Commercial barn conversion

A farmer based in a National Park had started to make ice-cream from their milk as a lucrative additional product, using the only Jersey cows in the area. They were successfully selling to retailers but in order to provide enough margin to continue their business, they needed to have their own retail outlet.

A neglected barn, seldom used due to its deterioration and inappropriateness for modern farming methods, was the perfect place to open a retail outlet in an area where tourists often visit during the summer seasons. 

Despite their need for diversity to survive owing to the larger supermarket chains' effect on milk prices, they were met with much resistance from the strict rules and traditional views of the National Park.

With our experience of working on sensitive buildings such as these, we were able to play a significant part in winning the battle and gain the planning permission needed to convert this barn into an ice-cream parlour; and in doing so, save the barn from further deterioration and verge of collapse.

"We came across Ecovril as a recommendation. Our aim was to take an old stone barn on our land and convert it sympathetically into an ice cream parlour. This all sounds very simple and straight forward, but the barn and land surrounding it just happens to be in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, which has notoriously difficult planning regulations and requirements

Andy was a great choice having gained a lifetime of experience working with Yorkshire Dales stone barns and eventually co-writing a book about the Barns of the Yorkshire Dales.

Ours is a very long and complicated story, but the important part is that Andy and Chau of Ecovril have been excellent in every way, even down to providing moral support and keeping us positive when the whole planning situation was looking very bleak indeed. They have provided us with the technical information we needed, helped us to obtain legal advice from experts, created plans and drawings, had excellent ideas, and all in all helped us reach a very positive conclusion.

After a long and persistent battle, between us all, and their were a few of us involved, we have won the day."

Gill Harrison

Wensleydale Ice Cream