period living - vintage home style

VintageHome Style

PERIOD LIVING

H O U S E A N D G A R D E N I N S P I R A T I O N l C R E A T I V E I D E A S l R E N O V A T I O N S

01_Cover.indd 1 23/08/2017 11:21

46-55_Faulkes.indd 2 21/08/2017 17:05

WelcomeIn Period Living Vintage Home Style, we showcase some of

the most beautiful period properties in the UK, from elegant

farmhouses to perfect Cotswold cottages and bijou Victorian

terraces, filled with inspiring ideas and creative solutions.

Period homes make up a significant – and architecturally

important – portion of the UK’s housing stock. Whether they

retain all of their original features, or have been modernised over

the years, each property is imbued with its own unique charm.

When decorating and furnishing an old home, it’s important to

instil a sense of ‘vintage style’ in some way. Exactly what that

means is open to interpretation – perhaps you favour an eclectic

interior look that appears to have evolved over time, mixing

classic and contemporary designs with antique and fleamarket

finds; or maybe your style is more focused on one era. But

creating a feeling of age is key to preserving the house’s soul.

So, whether you are planning a large-scale renovation, a

single-room decorating project, or simply love vintage style,

immerse yourself in this definitive collection, where you’ll

find all the inspiration you need.

Period Living 3

3_Welcome.indd 3 23/08/2017 11:22

Cove

r pho

togr

aphs

Dar

ren

Chun

g, B

rent

Dar

by, D

avid

Par

mite

r, Am

anda

Tur

ner

EDITORIALEditor Melanie Griffiths

Content Editor Rachel CrowChief Sub Editor Emily Hawkes

Homes Editor Karen DarlowStyle Editor Pippa Blenkinsop

DESIGNHead of Art Billy Peel

Book Art Editor Sarah Overs

PRINT PRODUCTIONHead of Production Bill Griffiths

Print & Digital Production Executive Alice Sullivan

PUBLISHING MANAGEMENTDeputy Managing Director Nick Noble

Director of Content & Product Development Michael HolmesEditorial Director Jason Orme

4 Period Living

DISCLAIMERAll contents © 2017 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the details of products/services referred to in this publication. Websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates to them. This book is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein.

