma Burns, a senior designer at Colefax & John Fowler, inherited "The Dovecote," she had her work cut out for her. Her parents had purchased the former stables many years earlier (on a shoe-string budget) and had slowly refurbished the building, originally a part of a much larger estate, into a weekend get-away home. The property also includes a small barn and other out-buildings (we'll get to that later). Using her design skills she wanted to update the home, while retaining the casual charm of a place filled with hand-me-down furnishings, collected antiques, and flea-market finds.

The Dovecote

In the drawing room, Emma removed old plaster-board to reveal the original beams, she also raised the height of the doors from the entrance hall into both the kitchen/dining room and the drawing room.

The fabrics used throughout the house were collected over the years, including a number of now discontinued Colefax & Fowler designs.

The oak corner cupboard is eighteenth century and came from Wales.

Reclaimed wood and doors were used to create the country kitchen cabinets.

A part of the original dovecote is exposed on the upstairs landing. Those are not real pigeons!

Emma's parents had established the gardens in the first couple years after purchasing the house. When the house came to Emma, she and her boyfriend refined and expanded the gardens, adding hedges to create "rooms."

The Latin inscription on the garden wall translates: "take as a gift whatever the day brings forth."

After several years of ownership, Emma decided that it was time to do something with the old dilapidated barn. Realizing that she needed more space for her large book collection, she converted the building to a library/guest cottage. The original barn doors were repurposed as shutters and she installed French doors. The windows instantly turned the barn into a light filled space.

When entering the barn (or Pigeon Cottage) the central space serves as a sitting room, while on either side the tall bookcases conceal a bathroom on one side and a kitchenette on the other. Above the bookcases is a gallery space. One side serves as a bedroom while the other is a small office space.