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Shirley Gale Lavished Lots of TLC on an Old School House To Restore it to its Former Glory

Shirley Gale has something of a passion for breathing new life into old houses. ‘One day I went to the hairdressers in a nearby village and looked out and saw an old house with a handsome façade that looked sad and completely unloved,’ says Shirley of the house she now lives in. ‘Half of the windows were missing and it felt like it needed rescuing, but I loved it. Then, luckily, I discovered that it was up for sale through auction.’

The house is located in an iconic historic village and Shirley was won over by its past and its period features. ‘It was the beautiful wooden staircases that sold it to me,’ she says. Having decided to take the plunge, Shirley was keen to undertake the building work using traditional methods wherever possible. ‘Whenever we replaced plaster we got the Traditional Plastering Company to do it with lath and plaster and where there was damp we used pig fat.’