4_Flannel.indd 4 23/08/2017 11:22

PERIOD LBRITA

IN’S BEST-S

ELLIN

G PERIOD HOMES

MAG

AZINE

OCTOBER

2017

HO

ME S

l D

E CO

RA T I N

G l

GA R

DE N

S l

A NT I Q

UE S

& V I N

T A GE

Rustic

charm

Delicious recipes for using

up your garden harvest

Plo

t to plate

CHAR

ACTER

FUL H

OMES,

FROM A

CONVER

TED BA

RN

TO AN

EDWAR

DIAN VIL

LA

ADD SPACE

& VALUE BY

CONVERTING

YOUR LOFT

Create the perfect sanctuary with the

latest beds, furniture and accessories

Beautiful

bedrooms

PLUS

Patterned

wallpapers

Art Nouveau

antiques

Statement

wood-burners

HOW TO

GIVE OLD

WINDOW

S

A HEALTH

CHECK

10

9770958198203

www.p

eriod

living

.co.uk

£4.3

5

GOING GREEN

A period house

gets the ultimate

eco makeover

OD LIVING

BRITAIN’S BES

T-SEL

LING PE

RIOD HOMES M

AGAZIN

E

OCTOBER

2017

HO

ME S

GA R

DE N

S l

A NT I Q

UE S

& V I N

T A GE l

RE N

OV A T I O

N

Rustic

charm



Plo

t to plate

CHAR

ACTER

FUL H

OMES,

FROM A

CONVER

TED BA

RN

TO AN

EDWAR

DIAN VIL

LA

ADD SPACE

& VALUE BY

CONVERTING

YOUR LOFT



Beautiful

bedrooms

PLUS

Patterned

wallpapers

Art Nouveau

antiques

Statement

wood-burners

HOW TO

GIVE OLD

WINDOW

S

A HEALTH

CHECK

10

9770958198203

www.p

eriod

living

.co.uk

£4.3

5GOING GREEN

A period house

gets the ultimate

eco makeover

NGR

E NO

V A T I ON



Plo

t to plate

ADD SPACE

& VALUE BY

CONVERTING

YOUR LOFT



Beautiful

bedrooms

PLUS

Patterned

wallpapers

Art Nouveau

antiques

Statement

wood-burners

OLD

OWS

EALTH

ECK

10

9770958198203

www.p

eriod

living

.co.uk

£4.3

5

PERIOD LIVING

BRITAIN’S BES

T-SEL

LING PE

RIOD HOMES M

AGAZIN

E

OCTOBER

2017

HO

ME S

l D

E CO

RA T I N

G l

GA R

DE N

S l

A NT I Q

UE S

& V I N

T A GE l

RE N

OV A T I O

N

Rustic

charm



Plo

t to plate

CHAR

ACTER

FUL H

OMES,

FROM A

CONVER

TED BA

RN

TO AN

EDWAR

DIAN VIL

LA

ADD SPACE

& VALUE BY

CONVERTING

YOUR LOFT



Beautiful

bedrooms

PLUS

Patterned

wallpapers

Art Nouveau

antiques

Statement

wood-burners

HOW TO

GIVE OLD

WINDOW

S

A HEALTH

CHECK

10

9770958198203

www.p

eriod

living

.co.uk

£4.3

5

GOING GREEN

A period house

gets the ultimate

eco makeover

OD LIVING

BRITAIN’S BES

T-SEL

LING PE

RIOD HOMES M

AGAZIN

E

OCTOBER

2017

HO

ME S

GA R

DE N

S l

A NT I Q

UE S

& V I N

T A GE l

RE N

OV A T I O

N

Rustic

charm



Plo

t to plate

CHAR

ACTER

FUL H

OMES,

FROM A

CONVER

TED BA

RN

TO AN

EDWAR

DIAN VIL

LA

ADD SPACE

& VALUE BY

CONVERTING

YOUR LOFT

Beautiful

bedrooms

PLUS

Patterned

wallpapers

Art Nouveau

antiques

Statement

wood-burners

10

9770958198203

www.p

eriod

living

.co.uk

£4.3

5

NG GREEN

A period house

gets the ultimate

eco makeover

PERIOD LIVING

BRITAIN’S BES

T-SEL

LING PE

RIOD HOMES M

AGAZIN

E

OCTOBER

2017

HO

ME S

l D

E CO

RA T I N

G l

GA R

DE N

S l

A NT I Q

UE S

& V I N

T A GE l

RE N

OV A T I O

N

Rustic

charm



Plo

t to plate

CHAR

ACTER

FUL H

OMES,

FROM A

CONVER

TED BA

RN

TO AN

EDWAR

DIAN VIL

LA

ADD SPACE

& VALUE BY

CONVERTING

YOUR LOFT



Beautiful

bedrooms

PLUS

Patterned

wallpapers

Art Nouveau

antiques

Statement

wood-burners

