4 days ago
‘We spent £535,000 to buy and convert a schoolhouse. Our bedroom is the old hall'
If the walls of Theresa and Stuart Ellis's home could talk, they would ring with the sound of times tables being chanted, the squeak of chalk on slate and tuneless Christmas carol concerts.
The couple fell for the charms of a Victorian-era former infant and primary school in Northamptonshire, and spent almost a year living in a caravan while they converted it into a three-bedroom, three-bathroom house with a dramatic double-height living room. They spent around £350,000 repurposing the property, earning a paper profit of more than £300,000 in return for a year's hard work.
'We were actually going to downsize, but when we found the school we just fell in love with it,' says Stuart, 67, an architectural designer who also runs a building company.
He and Theresa, 65, who works for the family business, previously lived in the village of Wootton, on the edge of Northampton, in a modern house Stuart had built for them. Their three children have long flown the nest and they have seven grandchildren.
The couple's house hunting led them to the village of Greens Norton, some 10 miles away where the former school, built in 1874, was for sale – along with a two-bedroom cottage, which had once been home to a succession of headmasters.
After the school was closed in the 1960s, the property was used as the village hall, hosting playgroups and Scout and Brownie groups. It had been empty for a year or two when the couple found it.
Stuart and Theresa agreed to pay £485,000 for the property in 2021, thinking they would redevelop and sell the school and live in the cottage. They sold their house to fund the project and bought a static caravan, which they ended up living in for a year.
During that time they began to get more and more attached to the school, with its arched windows and double-height space, and decided to flip their plans. Instead of selling the school and living in the cottage, they sold the cottage for £300,000.
'The exterior looks exactly the same as when it was built'
Permission for the building's change of use had already been granted, but Stuart redrew plans for the property – with an open-plan kitchen, living and dining room where the school's infants had once taken naps and learnt nursery rhymes.
A ground-floor bedroom suite and a home office replaced the primary school's main hall, and the former toilet block was demolished and replaced with a new garden room.
By adding a mezzanine they upped the floorspace of the building from 1,500 to 2,000 sq ft. This upper level has two bedrooms and two bathrooms.
The school playground is now the driveway, while a kitchen garden behind the school is now the couple's own garden.
Stuart decided that the best way to preserve the look of the school was to faithfully restore its exterior. 'It looks exactly the same as it did when it was built,' he says. Inside is a different story. Stuart built a new timber frame inside the hall to support the new layout and mezzanine, with insulation inserted in between.
Work began on the site in late 2021 and caused a bit of a local stir. 'We had lots of people who used to go to school here stopping in and asking if they could come and have a look,' says Stuart. 'Of course we said yes.'
By July 2022, Stuart and Theresa were able to bid farewell to the caravan and move into their new home.
The work cost an estimated £350,000, which was heavily subsidised by the sale of the cottage. That meant that buying the property and converting the school has cost Theresa and Stuart £535,000. It has since been valued at £850,000 although the couple have no plan to sell.
'We love it, it is a beautiful building, and we have a lot of family in the area. It is a great place to meet up and entertain,' says Stuart.
'Our living room is where children used to go for naps'
Rising school rolls and education shake-ups in the post war-era led to the closure of many traditional village schools in the 1960s and 1970s – but with their steeply pitched roofs, high ceilings and neo-Gothic doors and windows, they are ripe for conversion.
Generations of children learnt their numbers and letters at an old schoolhouse in Bideford, Devon. Then, after it had been replaced by a more modern building, Lara Watson and Will Jarvis jumped at the chance to repurpose it as a family home.
Watson, 43, a journalist and editor, and Jarvis, 42, a creative director, were both born and raised in the West Country and met at school. By 2018, they were living together in a rented flat in London's Isle of Dogs, but were ready to settle down close to their roots to start a family.
That year, the couple exchanged the capital for a rented cottage in Buck's Mills on Devon's north coast. They began house hunting for somewhere to buy.
'My in-laws noticed there was an old schoolhouse for sale in Bideford, and we just loved it,' says Watson. 'It had so much history and so much potential. It is in a very beautiful spot in the town, near the old bridge.'
Unfortunately, the couple were not the only people to fall for the charms of the school, built in 1882, and they were outbid on the property. 'We thought we had lost it, but then it came back on to the market a year later and we jumped at it,' says Watson.
The building had served as the village infant and primary school until the 1960s. It was then owned by the Salvation Army for a spell, before being used as offices, an artists' studio and a holiday home.
It was converted into a five-bedroom, two-bathroom house around three decades ago.
'The thing we really liked about it was that the main double-height room hadn't been split in two, cutting the windows in half, which has happened in some conversions,' says Watson. 'They go floor to ceiling.'
They paid £265,000 for the schoolhouse and in late 2019, they moved in. Then they started to work out how to breathe new life into the run-down house while simultaneously growing their family. They have two sons, Wren, six, and Raff, four.
'I put a message on our local Facebook page asking if anybody remembered going to school there and I got some lovely messages back,' says Watson. 'Apparently our living room is where the children used to go down for naps every day, and I had a message from one person saying they still remember getting splinters from running around on the wooden floors.'
Almost six years on, the schoolhouse is still a work in progress. 'There was such a lot to do, and to save money we are doing it all ourselves,' says Watson.
So far the couple have replaced one of the bathrooms and refreshed the kitchen with new worktops and green-painted cupboards. A utility room, one of two, is now a boot room.
The living room and bedrooms – one of which is on the mezzanine above the living room along with a second sitting room – have been redecorated, as have the hallways wide enough for the children to cycle up and down.
They have also redone the garden and are currently working on revamping the porch.
Still on the to-do list are the ecclesiastical-style windows which, while stunning, need replacing. The rendering needs to be replaced inside and outside, and there is still the second bathroom to tackle. The couple have opted not to remortgage to pay for the work, preferring to save up and do things bit by bit.
'Do we have any regrets? There have been moments obviously when we have thought this is going to cost a fortune, but it is such a special place for our children to grow up in,' says Watson. 'I am sure we will be able to make some money on the place when we do come to sell because of the work we have done and how unique it is.'
