A photographer's ancient longhouse in the Welsh hills

'I came here through ridiculous, romantic visions of being Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin on a misty hilltop, with a lurcher, music drifting out of the house, a glass of wine and a roll-up,' says photographer Julian Broad. We are discussing why, 20 years ago, he swapped his infinitely practical, two-storey loft on Old Street, EC1, for a 580-year-old longhouse on a remote hillside in Mid Wales. 'I was thrilled by the awkwardness of this place,' he explains, referring to the fact that it is miles from a main road and 10 minutes along a bumpy track to even a minor one. ‘All the decisions I’ve made throughout my life have come from the heart rather than anything practical.'

Julian's trajectory to becoming one of Britain's best portrait photographers was similarly driven by instinct. Not particularly academic, he discovered photography through a course at secondary school in the late 1970s. He left education at 16 and, unsure what to do, ended up assisting a London photographer. At 19, another assistant introduced him to Lord Snowdon, with whom he worked for two 'extraordinary' years. 'What I took from him was the relentless need to inhale what's around you', he says, recalling his second interview, when he was asked to close his eyes and describe his surroundings in minute detail.

Aged 23, Julian set up on his own and landed a regular gig for Pins and Needles magazine, shooting before and afters of readers' makeovers. 'I took every opportunity that came my way,' he recalls. Soon came commissions from cult magazines like The Face, Arena and Blitz, as well as Harpers & Queen, Vogue and Vanity Fair. The rest, as they say, is history. The National Portrait Gallery collects his work and he has photographed just about everyone, from Bruce Springsteen to Radiohead.

Wales came into the equation about 25 years ago. For the decade prior to that, Julian had been living on and off in New York, but on his trips back to the UK, he had started going to Mid Wales with friends, where they would ride dirt bikes across the hills. 'One day I thought, why don't I sell my investment property in London and buy a pile of stones in Wales that will go up by about £3.50 every three years?' he recalls. 'It felt like a genius idea,' he adds with a wry smile.

After a couple of other house viewings, Julian saw this one in the pouring rain and was lured in by the extraordinary views and big skies: 'I didn't really think it through, but the friend I'd brought with me was very enthusiastic and I decided this was the one. I had the sense that it would be a restorative place.'

The cruck-framed longhouse was in relatively good condition. Largely one room deep, it originally would have been three-quarters barn, with just one end given over to living space. By the time Julian came to it, the barn had been incorporated into the house, so it functioned as one long space. He decided to leave the layout the same. The ground floor consists of a boot room, kitchen, sitting room, music room and Julian's chipboard-lined studio. There is a staircase at each end, one leading up to the main bedroom and bathroom and the other to two spare rooms, a bathroom and his all-important darkroom.