HOW TO

GIVE OLD

WINDOW

S

A HEALTH

CHECK

10

9770958198203

www.p

eriod

living

.co.uk

£4.3

5

GOING GREEN

A period house

gets the ultimate

eco makeover

PERIOD LIVING

BRITAIN’S BES

T-SEL

LING PE

RIOD HOMES M

AGAZIN

E

OCTOBER

2017

HO

ME S

l D

E CO

RA T I N

G l

GA R

DE N

S l

A NT I Q

UE S

& V I N

T A GE l

RE N

OV A T I O

N

Rustic

charm



Plo

t to plate

CHAR

ACTER

FUL H

OMES,

FROM A

CONVER

TED BA

RN

TO AN

EDWAR

DIAN VIL

LA

ADD SPACE

& VALUE BY

CONVERTING

YOUR LOFT



Beautiful

bedrooms

PLUS

Patterned

wallpapers

Art Nouveau

antiques

Statement

wood-burners

HOW TO

GIVE OLD

WINDOW

S

A HEALTH

CHECK

10

70958198203

www.p

eriod

living

.co.uk

£4.3

5

GOING GREEN

A period house

gets the ultimate

eco makeover

PERIOD LIVING

BRITAIN’S BES

T-SEL

LING PE

RIOD HOMES M

AGAZIN

E

OCTOBER

2017

HO

ME S

l D

E CO

RA T I N

G l

GA R

DE N

S l

A NT I Q

UE S

& V I N

T A GE l

RE N

OV A T I O

N

Rustic

charm



Plo

t to plate

CHAR

ACTER

FUL H

OMES,

FROM A

CONVER

TED BA

RN

TO AN

EDWAR

DIAN VIL

LA

ADD SPACE

& VALUE BY

CONVERTING

YOUR LOFT

Beautiful

bedrooms

PLUS

Patterned

wallpapers

Art Nouveau

antiques

Statement

wood-burners

10

198203

www.p

eriod

living

.co.uk

£4.3

5

GREEN

A period house

gets the ultimate

eco makeover

PERIOD LIVING

BRITAIN’S BES

T-SEL

LING PE

RIOD HOMES M

AGAZIN

E

OCTOBER

2017

HO

ME S

l D

E CO

RA T I N

G l

GA R

DE N

S l

A NT I Q

UE S

& V I N

T A GE l

RE N

OV A T I O

N

Rustic

charm



Plo

t to plate

CHAR

ACTER

FUL H

OMES,

FROM A

CONVER

TED BA

RN

TO AN

EDWAR

DIAN VIL

LA

Beautiful

bedroomsGOING GREEN

A period house

gets the ultimate

eco makeover

PERIOD LIVI

BRITAIN’S BES

T-SEL

LING PE

RIOD HOMES M

AGAZIN

E

OCTOBER

2017

HO

ME S

l D

E CO

RA T I N

G l

GA R

DE N

S l

A NT I Q

UE S

& V I N

T A GE

Rustic

charm



Plo

t to plate

CHAR

ACTER

FUL H

OMES,

FROM A

CONVER

TED BA

RN

TO AN

EDWAR

DIAN VIL

LA

GOING GREEN

A period house

gets the ultimate

eco makeover

PERIOD LIVBRITA

IN’S BEST-S

ELLIN

G PERIOD HOMES

MAG

AZINE

OCTOBER

2017

HO

ME S

l D

E CO

RA T I N

G l

GA R

DE N

S l

A NT I Q

UE S

& V I N

T A GE

Rustic

charm



Plo

t to plate

CHAR

ACTER

FUL H

OMES,

FROM A

CONVER

TED BA

RN

TO AN

EDWAR

DIAN VIL

LA

GOING GREEN

A period house

gets the ultimate

eco makeover

For more home and garden inspiration,

pick up a copy of

w w w.periodliving.co.uk/vintagehomeFOR THE LATEST SUBSCRIPTION OFFERS, VISIT

PERIOD LIVINGBRITAIN’S BEST-SELLING PERIOD HOMES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

H O M E S l D E C O R A T I N G l G A R D E N S l A N T I Q U E S & V I N T A G E l R E N O V A T I O N

Rustic charm

Delicious recipes for using up your garden harvest

Plot to plate

CHARACTERFUL HOMES, FROM A CONVERTED BARN TO AN EDWARDIAN VILLA

ADD SPACE & VALUE BY

CONVERTING YOUR LOFT

Create the perfect sanctuary with the latest beds, furniture and accessories

Beautiful bedrooms

PLUSPatterned

wallpapersArt Nouveau

antiquesStatement

wood-burnersHOW TO GIVE OLD WINDOWS A HEALTH CHECK

10

9770958

198203

www.

perio

dlivi

ng.c

o.uk

£4.

