Ben Pentreath and his husband Charlie McCormick's triumphantly restored Dorset parsonage
Tucked away in a Dorset village is a beguiling Georgian rectory brought triumphantly back to life by the architectural and interior designer Ben Pentreath and his husband Charlie McCormick. The house itself is an exemplar of the genre: built in 1820, simple rather than grand, complete with envy-inducing sash windows and shutters, and exceptionally pleasing proportions. It has a sense of period and layout that, although the house was built after she died, would have made Jane Austen feel at home.
The importance of the church in Georgian England permeates the interior, particularly in the dining and sitting rooms where the deep bay windows - actually added a few years after the house was built - frame, in striking close-up, the medieval church, as well as the romantic grass path, which meanders down through the garden to the wrought iron parson's gate into the churchyard.
Ben had known the parsonage from childhood, when it was rented by a school friend, and latterly rented a flat in a nearby village, so there was a certain sense of inevitability in his taking a lease on the house some eight or nine years ago. 'It had been empty for a while and was in need of some attention, which suited me fine,' he says. 'The difference between renting and buying is often in the amount of work - and money - that one is prepared to invest in a property. With a rental, you tend to do as little as possible rather than as much as possible, which is what you do when you are working for a client. Wanting to do less adds a discipline to the project and makes you really think about everything you do, which I am beginning to realise is a good thing. However, I knew we were going to be here for a long time and that this would reflect in the final approach.'
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Ben commissioned a local builder to do much of the work for a reasonable price. 'Although we did a lot of rescuing, it doesn't look over-restored,' he says. 'The kitchen floor, for example, needed replacing. As there was a patch of old stone flagging, I had hoped there would be more beneath the linoleum. Of course, there wasn't, so we simply glued wooden boards on top of the existing floor and painted them dove grey. It looks really nice and happily maintains the fiction that nothing much has happened here in the past 200 years. 'I didn't want anything to be too clever and demanding; it's a plain and uncomplicated house and needed treating very simply. I already had a lot of furniture - mostly inexpensive, simple Georgian pieces bought in local salerooms - so that set the scene. At first, I painted it all in soft greys, off-whites and so on, but as I began to spend more time here, I felt bored decoratively, and I wanted to repaint in stronger, darker colours.'
It has to be said that the colours are terrific - not so subtle as to be dreary, nor so strong as to be raucous. The kitchen was the first room to be addressed. 'A rich orangey brown seemed the right colour - it needed warming up,' says Ben. 'The sitting room seemed to need pink. That was a little trickier. After splashing splodges of various pinks about, I called Patrick Baty at Papers and Paints and he mixed exactly the right shade that warmed and softened the room.' The colour is now in one of Patrick's paint ranges - naturally called 'Parsonage Pink'. The furniture is simple - no flounces, ormolu or unwanted frilly bits; nothing that is not appropriate. But more than that, nothing that is not pretty. It is quiet, peaceful and comfortable.
The dining room had a couple of colour attacks - first as a rather scary 'Victoria plum', which quite soon morphed into an incredibly good kingfisher blue, against which lattice-back chairs painted Chippendale red work a treat, as do the Piranesi prints on the walls. And the main bedroom and bathroom? 'Another colour from Papers and Paints, from the 1950s collection. I call it freshly laid cowpat, which is rather easier to remember than its code name, "4-050"; it is wonderful in the evening light, looking out over the garden.'
There are two spare bedrooms, plus an attic room and a second bathroom. The garden is important - it wraps around the house and, indeed, defines it. Rolling down the valley towards the church, it is shallow-terraced and divided into green spaces, and is as charming as the arrangement of rooms indoors. It has been transformed with a light touch by Charlie, a talented gardener. 'Although it had been looked after, it didn't feel like the right garden for the house,' says Charlie. 'We did little to the structure, except for terracing the slope along the front of the house, replanting the beds and resurrecting the vegetable garden.' The result is uncontrived and harmonious. 'It is interesting,' says Ben, 'that when you concentrate on doing the minimum, how suddenly unimportant the maximum seems to be.' Now there's a thought.
Ben Pentreath: benpentreath.com | Charlie McCormick: mccormick.london
Sharyn Cairns1/12Plenty of seating is arranged around an ottoman in the sitting room, including a sofa from Max Rollitt, an original Howard & Sons armchair bought at a local auction, and a Regency cane bergère chair. The black linen-covered fireside chair is the 'Chauffeuse' from Pentreath & Hall. The door leads out to the hall.
Sharyn Cairns2/12Simple pieces of Georgian furniture, including a glazed bureau bookcase, have been used in the sitting room.
Sharyn Cairns3/12The kitchen's Aga was installed in the Sixties; Ben added the wooden floor, painted in Farrow & Ball's 'Hardwick White', and found the glazed wall cupboard in a junk shop.
Sharyn Cairns4/12The hall has original blue lias stone flags and a lunette window bringing light from the sitting room.
Sharyn Cairns5/12The dining room walls, in Farrow & Ball's 'St Giles Blue', are lined with Piranesi prints; the imari lamp and the shade are from Pentreath & Hall.
Sharyn Cairns6/12The landing leads to a bathroom, with a door giving access up to the attic bedroom.
Sharyn Cairns7/12A corner of the spare room.
Sharyn Cairns8/12The landing leads to a bathroom, with a door giving access up to the attic bedroom.
Sharyn Cairns9/12An oval window lets light onto the stairs.
Sharyn Cairns10/12In the spare room the bed is covered in a quilt made by Ben's mother in the Seventies.
Sharyn Cairns11/12In the main bedroom and bathroom; the printed-cotton cover on the bed is Indian.
Sharyn Cairns12/12A grass path leads through the garden to the Victorian church; Ben's husband Charlie has replanted the beds here with classic English garden flowers.
