The coach house is a beautiful building that draws the eye whenever you are looking out from the house or walking in the woodland gardens. In recent years it has been used as a scout hut, games room, workshop, party hut, theatrical venue, kitchen, laboratory and garage. Unfortunately it had fallen into such a bad state that the roof had started to fall in. Rainwater coming through the roof had rotted many of the floor timbers below. Our first priority was to restore the roof, to make it safe and watertight, which entailed completely replacing all the sarking, slates and other rotten roof timbers. These have been painted in “Autumn Fern”, a colour selected to most closely match the colour of the old paint remaining on the doorways to the walled garden. Then, to protect the integrity of the walls, we needed to provide the roof with guttering and downpipes to take rainwater away, and to remove the turf from the old cobbles outside to stop water ponding.  Finally we need to restore the services that it has historically been provided with: power and water. To date, we have restored the power and rewired the building, but the water supply from the private water supply is unreliable and will need to be replaced with a supply from the main house. One day someone may wish to convert it into accommodation, but we will use it as it has been used before, and so continue to share it with any wildlife that wishes to use it as a home