For years Marc Burrows believed that it would be career suicide to leave London.
The music producer, remixer, and ecstatic DJ thought the energy of the capital and its concentration of creatives were essential to his creative process.
“The opportunities and the musicians and the ability to get people together is amazing,” he says.
Home was a Victorian villa in Telegraph Hill, and life was a blur of travel and work until, by the early 2020s, Burrows was feeling burned out.
He tried to fix the problem by spending weekends out in the countryside in his camper van but failed to find the peace he craved.
“I had hit a brick wall in London - I couldn’t think of anything else to create,” he says.
“I was brought up in Hertfordshire – before they built the M25 you could walk for hours – and I really felt the call to come back to my roots. I needed to be in nature and see some horizons.”
Burrows, 50, decided that the perfect spot to live would be the “hidden gem” that is the Ashdown Forest, a 6,500 acre swathe of open countryside in East Sussex.
In early 2024 he sold his London house for around £1.5m. His possessions went into storage and he spent the next eight months living in his camper van and a succession of Airbnbs until he was able to move into his country bolthole – a four-bedroom, 600 year house.
A stream runs through the garden and there are plenty of outbuildings. The property cost around £200,000 less than he had sold his London house for. “It is really beyond my dreams,” he says.
The move has meant a real change of pace for Burrows (@djmarcjb). His days now begin by collecting the eggs laid overnight by his chickens, he grows his own vegetables; in motoring terms his foot has come off the accelerator.
The household includes Burrows’s mum, who came with him from London, one of his sons, who is waiting to start university in October, a lodger, plus a roster of regular visiting friends.
He has also surrounded himself with animals – two Bengal cats, a dog, and some koi carp.
Burrows has been particularly inspired by the quality of locally produced food. “You can go up the road and buy food grown in the fields around you, cook it up, and have amazing dinner parties,” he says.
Being forced to slow down has been a challenging process. “My nervous system was so highly tuned in the London atmosphere – and I loved that – that I came out of London at a million miles per hour and I had to come down the gears,” he explains. “It was not easy. I had to do a lot of calming down.”
But just over 18 months in Burrows has found a new purpose and a new career path.
“I have been so inspired by being in the countryside,” he says. “I have met loads of new people and got involved in creating the pathways for people to find their own personal, authentic creative expression.
“Everything is so fast in London that you have to be very disciplined to give yourself the time to breathe.”