35

GOING GREEN A period house

gets the ultimate eco makeover

PL SINGLE SUBS ADVERT.indd 5 23/08/2017 12:33

Contents

The shoemaker’s cottageSet in an idyllic location on the village green, Liz and Tim Hoad’s home has an intriguing past

Our forever homeMel Prescott-Davies and Chris Green’s cosy Victorian terrace is full of vintage character

Looking to the past �e late-Victorian home of Sarah Dubois and Nigel Phillips is brimming with treasures

A fine vintageLouise Lingwood has decorated her cottage with secondhand finds and Art Deco pieces

On the waterside�is Victorian watermill conversion has been beautifully renovated by Tina and Simon Jones

The old Sunday schoolHelena Garcia and William Briggs’ atmospheric home started life as a convent building

In good tasteLottie Wern-Ooi and her husband Yang have renovated an old bakery to create their home

Discovered treasure�is local architectural gem has been restored and filled with one-off pieces by Michelle Lewin

6 Period Living

818

26 38 46 56 6676

8114

106

6-7_Contents.indd 6 23/08/2017 12:19

Period Living 7

Built in a dayChris and Alison Young have slowly uncovered the secrets of their charming thatched cottage

Down in the valleysJane Beck put in 15 years of hard work to transform a derelict shell into her dream home

Time for changeKerrie Griffin-Rogers has evolved her ancient cottage over the years to keep it looking fresh

Simply beautifulNeil Mckay and Helen Davison restored their farmworker’s cottage with painstaking detail

Vintage charm Carrie and Michael Page returned their home’s character and finished it with unique pieces

By royal appointmentWendy and Peter Blakemen renovated a cottage with a fascinating history using lots of DIY

Milestone cottageAlison Lewis celebrated her 50th birthday by buying and decorating this gem of a house

Home from homeVal and Norman Rennie created a dream rural getaway with creative thinking and upcycling

8496

106 114 122 132 144 154

66

46

966-7_Contents.indd 7 23/08/2017 12:19

8 Period Living

THESHOEMAKER’S

COTTAGEIn a picture-perfect setting on the village green, with views of the

sea beyond, a tumbledown cottage became a much-loved home for Liz and Tim Hoad, with a surprising coincidence in its history

Words and styling Karen Darlow | Photographs Darren Chung

8-17_Hoad.indd 8 21/08/2017 10:36

Period Living 9

Liz and Tim’s pretty two-up, two-down cottage is in a prime spot overlooking Dorset’s Jurassic coastline (left) and the village pond. The couple have put a gate into their garden wall so that they can keep an eye on the ducks

8-17_Hoad.indd 9 21/08/2017 10:36

10 Period Living

itting on the edge of the village green, with views of Winspit Bay, this pretty stone-built cottage is an

idyllic place to be. Near some of the best sailing along Dorset’s

Jurassic Coast, the area is the perfect base for family holidays.

There’s a certain synchronicity in how Liz and Tim, who owned a footwear business, came to take on the old village cobbler and shoemaker’s house. ‘Tim used to come here in the 1950s, then we brought our children here,’ recalls Liz. ‘We were staying in a B&B when we saw the cottage up for sale. It was dark, damp and tatty, but Tim and I loved it. When we found out it had been the village shoemaker’s home and workshop, that just added to its appeal, and we bought it the following week.’

That was 22 years ago, and what worked for the family back then didn’t work quite so well as grandchildren came along. ‘We got to the point, about 14 years ago, where we needed more space,’ explains Liz. ‘But the cottage is Grade II listed and in a Conservation Area, so we knew we could only make minimal changes. Thankfully we were able to enlarge the kitchen-diner and extend the roofline to include a dormer. It added just 10 square metres, but it made all the difference. The kitchen and main

S bedroom feel much more spacious and it’s lovely to have room for a small sofa in the kitchen.’

