The partner of film, TV and stage actress Maxine Peake plans to turn disused barns at a Herefordshire farm into an acting rehearsal space and ceramic studio.

Pawlo Wintoniuk, the star's long-term partner and himself a successful art director and production designer in film and TV, has applied for planning permission and listed building consent to refit the buildings.

They lie beside a grade II farmhouse in the north of the county which changed hands last year for £1 million.

One of the buildings, a former threshing barn, would house an open-plan rehearsal space and breakout space on a reconstructed first floor, with two guest bedrooms and a lounge underneath “to enable actors to stay overnight”.

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A former stables to the rear would meanwhile become an open-plan ceramics studio, with exposed walls and a new wood-burner with flue, and a new cycle store alongside.

The plan would “help support in a small way the country’s leading role in the theatrical and cinematic industries”, his applications say.

The couple previously lived together in Salford.

But Maxine Peake was spotted at a traditional “wassailing” event in north Herefordshire at the start of this year, which she described online as “my first wassail in the new neighbourhood”.