Inside a Restored Cotswolds Barn Living Room Filled with Antiques

Welcome to one of the most extraordinary living spaces we've toured — the main room of a beautifully restored barn in the bucolic hills of the Cotswolds, where Sue Jones and her husband have lived for the past 17 years. From the moment Sue first stepped inside, she was enchanted by the grand ceilings, the old-world details and the sense that this was where they wanted to spend the rest of their lives. Two years of intense work followed a classic Cotswold barn that once housed cattle, sheep and horses into a single, uninterrupted double-height living space they use every single day.

The room is reached through a colonnade of Roman pillars, giving it an almost enchanting approach, and every piece of woodwork you see — the Elizabethan-Tudor linen-fold frieze, the gallery, the floors and banisters — was added by the couple with the help of a genius carpenter. Because the scale is so dramatic, everything here is oversized: small things simply get eaten up. Sue divided the room into three, with a dining area on one side and two seating areas anchored by an enormous ottoman groaning under the weight of books and two very large, supremely comfortable Howard sofas bought to last a lifetime.

Sue keeps the main furniture deliberately neutral, so all the color comes from the cushions, books, paintings, carpets and tapestries. She and her late husband Alex were passionate collectors, and the room is layered with a treasure trove of patina and sentiment — faded Turkish kilims, blue-and-white china from Thailand, a Moroccan table with Basra pearl inlay, portraits collected simply because they're highly decorative, and pieces gathered across an extraordinary 44 trips to India plus travels through China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Burma. Those journeys shaped her love of mixing English and Oriental style, and it shows in every corner. A dramatic sculpture, dummy boards from Hampton Court and a Carlton House desk complete a space that feels both grand and deeply personal. Above all, Sue says, her priority is that people feel truly at home here — a charming, livable, genuinely happy room that she feels feeds her soul.