Two pigs were the excuse for this exercise in primitive classicism, supposedly inspired by buildings seen by Squire Barry of Fyling Hall on his travels around the Mediterranean in the 1880s. By his use of timber columns, and his choice of inhabitants, he was perhaps trying to make a point about the roots of Classical architecture; or it may just have been that, as in the song, ‘there was a lady loved a swine’. In Walter Crane’s illustration for this song (from The Baby’s Opera, published in 1877), the sty is given a Classical front, which might have been the starting point for Barry’s eclectic inspiration.

The pigs’ keepers lived in a pair of nearby cottages built close enough to keep an eye on their porcine charges and also architecturally embellished, but this time in more traditional Estate Gothick. It is several decades since they went in for pig-breeding, and alternative uses were hard to think of, until its owner heard of our activities and later gave us a long lease. By the minimum of addition, and the insertion of glass here and there, we hope that we have made it acceptable (if not entirely draughtfree) to a higher breed of inhabitant; and although the living quarters will never be palatial, the view over hills and towards Robin Hood’s Bay from under the pediment is undoubtedly fit for an Empress.

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Sleeps: 2