Though Liz and Tim have made updates over the years, it is still possible to trace the home’s humble origins. In the living room you can see where a hatch to the hayloft has been filled in. And when the couple replaced the staircase, they found the remnants of some outside steps – these, too, would have led to the hayloft, perhaps even to the shoemaker’s leather store. In the living room, the original flags had been laid straight on the earth, ‘terribly chilly in winter’, until they installed a woodburning stove, which, along with the Aga in the kitchen, sorted the cottage’s damp walls and keeps things cosy. Battered by sea breezes, the windows were rotten and have been replaced like for like.

After three years of travelling to and fro, Liz and Tim decided to retire in Dorset. ‘Retire’ perhaps isn’t the right word, as the couple are so busy. Tim enjoys sailing and golf, and is an excellent handyman so keeps himself occupied around the cottage and garden. Liz loves to spend time with their grandchildren, is an active member of the church PCC, enjoys crochet, and tends the garden.

She doesn’t do anything by halves, so it’s no surprise that Liz has also thrown herself into creating a cosy home. ‘There isn’t a lot of space and I’m not very good at being minimalistic, but luckily this cottage is very versatile – it just has to pack up and unpack as we need it,’ she says. In any case, when space gets tight in the cottage, Liz retreats to her ‘other living room’ – a stunning cottage garden, brimming with plants of all heights and textures. Alongside her crocheting, the garden is her passion, and Tim came up with the perfect place for her to enjoy both at the same time. Restoring the once-ramshackle greenhouse at the bottom of the garden, he has created a craft studio. It’s a bright, warm space where Liz can look up from her needlework and enjoy leafy views of her beautiful cottage and garden from a different perspective.

THE STORYOwners Liz, a retired teacher, and Tim Hoad, who owned a shoe shop business in Sevenoaks, Kent. They have three grown-up childrenProperty A Grade II-listed two-up, two-down cottage, built in local Purbeck stone and dating back to around 1750. The house is in a quiet village west of Swanage in DorsetWhat they did The couple renovated the house and built a small extension at the rear

8-17_Hoad.indd 10 21/08/2017 10:36

Period Living 11

Above: Sandy neutrals and sea blues create a relaxing feel in the living room. Laura Ashley sofas face the Clearview stove (pictured right) that Liz and Tim fitted to take the chill off the ancient flagstones. The stable door is the original and was restored by local joiner Colin Mutter, who also replicated the original windows. The rug is from The Braided Rug Company, and above the fireplace is a seascape collage by local artist Sarah Wootton

8-17_Hoad.indd 11 21/08/2017 10:37

12 Period Living

This image: With its Aga, Windsor chairs, farmhouse table and rustic terracotta floor, the extended room has all the ingredients of a classic country kitchen. The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball’s White TieOpposite: Tim fitted the kitchen cabinets and made the wall cupboards. For a similar butler’s sink and taps, try Shaws of Darwen. French windows in the extended section give a lovely view of the garden, framed by curtains in Vanessa Arbuthnott’s Feather and Egg fabric. A Lloyd Loom sofa from Smiths Vintage is the perfect choice for this spot. The candelabra above the table is from Country Corner

8-17_Hoad.indd 12 21/08/2017 10:37

Period Living 13

8-17_Hoad.indd 13 21/08/2017 10:37

14 Period Living

Above: In the master bedroom, a patchwork quilt from Smiths Vintage complements Liz’s floral plates and accessories. On the window ledge, next to an antique lamp that once belonged to Liz’s grandmother, is a pair of tiny T-bars – daughter Anna’s first party shoes

Below left: The guest room at the back of the house has been furnished with Liz and Tim’s grandchildren in mind. Tim built the cabin-style bed, bookshelves and fitted cupboard, while Liz made the nautical bunting and the cheerful crochet throw

Below middle: The embroidered tapestry evening bag belonged to Tim’s mother. For a similar decorative mirror, try Wesley-BarrellBelow right: The en-suite bathroom was created when the cottage was extended before the Hoads’ time

