Cattle byre

Traditionally, the cattle lived in the ground floor of Tuscan farm houses. The heat they gave off kept the human occupants on the first floor warmer than they would otherwise have been. Our house was no exception. Although it had been converted to domestic use in 1970, when we bought the house in 2000, there were still cattle feeding troughs around the walls of what is now our living room. We replaced the beaten earth floor with terracotta tiles and sand-blasted the chestnut ceiling beams and brick arches. The thick walls and small windows make it cool in the summer and cosy in the winter. We have central heating but rarely use it, we prefer to burn logs in the wood-burner - a cast iron Coalbrookdale that we exported from England!