Deep among the rolling hills of the West Country, close to the remains of a Neolithic settlement, sits a remarkable house of understated beauty. It is a very elegant manor house, part seventeenth century and part nineteenth century, with a restrained Victorian façade in the Georgian style. The present owners had been looking for a family home for some time when they saw it in 2012 – it was love at first sight. They moved in two years later.‘
The exterior was so pretty,’ explains the owner. ‘And the rooms had great proportions with masses of sunlight.’ However, nothing had been done for 30 years. ‘The back was a mess, with a lift going up into a first-floor bedroom. We realised we would have to do a lot of redesigning.’ Thankfully, she and her husband had a clear vision of how they wanted the layout to be: the front of the house, where the rooms were of generous size, would be the so-called grown-up end; the back, which could be closed off, would be for their grown-up children.
There was much to do. The double-height front hall, with a gallery around it from which the bedrooms are accessed, had been painted a dark salmonish terracotta colour; a small skylight illuminated the gallery landing but not the main part of the hall. With the help of the Salisbury-based builders, R Moulding & Co, who undertook the whole project, the owners applied for planning permission to install a large lantern skylight over the centre of the hall in order to bring this space to life. It has become a favourite place to linger and have drinks in front f the fire on the pink ‘Dalaman’ flatweave carpet, which was commissioned from Robert Stephenson.
Bleak additions at the back of the house were demolished, and the architects Johnston Cave Associates reconfigured the space and built a new roof and extension. They also re-plumbed, rewired, put in underfloor heating, which the dogs love, and constructed an L-shaped terrace and raised border on the east side of the house.
While this work was in progress, the designer Keith Anderson planned the garden. Two huge trees that robbed the extension of light were cut down, and new and existing borders were enlarged and planted up. An avenue of limes was put in place at the side of the house and a hornbeam hedge laid at the back to hide the cars. ‘We wanted to have the foundations of the garden ready before we moved in so we didn’t have to look at empty flower beds,’ explains the owner, who was in charge of the interior decoration.
It was her first grown-up home and she was well equipped for the task, having been surrounded by beautiful things since childhood and then going on to work at Sotheby’s for nine years in the Impressionist & Modern Art department in New York and London. Part Swiss, Greek and English, and with family homes in Switzerland and Paris, her taste reflects her European heritage. ‘I was quite influenced by French design – I love wonderful old-school French fabrics like those produced by Braquenié.’ With a discerning eye for detail, inherited perhaps from her great-grandmother, the legendary British decorator Syrie Maugham, the wife of writer Somerset Maugham, she set to work.
At the start of the process, the late decorator Melissa Wyndham advised on architectural features, colour and the placement of furniture. ‘I adore colour and get carried away,’ says the owner. ‘I tend towards bohemian, Indian colours and fabrics. Melissa reined me in and I pushed her to be more colourful, so we worked well together. If you are using a decorator, it is important to have your own input.’ The main bedroom, with its en-suite dressing room and bathroom, was moved from the west to the east side of the house to overlook the garden. It features that French trait of using the same fabric on the walls as for the curtains: in this case, a Christopher Moore ‘De Beautiran’ linen.
Antiques were inherited or acquired from dealers such as Orlando Harris, sale rooms and f lea markets. Paintings came from the family houses in Greece and France, and from the couple’s collection of modern British works. The kitchen has exuberant street art from Brazil, Mexico and the Caribbean. Through its eclectic gathering of art, the house has developed a distinctive personality of its own. ‘I wanted the feel to be country but modern,’ explains the owner. ‘Traditional but with a twist’.