8-17_Hoad.indd 14 21/08/2017 10:37

Period Living 15

Liz calls the immaculately kept garden her ‘other living room’. Bathed in Dorset sunshine, all manner of cottage garden plants thrive here. From this angle it’s possible to see where the roofline was extended, and how a hidden dormer was added in the master bedroom to emulate the style of that in the guest room, on the left of the picture

8-17_Hoad.indd 15 21/08/2017 10:37

16 Period Living

Marking the boundary between the flower garden and vegetable patch is a bespoke gate made by the couple’s son Toby at his nearby Green Wood Workshop. He also makes chairs, fencing, plant supports and other traditional coppice products

8-17_Hoad.indd 16 21/08/2017 10:37

Period Living 17

Tim renovated a ramshackle greenhouse to create a garden room where Liz can enjoy her handicrafts. He built bench seats around two sides of the room, with cupboards where Liz stores her materials and crochet yarns. Warm – ‘too warm sometimes,’ says Liz – and bright, it’s the perfect craft studio

8-17_Hoad.indd 17 21/08/2017 10:37

18 Period Living

OUR FOREVER HOME

Behind a conventional Victorian façade, Mel Prescott-Davies and Chris Green’s family home is bursting with character and cosiness

Words Pippa Blenkinsop | Styling Anna Morley | Photographs Darren Chung

18-25_Prescott Davis.indd 18 21/08/2017 10:28

Period Living 19

When Chris and Mel moved in, the dining room floor was covered in lino, but Mel peeled it back to reveal an original quarry tiled floor. The settle was made bespoke by The Canadian Pine Company and doubles as a useful storage chest for the family’s winter boots and coats


20 Period Living

he moment we stepped through the front door, we got a warm, fuzzy feeling and felt like we were home,’ says Mel Prescott-Davies of the moment she and partner Chris Green found their three-bedroom terraced house on the outskirts of Stoke-on-

Trent. Though a familiar feeling to many people, for this couple it was extra special, as they had been waiting for it for most of their lives.

Not only was it to be their first home together after both had been married previously, but, having served in the Army for 21 years, completing tours of both Bosnia and Afghanistan, Chris had never really had a place he could call home. ‘He had only ever lived in boxy, cold military housing, so it was important for us to have somewhere that was warm and welcoming,’ explains Mel.

First impressions were crucial when it came to buying, but this was by no means the only criteria: there were a lot of boxes to tick on the wishlist that Mel had given local estate agents at the start of their search. Having grown up in Edwardian and Victorian houses, she knew that she wanted a period home filled with original features, and was not willing to compromise. ‘We wanted a Victorian house with three good-sized double bedrooms. It had to have an original bay and sash windows, and a recessed doorway with a Minton-tiled step leading up to it,’ she explains. ‘Inside, it also had to have a Minton- tiled hallway, original fireplaces throughout, and preferably a hand-built kitchen with a Belfast sink.’

T A property of this specification would have been too costly in Manchester, Mel’s home town, so the couple decided to focus their search on Stoke-on-Trent, which was conveniently located for Chris’ work. With such an extensive list, Mel and Chris had many disappointing viewings, but, after a year, they managed to find a property online that ticked every box. ‘The only thing we had to compromise on was the fact that it was on a fairly busy road, but apart from that it was perfect,’ says Mel.

Luckily, the house was in good condition structurally, needing only minor repairs. ‘The chimney stack had to be rebuilt and repointed, as it was in quite a bad condition,’ says Mel, ‘but most other things just needed a good old scrub.’

Committed to preserving the period features – a passion nurtured during her time working with the National Trust – Mel was keen to be hands-on straight away. First on the agenda was the tiled hallway and dining room floors, which had been near the top of their must-have list. ‘We started on Friday, and it took us the entire day to scrub the dining room floor, then we applied sealant, which we left overnight, followed by another coat on Saturday. By Sunday afternoon, it was ready and we ate our roast dinner in there.’

