The owners of ‘The Old Flax Shop’ approached Design Storey after seeing our work at the Miner’s Cottages, to explore the possibility of converting this curtilage-listed outbuilding into a boutique Airbnb. The building, which forms part of a former flax farm, is located near Bridport in the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and has a lovely position, tucked in next to the former farmhouse, with views across to a local landmark Colmer’s Hill. The area around Bridport is renowned for its rope making industry and its likely that the flax on this farm was grown to make ropes. Originally the owners thought the building was a former coach house as it been used as garaging and storage but research into the building’s history at the start of the project revealed the connection with flax and the rope-making industry. The building is quirky, and had been subject to quite a few alterations over its past including changes to the first floor structure to accommodate a large motor vehicle in the early c20th. We embraced the historic fabric and phases of development, and sought to tell the story of the building’s association with flax growing and the rope-making industry through the design. The brief included sensitive conversion of the existing building by the insertion of two bedrooms, bathroom and a kitchen. Our approach was to minimise disruption to historic fabric and celebrate historic features where possible with careful consideration given to the bathroom and kitchen design to ensure that services could be sensitively inserted in to the building. Inspiration was drawn from the building’s flax history by through the stair design, which features rope balusters and through the material choices for the interiors. Existing materials where re-used where possible, this included cleaning and relaying the Staffordshire-blue pavers in the main living room and refurbishing and reusing an old workbench to create an up-cycled unit in the kitchen. ?