A former groom's cottage in the Cotswolds with deeply personal interiors
'Poor little groom’s cottage – none of us have been satisfied with it,’ says the owner of this pretty, pale stone house, tucked away in an untouched part of the Cotswolds. By none of us, she is referring to the property’s previous owner – none other than Stanley Falconer, the late director of design at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, who was, together with his partner John Dempster, the last resident to put his own personal stamp on the house.
The current owner and her husband had been wanting to downsize, as their four children had, as she puts it, ‘flown the coop’, so they were looking for a smaller and more practical house. Her aesthetic sense has been shaped by her Norwegian roots, along with the 12 years that she spent living in Portugal (her husband is from Lisbon), where she founded her own childrenswear company. So she liked the idea of a project in which she could reference these two distinct influences.
What had initially endeared the originally 16th-century house to her were all Stanley’s additions – turrets and gables apparently inspired by Craigievar and Brodie Castles in Scotland, antique rim locks on the doors, wooden panelling and elm flooring, as well as the romantic garden with its outdoor rooms inspired by those at nearby Hidcote. After one holiday weekend with the entire family all together in the house, it became apparent that they had downsized a little too far. There was only a tiny kitchen and they definitely needed a larger room in which to gather. An extension was required.
She had met the Gloucestershire-based architect Christian Fleming socially and asked him to help – an inspired choice as they became an excellent team. As Christian says, ‘We would often suggest ideas to each other – mine were more architectural.’ These include the transformative oak porch that now greets you at the entrance to a new boot room, the architectural form of the extension and the attention to detail in the choices of materials. ‘Her ideas were more interior,’ he adds, referring to the gothic vaulted ceiling and reclaimed French limestone fireplace in the sitting room, the double-staged oval window with a staggered ceiling in the bedroom and all the finishes. ‘We collaborated when it came to the joinery details,’ says the owner. ‘We found we agreed on almost everything. The project was a rare combination of being both fun and challenging.’
Work began to transform what had been a mostly glass orangery, added by Stanley, into the basis for the kitchen, a hall-cum-boot room, a laundry and a bedroom. Inspiration for the extended living area, with its Strawberry Hill-style gothic windows, stone columns and lattice sashes came from a Regency Revival building nearby, while its interior scheme came from Scandinavian castles visited by the owner in her youth. She insisted on the distinctive vaulted ceiling and vast fireplace for this room, and was on hand to make sure the builders got the incline of the ceiling just right. To Christian’s horror, she painted over the handsome oak beam he had had hollowed out to cover a steel girder in the adjoining kitchen, in order to create a pale backdrop for the blue-and-white chinoiserie murals that span both areas, like those in Tureholm Castle in Sweden.
The new view from the kitchen is of a limestone-floored hall and boot room, off which is a downstairs bedroom. Its ceiling is half vaulted with mitred corners in the Portuguese fashion and clad in tongue-and-groove panelling. Drawing the eye on beyond the boot room is an enviably bright laundry room lined with windows, which the owner maintains is important, since people underestimate how much time is spent in such a room. This has a glorious 18th-century limestone sink found at auction in Lisbon, which to her relief arrived before Brexit. Here, you can cheerfully get through a whole household of laundry, while enjoying views of the garden.
Elsewhere on the ground floor, she had the dining room wallpapered in Zoffany’s ‘Verdure’, hung by the decorator so that the scenic focal point is in the optimum position – ‘which makes all the difference’. The original front door was replaced with a window and, instead of entering into a corridor as previously, you now walk into a light and airy entrance hall facing the door into the garden, which gives the old part of the house more integrity. A door from the hall now leads onto two sitting rooms, the first of which has a cupboard staircase going up to two bedrooms via a landing with walls and ceiling in a Braquenié wallpaper featuring a floral design on a nicotine ground from Pierre Frey. This could have felt too much but, in fact, works beautifully and is balanced by the calm sage green of Paint & Paper Library’s archive colour ‘Samphire’ on the woodwork.
The main sitting room, which lies beyond the first smaller sitting room on the ground floor, has panelling installed by Stanley – after he had enlarged the room by laboriously scraping away inches from the thick Cotswold stone walls – and has been made cosy with a warm cream and brown scheme, comfortable furniture and bookshelves. A late 1800s seascape by Tomás de Mello Júnior hangs above the chimneypiece.
