An airy scheme for an 1830s railway cottage in Somerset

It was Julia Barnard’s mother who pointed her in the direction of her present career, when she found her a job with Laura and Bernard Ashley. She worked there during the Seventies and Eighties, a time when the Laura Ashley clothing empire was expanding into homeware and the Ashleys’ property portfolio was growing. As part of her role, Julia found herself in charge of finding, restoring and furnishing houses and chateaux and, in the process, ‘working with and learning from the best, like Charles Hammond, an originator of country house style, with a reputation for fine craftmanship’.

Marriage and motherhood followed, during which time Julia became a stylist and wrote the book New Decorator for Dorling Kindersley. More than 20 years after joining Laura Ashley, with three grown-up children, she moved to Somerset and started up her current business restoring and decorating houses. Sometimes this involves her living away from home for over a year, managing a team of builders and delivering the finished project at the end, ready for the owner to move in.

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She bought this house in Somerset in 2013, for her own personal use. A one-up, one down, cement-rendered 1830s railway cottage, it was riddled with damp and its plastic windows had blown – not a pretty picture. Her children agreed it was ugly, but Julia felt differently. ‘It had the most beautiful view over a valley, was south-facing and had an acre of garden. Added to which I knew that the family had, since their grandfather’s time, lived there happily for over 120 years.’

To make enough room for her own family, she decided to double the footprint of the house but, because it is in a conservation area, it took over a year for her to secure the correct approvals. During this time, Julia scoured the countryside for enough reclaimed local stone to build with. Once the work had started, true to form, she camped in the old house while three more bedrooms, a bathroom and a large kitchen were added. For sentimental reasons, she decided to keep the original staircase – ‘after all, the family had happily been going up and down it for generations’ – so while it was away being restored, she reached her bedroom by ladder.

She sensibly decided to devote the entire floor area of the new wing to a family kitchen and dining area, with an Aga at one end and a dining table at the other. The room is divided by a large island and two glass-fronted storage cupboards, which were placed to one side to allow for ease of movement.

In contrast to the airy kitchen, the ground floor of the original house is a cosy library space. The room is narrow, so Julia has cleverly had the bookshelves built into the wall, as well as the Chilmark stone fire, the flue of which is part of the back wall. The mantelpiece lines up exactly with the bookshelves. Julia’s upholsterer cut the middle out of two family sofas that had seen better days, making them into two-seater sofas with matching camel backs.

On the floor above the library is Julia’s bedroom, with its own dressing room and bathroom. ‘You always hope that you will uncover something wonderful when you restore a property, and here that was a window with a beautifully curved reveal,’ she explains. ‘I copied it throughout the house and used it as the inspiration for the curved wall between my bathroom and bedroom. This meant that the skirting boards had to be individually made, but I don’t regret the additional expense.’

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A work studio at the end of the long and narrow garden acts as a focal point. This building was not allowed to exceed a certain height, so Julia decided to sink the ground floor, allowing for two floors – a bathroom on the ground floor and a studio above it. From what had been a tiny dark and dank cottage, Julia has wrested a light, bright and essentially personal home, full of colour and pattern, which happily rewards the years she has spent restoring the homes of others.

Julia Barnard: juliabarnard.com