A historic country house sensitively restored by Hugh Henry

It was a sharp, crisp autumn day and driving through Winchester and the New Forest, the current owner of this magnificent house felt as if he was gradually leaving the twenty-first century behind - a feeling confirmed as he drove through the narrow lanes and clustered villages, evocative of a Thomas Hardy novel. His first glimpse of the house - surrounded by woods, lakes and the sea beyond - made him feel that this was a valley that time had forgotten and that was utterly magical.

Convinced that this was finally what he had been looking for, he asked his family to come down and, walking around in the pouring rain, they too loved the scale, the beauty and the landscape of the place. Although a much-loved home, the new owner describes it as 'a duchess in a dressing gown, who still needed to be dressed in her finery in order to go to the ball'. Taking on the house was a huge undertaking, but one that his family wholeheartedly supported, with one major proviso: his wife insisted that since this was a once-in-a-lifetime decision, it was most important that the whole process should be fun.

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That was in 2009; over the next four years, the roof was removed and all timbers replaced. The entire house was rewired, the plumbing renewed and a sophisticated computer-controlled underfloor heating system installed that reduces the cost of heating the house by two thirds. Unusually for a large country house, ultra-fast WiFi operates seamlessly throughout - albeit after the owner had to contract an independent fibre-optic cable from the nearest town five miles away.

Hugh Henry, co-founder of Mlinaric, Henry & Zervudachi, was brought in to help with the project. 'I had never worked with the owners before,' recalls Hugh, 'but they were incredibly organised, loved the house and knew what they wanted.' This included joining the east wing - which had been detached - to the main body of the house and reconfiguring the building internally, so every room can be used. The number of bedrooms was reduced and each now has its own bathroom.

As you enter the house, you step into a long, low entrance hall. This was once the drawing room - in 1870, the roles of entrance hall and drawing room were swapped round, giving the current drawing room south-facing views over the gardens and waterfalls. Hugh replaced the hall's wooden floor with a chequerboard of local stone and, as an alternative to a central light, he designed four separate ones that have the effect of extending and heightening the space. The chimneypiece, thought by Hugh to be too high for a relatively low-ceiling room, was returned to the more lofty dining room from where it had come originally, and a new chimneypiece was carved by a local craftsman using stone from the estate quarry.

The drawing room, which is equally long and low, presented more problems, so Hugh broke it up into three separate seating areas, creating ample room to seat 24, as had been requested. Two large Howard sofas occupy the central areas, with a varied selection of armchairs and a settle upholstered in complementary but non-matching fabric. An enormous carpet, also designed by Hugh, pulls the room together along with Fortuny curtains and panelling in three shades of soft yellow.

'One of Hugh's great skills is envisaging a room from the outset and, of course, there is his use of colour,' explains Lois Allison, his assistant on the project. 'In the beginning, he would sit - he always sits - in the middle of what was then a building site, mixing large quantities of paint to get the colours he wanted.' When he came back the next time, he was touched to find a stool, paint brushes and a cushion - specially laid out for him by the builders - in the middle of the room. His eye for colour is everywhere. As a general rule, bedrooms are painted. Wallpapers - Mauny papers under the name of Zuber and also tiles, made from the family firm Castyle - have been coloured to his schemes.