Architecture Wednesday: School Barn Farm

Hidden in a peaceful pocket of Warwickshire, School Farm Barn is an elegant and contemporary home with five bedrooms and an expansive open-plan living space. Its striking profile rises amid a half-acre garden with vegetable beds, pastoral views and a wonderful natural swimming pool.

Once used to store grains, School Farm Barn was converted in 2021 but still using hardworking and hardwearing materials with photovoltaic panels, efficient battery storage capacity, two air-source heat pumps, and underfloor heating added during its construction.

A quiet countryside road winds up to the house with the home's silhouette peering over mature hedges. Behind electric-gates is a large driveway with plenty of space to park cars, including a garage with an EV charging point and a two-car carport.

From the front the home’s roofline extends upward to form an elegant pitch and directly below is the large front door, slightly set back and framed by glazed panels. Entry is to the social core of the house, an airy, versatile open-plan living space with up to twenty-nine-foot-high ceilings. To the left is the dining area and a beautiful bespoke kitchen with discreetly integrated appliances. Part of the countertop doubles as an informal breakfast bar, and beyond are floor-to-ceiling sliding doors to the south-facing terrace. Adjacent to the kitchen is a large pantry, with additional fridge/freezer capacity, a wine fridge, additional units and plenty of shelf space for dried goods. Grounded with oak floors the other half of the space features a living space with a large contemporary Stovax log burner and large windows of varying shapes and sizes that allow plenty of light. 

The rest of the ground floor has been wonderfully apportioned. There is a boot room, separated from the corridor by a glass door, with garden access, ceiling-high cupboards, and an apple-green paneled wall; a large utility room, a half bath, and a large, serene bedroom with en suite shower room. The principal suite also begins on the ground floor. Here, a dressing room with an entire wall of built-in wardrobes and a sublime en suite bathroom with a freestanding bathtub and shower; from the dressing room stairs rise up to the private sleeping loft which overlooks the dressing room below.

At the front of the house, stairs ascend from the living room to the first floor where a long hallway ends in a cozy space built into the window frame. This floor also includes a private office and the three remaining bedrooms; one of the bedrooms has a walk-in wardrobe and a bathroom, while the other two have en suite shower rooms.

The half-acre garden that surrounds School Farm Barn is an immersive space, one that is a core part of the home’s overall experience. A large terraced area abuts the house, providing space for outdoor dining and seating, and a view of the natural swimming pool, a clean-water swimming area added under current ownership, surrounded by water lilies and carefully selected water plants.

Despite its blissfully rural setting, the house is a short distance from central Birmingham and Birmingham International airport and station; the latter runs rail services to London in as little as 65 minutes.

And it can all be yours for £2,150,000 or 2,865,000 USD.

As always click to emBIGGERate …

The Modern House

A Tale of Two Teachers ... And Parents Who Teach Hate

I’ve said on this blog before that I am the son of a ‘teacher man’ and I have always had great respect for educators of all kinds. Teachers show us how to read and write, and add and subtract; they show us how to think; they give us our history.

Parents, on the other hand, or at least the parents in these two tales, only seem able to teach hate and intolerance and bigotry and homophobia and transphobia.

Laura Jane Klug worked as a fifth grade substitute teacher at Lumberton Intermediate School in Texas, until she was asked not to return to school following the complaints of several parents.

Was she disrespectful to the children? Was she not following the curriculum?

No, it’s because Laura Jane Klug was born Kurt Klug, and the fact that she is transgender means she cannot possibly be any kind of teacher to the children.

Klug says she met with a representative of Lumberton Independent School District's Human Resources and District Superintendent John Valastro who suspended her pending a decision by the school board on whether to continue using her as a substitute teacher.

Because she’s transgender.

Roger Beard, whose son was in the class Klug was subbing, said what concerns him is the distraction he believes a transgender teacher poses to ten and eleven year old children:

"If it does affect my child and his ability to learn or if it causes questions that I don't feel are appropriate then undoubtedly there's an issue with having somebody transgender, transsexual or transvestite, to be teaching that age group."

First question, Rog? What kind of distraction is she actually? Do the kids in her class know she’s transgender? And if they do, so what? It isn’t about the children being uncomfortable, or distracted, it’s about parents like Roger Beard not wanting to have the transgender conversation with their children.

It’s about telling your kids that transgender teachers cannot and should not teach children because, somehow, they are less than, and incapable of doing the job correctly.

And it’s funny this comes up now, because Laura Jane has substituted at the school without any issues before and she's unsure what instigated the outrage:

"I have always conducted myself in a professional manner and would never discuss my gender identity in school."

She didn’t discuss her gender identity at school because she wasn’t teaching a class in gender identity. She probably taught more radical things like readin’ and writin’ and ‘rithmetic and stuff.

