Restoring a Historic Stone Building in England

Jikyeong bought a deralict prop­erty that had been stripped back by a pre­vi­ous owner and renov­a­tion work had stalled before it had really begun. Many of the sur­round­ing dry-stone walls had star­ted to col­lapse.

Jikyeong says, “Ever since mov­ing to Eng­land in 2000, I had dreamed of own­ing a tra­di­tional York­shire stone house, There is something time­less and deeply authen­tic about York­shire archi­tec­ture that has always appealed to me. What cap­tured my heart imme­di­ately was the loc­a­tion. The pan­or­amic views are breath­tak­ing. I could imme­di­ately see what the prop­erty could become, even though many people prob­ably only saw a build­ing in need of enorm­ous work.”

Two skilled dry-stone wall­ers spent almost two years rebuild­ing the walls around the prop­erty, stone by stone. Jikyeong was closely involved throughout the trans­form­a­tion, bal­an­cing an extens­ive inter­na­tional travel sched­ule with painstak­ing decisions about every aspect of the design.

“I was par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in cre­at­ing a har­mo­ni­ous dia­logue between old and new. Stone, tim­ber, glass and steel were all used delib­er­ately so that con­tem­por­ary archi­tec­ture would com­ple­ment, rather than com­pete with, the his­toric fab­ric of the build­ing.” she says. “The spec­tac­u­lar views were also cent­ral to the design. I wanted the land­scape to become part of the home itself, with large win­dows fram­ing the chan­ging sea­sons and the beau­ti­ful scenery.”

The fin­ished home reflects that vis­ion throughout. At its heart is a spec­tac­u­lar glazed dome exten­sion, designed for enter­tain­ing and to max­im­ise pan­or­amic views across the sur­round­ing coun­tryside.

The prop­erty includes eleg­ant recep­tion rooms, four double bed­rooms, spa-inspired well­ness facil­it­ies with sauna and lux­ury bath­rooms, and a prin­cipal bed­room suite with dir­ect access to the gar­dens and water fea­tures.

The ori­ginal barn has also been trans­formed into a flex­ible west wing, fea­tur­ing an arched win­dow, float­ing tim­ber stairs rising through a triple-height interior towards a gym and mezzan­ine study. “We were able to pre­serve many of the barn’s ori­ginal fea­tures, includ­ing its impress­ive full-height entrance and the ori­ginal split-level struc­ture,” Jikyeong says.

Although the house has spaces designed for enter­tain­ing on a grand scale, it is one of its smal­lest rooms – the snug – that remains closest to her heart. “There is something incred­ibly peace­ful about sit­ting there beside the wood-burn­ing stove on a winter even­ing, watch­ing the sun set over Marsden Moor. No mat­ter how stress­ful life has been, that view has always had a remark­able way of put­ting everything back into per­spect­ive,” she says.

Out­side, there are more than two acres of land­scaped grounds, with private gar­dens, hid­den seat­ing areas, path­ways, a nat­ur­ally fed lake and cas­cad­ing water­falls.

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