Thirty-four rambling acres, six buildings reclaimed from various stages of disrepair, one fantastical party barn, and a total of net-zero carbon emissions: By the tallies alone, this pastoral estate in Oxfordshire, in southeast England, belonging to a professional couple and their two young children exudes whimsy and thoughtfulness. Their move-to-the-countryside story began the way so many recent ones have; urged out of London by early COVID lockdowns, the four first found their property, then their designer.
While the wife had previously overseen the design of their primary London abode—“She has amazing taste,” enthuses the husband—the pair knew that for the scale and intensity of the rural project, bringing in an interior designer would be necessary. They tapped Amy Dalrymple of Dalrymple Studio, praised for her ability to divine structure, form, and function from the couple’s design reveries. “I get very, very involved in the nitty-gritty of things,” laughs the homeowner. “I needed an interior designer who was going to work with me and help us realize our dream,” he says, then pauses to reconsider, “and, sometimes, work out what that dream was.”
Making the home net-zero was also of primary importance. The husband’s father, an amateur naturalist, had passed away of cancer at the outset of the process, and his death raised weighty questions. “Am I actually doing what’s important to me?” he recalls. “My dad was always very into wildlife, and being green and carbon-neutral. So I thought, You know what, let’s build something for me and my kids, but let’s be responsible with it. It’s a huge privilege; I thought that came with some responsibility.” Alongside Rose Architectural Studio, the team worked out a “fabric-first” strategy that focused on improving heat and energy conservation, implementing ground solar panel systems, and using high-efficiency, centralized biomass boilers to supply low-carbon heat and hot water. Design-driven solutions, like tucking air handlers within the polished joinery, conceal the complicated workings within.
Designer Dalrymple’s purview was spread across 15,700-plus square feet of the property’s buildings; what unfolded was an entire reconfiguration and renovation of the six-bedroom, circa-1780 main house that prioritized communal spaces for the family as well as for their extended and frequent roster of guests. Unifying the expansive property proved to be fluid, shares the designer. “The house and outbuildings really work together. Nothing stands out as being too different,” she says. “Feet up on sofas—children can go anywhere…. It doesn’t feel exclusive. Everyone can feel at home there.”