And now she’s somewhat of a pariah and a whole group of kids are thinking there’s something wrong with being transgender. Klug said the Lumberton school board will privately make the decision whether to fire her …

You have to be taught to hate in Lumberton Texas.

In Birmingham, England, Andrew Moffat, a gay assistant head teacher has reportedly resigned after parents complained that they did not want their children to “learn that it’s OK to be gay”.

Not that that’s what Moffat was teaching, but just the fact that he is gay makes him a target.

Ironically enough, Moffat is the author of Challenging Homophobia in Primary Schools, until he was targeted by a group of mainly Muslim parents in the dispute at Chilwell Croft Academy. Moffat, who resigned last December, and will leave permanently this month, also said some Christian parents complained as well.

His books have been used in literacy lessons for 10- and 11-year-olds, both at Chilwell Croft and other schools, but in a statement, the school said:

“A minority group of parents… objected to some of the resource books being used in literacy lessons with some of the oldest children in the school, which explored relationships with different families. The … objections were primarily voiced by those whose own religion took an opposing stance to homosexuality.”

Too bad, I say; if you want your child to be taught in the manner of your own personal faith — which, as we all know is a choice — please enroll your child in the appropriate religious school.

Moffat, who will soon be teaching at another school in Birmingham, says he has met with all kinds of challenges regarding his sexual orientation and the religious beliefs of parents:

“Some Christian and some Muslim parents have told me they don’t want their children learning that it’s OK to be gay. I did come out at school in an assembly after a group of 11-year-olds held up a poster they made, with the heading 'Gay is good'. It seemed like the right time to let the children know that they knew a gay person. Following my coming out, some parents from different communities complained to the school, but I maintain that my decision was the right one at that time.”

Funny, that the children are the ones who have no problem with a gay teacher.

I can only hope that these children will see what their parents are doing and this cycle of religious-based hate and homophobia will end one day.

Transgender Substitute Upsets Parents

Gay Teacher Resigns After Parents Complain

Bishop Melvin Talbert Defied His Church To Officiate Same-Sex Wedding

Bishop Melvin Talbert

I’ve often said that change will come in the fight for LGBT rights when the change comes to the South. See, down here folks like to hold onto to tradition, and grudges; I mean, how else do we explain that some Southerners still complain about the Civil War, AKA  The Act Of Northern Aggression? So, when change comes to the South, then change will most assuredly be coming everywhere, which is why this story makes me smile.

Down in Birmingham, Alabama — Birming-effing-ham, Ala-effing-bama — Melvin Talbert, a retired United Methodist Bishop, officiated at a same-sex wedding last weekend and used part of the ceremony to criticize the United Methodist Church anti-equality policy.

"This is a great day for the church and I hope it's something we can build on.”—Melvin Talbert

Talbert united in wedded bliss Joe Openshaw and Bobby Prince. Now the two men had already been legally married in September up in Washington DC, and since marriage equality has not yet come to Alabama this was a mostly symbolic ceremony, but it was a stance against intolerance and inequality that needed to be heard.

L to R: Reverend Kevin Higgs,
Bobby Prince, Reverend J.R. Finney,
Joe Openshaw and Bishop Melvin Talbert.

Openshaw and Prince are members of Discovery United Methodist Church, but were told the ceremony could not be done in a Methodist church, so they held their ceremony, for their friends and loved ones, at Covenant Community Church, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, one faith that does bless same-sex unions.

And Melvin Talbert agreed to officiate the wedding even after he received word from North Alabama Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett and other United Methodist bishops that he refrain from doing so because it’s against United Methodist church law. The United Methodist Book of Discipline says homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching" and Talbert talked about that ‘rule’ during the ceremony.

"It's wrong, evil, immoral.”—Melvin Talbert

And for his service in performing this ceremony—and let’s again remember that the ceremony he performed is not yet legal in Alabama—Melvin Talbert could be charged with breaking church law, but he says he chose doing the right thing over following archaic church laws.

Talbert, along with Openshaw and Prince, said he hopes his little ceremony would help the church to change. And it just might.

This Sunday Talbert will preach at the 10:30 AM service at Brownsville United Methodist Church, where the Reverend Kevin Higgs is pastor. Higgs was the pastoral counselor for Openshaw and Prince and he has pointed out that the Book of Discipline also has a rule that ministers must serve people of all kinds, including homosexuals.

"The Book of Discipline commands me to be in ministry for Joe and Bobby."—Pastor Kevin Higgs

Joe and Bobby, whose wedding ceremony in Birmingham looked like every other wedding done in that town, except there was no bride. There was family and friends, and flowers and pomp and circumstance; there were prayers and a reading of the "love is patient, love is kind" passage, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, and there was this:

"Why are we here? Joe and Bobby, two men created in the image of God, loyal and faithful United Methodists, servants of the church in Jesus Christ, are in love with each other."—Melvin Talbert

And isn’t that all that matters.

Love. 

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