The Lakeside Barn - Design Masterpiece with Views!

The Lakeside Barn is an architectural masterpiece that was built in 1997 from the old wharf buildings at Darling Harbour.

It has been featured on the cover of "Southern Highlands Homes II” - showcasing the best in architecture and rural living in the Southern Highlands.

The moment you walk into The Lakeside Barn, you are greeted with head-to-toe windows that overlook the iris and lily pond lake. The Lakeside Barn is the perfect romantic escape, only 90 minutes from Canberra & Sydney!

The barn is positioned to take full advantage of the northern sunny aspect, the lovely lake with iris and lily pond, stone walls and the woodland which is planted with aspens, birches and maples. The woodland has forget-me-nots, winter roses, and periwinkle flowering during different seasons, briar roses dribble into the water and are delightful when in flower. In spring different varieties of daffodils bob merrily in the breeze around the lake amongst the seaside daisies.

The lake was created from a flat paddock and it is fully lined as the rich topsoil is so deep there wasn’t any clay to hold water, a jetty was created and a small boat that belonged to the owner's grandparents. Wild ducks call the lake home and there are baby ducklings scooting around every spring.

The whole garden was a bare paddock when the owners bought the property in 1996, and they have planted and landscaped all you see. Well over 6000 trees and shrubs have been planted on the property as this was an old dairy farm and there were very few trees. The stone walls are all built from stone sourced on the property.

The barn was built after the owners finished travelling the northeastern states of America and seeing some fabulous rural barns some 25 years ago. They returned home and had the architect draw the barn from piles of photos they bombarded him with and it was built in 1997, when there were really no other barns around. They lived in the barn for a year while renovating and rebuilding their main homestead and loved every minute of it, wondering why they just didn’t stay in the barn!

The wood was sourced from the old ironbark warehouse timbers from the now Darling Harbour and through the help of local craftsmen, they created the wonderful framework from enormous 14x14 inch beams some up to 7 metres long, and huge purpose-built rafters, hiding all fitting internally for aesthetics. The owners had the rusticated weatherboards milled to match the old cottage at the time and had the huge barn hinges made by a local blacksmith. The owners had some of the wharf timbers milled for the fabulous wide floorboards and simply tongue-oiled them. The red front door is an original door from the old cottage and you can see where the farm dogs had once scratched to get inside probably for warmth many years ago. The rustic timber lining boards in the kitchen were repurposed from old used boards from the original cottage. The huge bank of north-facing windows was sourced from an old school in Sydney and they have used the remainder of these in their main homestead as well.

The Barn is an adults-only property & we cannot accept bookings for babies, children or pets.