Fortuitous FIND

Sometimes good things happen when least expected and serendipity plays a part. Driving home from a trip to a National Trust property in Hampshire one sunny afternoon, in August 2012, art consultant Dawn Atkins noticed a ‘For sale’ sign, however, the house was not visible from the road. “I couldn’t resist going up the drive to take a look and that was it, I was hooked,” she explains. “I knew I wanted a barn conversion and came across this delightful property purely by chance.”

Upon contacting the estate agent, Dawn learnt the previous owner, who had sadly passed away, had lived in the four-bedroom, Grade II listed seventeenth-century barn for 25 years. Luckily for her, his unusual taste in decor had deterred other prospective