A graceful, coastal country house with the architectural elan of a modest stately home

It is often a measure of the loveliness of an English house if it is still lovely when the weather is not, and this is one that passes that test with flying colours. Cadland House is exquisitely sited in its own extensive grounds, encircled by gardens designed by Capability Brown and set back from a long private beach facing the Isle of Wight with the New Forest stretching behind it. While these photographs were taken on a glorious summer's day, there is a lightness and an airiness, and equally a cosiness, to the interiors at all times - even when the sky is dark, the rain torrential, and the Isle of Wight a shadowy hump rising from the water. Lunch on one such wet day, the day I visited, is served in the yellow dining room, warmed by a blazing fire.

Rain or shine, this is an idyllic spot. The owners are Aldred and Fiona Drummond, who have three small children, Laszlo, Melinka and Daphne. The couple moved here when they married in 2007, taking over from Aldred's parents, who downsized to a farmhouse on the estate. The house is capacious, with 11 bedrooms plus recently converted attic dormitories and playrooms, a big kitchen to the right of the entrance hall, a boot room and a utility room. There are studies upstairs and down, and along the side of the house that faces the sea, there are three reception rooms that open onto a deep veranda - a grand drawing room, a dining room with a table that can seat up to 20 and the more intimate yellow dining room.

It is a comfortable family house, with all the architectural elan of a modest stately home, including a sweeping staircase, mahogany doors with carved architraves and splendid chimneypieces. But its current form is only the most recent of several incarnations, all of which have grown from the relatively humble beginnings of an octagonal, one-storey, thatched cottage orné of only three rooms: an 'eating room', a kitchen and a tea room. This elaborate Georgian beach-hut-style cottage was designed in the mid 1770s by architect Henry Holland as the focus of miniature pleasure gardens created by Capability Brown. The mansion to which it all belonged, now referred to as Old Cadland, and also designed by Holland, was demolished after the Second World War.

In 1785, the cottage burned to the ground and was rebuilt with a slate roof. In 1803, the slate version was extended, again by Holland, with the addition of two wings. Sixty years later, it was extensively enlarged and made habitable as a rambling dower house, which was also destroyed by fire in 1916. It remained a shell until 1935, when Cyril Drummond built the current house, honouring the position and octagonal design of Holland's original, the footprint of which is reflected in the current dining room. He gave the interior a historic feel by using reclaimed architectural features, such as the staircase and some doors, architraves and chimneypieces recovered from Old Cadland.

Fiona and Aldred are entrepreneurial and energetic. Fiona is the founder and designer of a childrenswear company, Mini-la-Mode, alongside managing the estate's properties and events business. Aldred is a property developer. They have taken on the task of running the estate with creativity and gusto. Fiona says she was initially 'frozen' by the daunting task of making a home in a house already full of furnishings, paintings and collections, and with an important decorative scheme in the main reception rooms, unchanged since it was devised in the Seventies by the interior designer David Hicks.

Never known for using quiet colours or retiring pattern, Hicks came up with a striking bespoke carpet for the hall and stairs based on the caltrop - the iron spikes thrown on the ground to impede enemy cavalry, which were introduced by an ancestor of Aldred's to help win the Battle of Culloden. Stylised as three-pointed golden stars on a strawberry-red background, the effect is more handsome than bellicose and creates a warm, if graphic, welcome. The bold scheme continues with purple geometric wallpaper in the side hall, a tomato-red linen on the dining room walls and a darker purple hessian in a sitting room.