An untapped part of Fife is fertile ground for fresh-air adventures – especially now that the doors have opened to this stylish farmhouse
Well, this is fortuitous. My husband and I are a few weeks away from moving to our new house and almost every conversation has revolved around how we’ll decorate it. Just when I start to worry that we’ve excavated every last scrap of the fun topics (Farrow & Ball vs. Edward Bulmer; what lurks beneath the carpets; where we’ll hang the weird ceramic fish I bought in Portugal three years ago) and will have to move on to terra snore-a (insulation, heat pumps), I step inside The Grieves Farmhouse and feel my eyeballs begin to tingle. “Wow. Look at those tiles!” I exclaim. And lo, our chat is rescued by a herringbone-paved terracotta brick floor.
There’s an unexpectedly continental feel about this place given its location on a 750-acre arable farm near Kirkcaldy. It helps that we’re visiting Banchory Farm on a sun-drenched May weekend: the fields around us golden with flowering gorse; the Fife coastline winking in the distance. “This was always such a happy place for us,” says Jane Manifold, who grew up in Australia but spent many summers here on her late grandmother’s farm. Shortly before the pandemic, she and her husband moved to Scotland from Singapore with their three kids to take the reins. They grow oats for Quaker and barley for a whisky distillery, and have spent the past few years transforming a crop of disused farm buildings into boutique self-catering holiday lets as they venture into agritourism. “My granny was always entertaining,” says Jane. “So it feels like we’re opening up those doors again.”
Jane collaborated with the writer, interiors expert and mentor Ali Heath on the renovation of the six cottages and farmhouses, initially bringing her on board to source furniture and objets before her role naturally evolved into that of interior designer. The two-bed Grieves Farmhouse, where I’m staying with my husband and son, dates from 1793 and was the steading’s original farmhouse. “It was an exciting project, as everything had to be gutted,” says Ali. “The brief was to turn it from an unwelcoming, very dated and in places quite derelict home, into a sanctuary-like retreat.”
Mission accomplished. It is now one of those houses you walk into and immediately want to live in. Warm, open, luxurious but not overly polished, like a Tuscan villa that has been slowly filled with finds from local markets. Ali describes the interiors as a “high-low mix of old and new”. Everything in this unique farmhouse is fantastically easy on the eye, with something – several things – to obsess over in every room. The worn-paint patina of the antique French armoire and rustic dining table in the kitchen. A roll-top bath in our bedroom resting like royalty on its own marble plinth. Headboards upholstered in jewel-toned fabrics. Hand-painted botanical wallpaper. The floors, my god, the floors – marble chequerboard in the kitchen; those perfect terracotta tiles in the boot room and hall; a bitter-chocolate parquet on the upstairs landing that was sourced from an old church down south. Yes, I’m taking notes.
We’re actually at the farmhouse to holiday, though, so I tear myself away from examining Beata Heuman’s Dodo Egg lantern in the stairwell to relax in the private walled garden while our son roly-polies on the grass. A patchwork of green unspools behind him for miles. There’s something comforting about being a speck in this landscape. It’s just us, a pot of coffee (from The Roasting Project in Burntisland) and a fat welcome book brimming with Jane’s recommendations for things to do in the area. And the weather is gorgeous, so we waste no time in exploring.
First, to Elie, for fish suppers at the Ship Inn. The haddock is the length of my forearm and its batter twice as golden – ample sustenance for a walk along the beach as dusk falls and the Firth of Forth turns silky grey. A group of pals huddled together in the seaside sauna inspire us to get the log fire crackling in the sitting room when we arrive back at the farmhouse. Summer, schmummer.
The next day, Deep Sea World in North Queensferry proves a hit with our toddler, as does the Pillars of Hercules, an organic farm shop and cafe outside Falkland with a decent playpark and fruit and veg so expensive you can only assume it’ll give you the gut flora and glowing skin of a 22-year-old biohacker (“I once spent £30 on mushrooms here, and not the magic kind,” admits my friend, who meets us for lunch).
Afterwards we stroll through the charming streets of Falkland then head to St Andrews for more of the same. Why not? Everywhere is within easy reach for an unhurried day of town-hopping in the lemonade light. The best bit, though, is pottering around the farmhouse and pretending this rural idyll is ours. Waking to birdsong. Making an omelette with freshly laid eggs. “Life is so busy – this space is about slowing down and appreciating everyday pleasures,” says Ali. “The joy of cooking in a beautiful kitchen; the pleasure of dreaming away an afternoon in a roll-top bath overlooking the hills.”
We might not be able to cart the countryside back to Glasgow with us, and our bath won’t have views of anything more exciting than a toilet, but I suspect there are lessons learned from The Grieves that will find their way into our new home. At the very least, I’m pinching that floor.