The main bedroom was once two rooms but the owner had removed a windowless dressing room to make it into one when she moved into the house in 2013. Between its sloping walls, Portuguese upholsterer Luis Maximo squeezed a four-poster, dressed with florals from Bennison Fabrics. The shower in her husband’s bathroom is tiled in 18th-century Portuguese indigo tiles, while her own bathroom is housed in a turret added by Stanley, with a freestanding bath positioned by the window.
Outside, a swimming pool was installed beside an existing arbour, on which the roof was raised and windows put in so that the pleasingly pastoral view through to the field of sheep remains uninterrupted. Edged by York stone, with a terraced area to one side, the pool is lined in porcelain tiles with an oxidised glaze that give the impression of verdigris copper.
In the garden, the owner was helped by historic landscape specialist Sarah Cotter Craig of CC Landscape Management and designer Phillippa May, who both worked with the existing garden, adding further layers of romanticism, including beds of wild daisies, peonies and roses, walkways and hidden areas. These add to the feeling of bucolic happiness in this quiet corner of the Cotswolds. Both the current owner and Stanley had their ambitions for this house, each taking inspiration from their native castles. Now, with the help of Christian, a further successful stage has been built into the history of the groom’s house.
Fleming Architects: flemingarchitects.co.uk || CC Landscape Management: cottercraig@btinternet.com || Phillippa May Design: phillippamay.com
Mark Anthony Fox1/9Focal points in the sitting room are provided by an 18th-century landscape painting and the original fireplace with a Rockingham fender seat in Edmond Petit’s ‘Point de Hongrie’. An ottoman in a Rubelli green silk velvet tones with a sofa in Clarence House’s ‘Rayure Nantes’ in green.
Mark Anthony Fox2/9In the dining room, Zoffany’s ‘Verdure’ wallpaper in tapestry green, with its depiction of a lush pastoral landscape based on a late-17th-century painted cloth, creates a rich backdrop for gilt wall lights from Kensington Lighting Company, antique French mirrors sourced in Paris and an 18th-century marble-topped Italian console table bearing a large silver punch bowl found at Lorfords in Tetbury. A 19th-century English mahogany dining table from Brownrigg is partnered by antique French dining chairs, on an abaca rug from Tim Page Carpets.
Mark Anthony Fox3/9Howard & Sons sofas in a Claremont linen, with cushions in GP & J Baker’s ‘Seacliffe’ in sky and Blithfield’s ‘Wicklewood’ in blue, flank an Oka coffee table in front of the French 18th-century limestone chimneypiece.
Mark Anthony Fox4/9On the landing, Braquenié’s painterly floral ‘Petit Parc’ wallpaper in nutmeg/blue from Pierre Frey creates an enveloping effect, which is balanced by woodwork in ‘Samphire’, a restful sage green from the Paint & Paper Library archive. Gilt scrolled brackets, used to display antique Italian porcelain plates, and a circular 19th-century gilt-framed Italian mirror lead the eye on to the daughter’s bedroom. A French 19th-century mirror hangs above a birchwood chest of drawers from the early 1900s, with a table light from Vaughan topped by a Lucy Cope lampshade.
Mark Anthony Fox5/9In the spare room, bed curtains in ‘Pondicherry’ linen from Bennison Fabrics are lined with Chelsea Textiles’ ‘Small Check’ linen mix in antique blue.
Mark Anthony Fox6/9An antique suzani and watercoloured engravings provide a colourful contrast with a white Portuguese-style ceiling in another spare room on the ground floor.
Mark Anthony Fox7/9Walls in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Parma Gray’ set off a ‘Hanley’ bath from The Water Monopoly.
Mark Anthony Fox8/9At the back of the house, Gothic windows allow light to flood into the new sitting area adjoining the kitchen, in what was once an orangery.
Mark Anthony Fox9/9Climbing roses and abundant borders overflowing with tall purple salvias and Geranium ‘Wargrave Pink’ soften the area beside the gravel path, which separates the front of the house, with its wooden porch designed by Christian Fleming, from an outbuilding in the same Cotswold stone.
