It was originally a 17th-century agricultural building, then in the 1820s it was turned into a school. When we saw it, it had 16 outside loos, a massive oil tank and lots of tarmac. It had been for sale for some time, and I think no-one had liked the scale of what had to be done. The inside was quite simple to convert, but the outside was horrendous.”The playground was at the height of where the bedrooms are now and there was a 6ft-deep trench all around the property. We had to take out 400 tonnes of rock to expose the elevations and that really was the key. Then we were able to build terracing and create a lovely private garden behind the old stone wall. We used the rock to make the terrace, which wraps around the house in a sort of Proven? style This was a massive operation and took six months to do.

All the steps are lit at ground level, which looks wonderful at night, and I put in several water features too.”The good thing about the house being a former school is that it is very solid and the council had looked after it well. Five years before we bought the house the council had put on a new stone tiled roof, so we didn’t have to touch that. Inside there were two big halls, about 70 feet long by 15 feet wide, one upstairs and one downstairs, and all that space really attracted me. The building also had very large windows and this was one of the joys of the place, as it was so light.”When I was thinking about how to convert the halls, I remembered seeing something I had always wanted to do while walking along the river in Chiswick, west London. We had noticed that one of the houses had a fireplace in the middle of a very big room and you could see right through that into the kitchen I thought I would do something similar here. So the feature of the ground floor at Combe House is the half partition across a huge room, in the middle of which is a double-sided, wood-burning stove. You can put logs into it from either side and, like the Chiswick house, see right through from the sofa in the family room on one side into the dining area and kitchen There are shelves each side for the hi-fi and television.

I think it is charming.”In the sitting room, I built out the chimney breast so that I could put in two alcoves on either side. And the shelves in all the living rooms have a gap at the back, where I have put in hidden lighting, so that when you look at them at night, the effect is of the shelves floating on light.”I also created a wide, arched recess over the kitchen units, with a door either side. Across this is a huge plate rack with lighting top and bottom, which gives the rack a floating effect too. As I am quite into lighting, I have put in a computerised Lutron system.