About Us

History

Our house, Lea Barn, dates from the seventeenth century when it was a one-up-one-down timber-framed farmhouse facing onto a farmyard with an open-bayed cartshed to one side and a low timber barn to the other. In Victorian times the house was extended and the present barn was built using the timbers from the old barn, but creating a higher structure by building six feet of brick wall and then timber wall above. The size, shape and design of the barn is typical of threshing barns in this area; the two large opening doors on opposing walls providing a through draught and good ventilation for stored crops.
When we moved here in 1992 the barn was in reasonable shape, but needed insulation and heating to reduce the impact of the good ventilation and change its suitability from that for crops to that for making music. Our first concert, a performance of Mendessohn’s Octet in the autumn of 1992, required the use of clothes pegs to keep the music on the stands and many of the musicians wore fingerless mitts despite the fact we had calor gas heaters blasting out throughout the performance.

After much research we were fortunate to meet environmental architects Adele Mills and Andy Simmonds who were demonstrating bodging and living willow sculptures at our daughters’ primary school. They in turn introduced us to Neil May, a local builder specialising in renovating local buildings using traditional methods and materials, sourcing these locally if possible.

The renovation of the barn and then the cartshed was a real adventure involving, among other things, digging a pit in the garden and slaking lime from Pinkneys Green for the lime mortar, inviting the school environment club to come and have a go at the wattle and daub, learning about flint footing and timber-frame building and finally digging and planting a reed bed for dealing with the waste from the house and barn. It was fascinating throughout – to us and the local building regulation team and men from the water authority who made several visits for their own interest.

We were very pleased for ourselves, and for Neil, Andy and Adele, when we received a Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Architectural and Environmental award in 1996.

Other events

West Wycombe Chamber Music Festival

The West Wycombe Chamber Music Festival was founded in 2011 by the internationally acclaimed viola player, Lawrence Power. It is an amazing three days of concerts in September held in St Lawrence’s Church on the hill in West Wycombe – quite the most exciting concerts that we have ever attended.

One event of the festival each year is a masterclass that Lawrence holds in the barn – many such as Tim Ridout have gone on from this to very successful musical careers.

In 2015 the Friends of the Festival came into being with the intention of helping to ensure its future success and as part of that we have hosted very enjoyable Friends’ evenings here at Lea Barn every year since then. They have been recitals by Lawrence with pianists Simon Crawford-Phillips or Pavel Kolesnikov and followed by drinks and home-made canapes. We feel very privileged to have had music such as this in the barn!

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Wild Cookham

Since September 2015 we have been hosting events for Cookham Wildlife Supporters. These have included talks about birds, the night sky, hedgehogs, and twice we have had a bat walk and talk.

In November 2016 the group made birdboxes in the barn with participants from 3 to 80-odd.

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The one principle covering all events is that the only people who benefit financially from events in the barn are the various charities; players do not receive a fee and we never charge for the barn or the refreshments.