Before starting, Mel was careful to do plenty of research, seeking expert advice for the best techniques and products to use. ‘We feel like the custodians of the property, so we think it is important that we do our bit for it,’ says Mel. ‘We love this house. It’s our forever home, so we want to make sure that we are doing the right thing.’

To complement the flooring, the couple then painted the walls in neutral colours. ‘The hallway was red at the bottom and bronze on the dado rail, with tobacco yellow above,’ recalls Mel, ‘but we decided to paint over in a cream because we thought there was no point in having a feature wall when the floor is so spectacular.’ Inspired by the rejuvenated Victorian floors, but also to enhance the cosy feeling, they opted for a warm scheme of creams and reds, with pastel-blue accents, throughout the house – it is fittingly patriotic, though unintentionally so.

As well as a wealth of original features, the couple were lucky to inherit a bespoke kitchen


Period Living 21

THE STORYOwners Mel Prescott-Davies, an NNEB nanny, lives here with partner Chris Green, a Warrant Officer 2 Squadron Sergeant Major in the Army Air Corps. Chris’ children Megan, Ryan and Jack often visitProperty A three-bedroom, 1900 terraced home in Stoke-on-TrentWhat they did The house was structurally sound, but Mel and Chris have reinstated and revitalised period features

with fitted, solid pine units that complemented the style of property. ‘We had intended to have a kitchen built exactly like this one, which would have cost us thousands, so to find it already here was amazing.’ says Mel. ‘It’s my favourite place in the house. It’s a nice big room, which was important to me as I love baking.’

The couple have furnished the rest of the house with a mix of inherited, found and bargain buys. ‘It’s hard to remember if there’s anything I’ve paid full-price for,’ Mel laughs. Indeed, a bureau from Freecycle is a charming feature in the living room, the dining room chairs were bought from a charity shop for a pound each, and homespun textiles decorate almost every room. And, although the home is designed as an escape from military duties, everywhere you look you are reminded of the army connection – Chris’ regimental photograph hangs proudly on the living room wall; in the kitchen is a piece of original art by Derek Blois featuring the word ‘scoff’: what the army call their food; and Chris’ great-grandfather’s old Moroccan side table, picked up on army tour, sits in the corner of the master bedroom.

Just as Chris is committed to serving his country, so Mel continues to focus on restoring the property to its former glory and maximising its potential. While they may have found the feature-filled family home that they had always dreamed of, the list of projects continues to grow. ‘This year all the timber windows are being restored, the original wood floors will be uncovered and we’re fitting a mini Aga range cooker, which is exciting as I’ve always wanted one,’ says Mel. ‘The final push will be to convert the loft!’

Below: A stained-glass panel given to Mel for free from a salvage yard adds a decorative touch to the kitchen window. Mel handmade the curtain under the sink using one of her favourite vintage Cath Kidston fabrics, Posy. ‘I’d saved it up for years waiting for the right home to use it in,’ she says


22 Period Living

Top left: Mel and Chris cleaned the original Minton tiled hallway using HG tile cleaner with a protective coating in a satin finish, recommended by Period Features in nearby LeekLeft: An old walnut veneer bureau found on Freecycle fits perfectly in the living room. The rocking chair once belonged to Chris’ grandmother and the cushion is from B&Q. The curtains are made from Laura Ashley’s Awning Stripe in Raspberry/Lichen

Top: An upcycled printing tray is used to display treasured keepsakes and souvenirs that Chris brought back for Mel from his travelsAbove left: Pickle, the family catAbove right: The dresser was inherited as part of a bespoke fitted wooden kitchen and makes the perfect place for Mel to display her collection of Emma Bridgewater ceramics, made just down the road in The Potteries


Period Living 23

Mel and Chris wanted a cosy, calm living room, that would also reflect their personalities. The sofa is from Next and on the wall is Chris’ regimental photograph. Above this is an artwork of Chris’ cap badge by Derek Blois. The clock is from an antiques shop. ‘We liked it because of its military connection,’ says Mel, ‘as it was awarded to a Sergeant in the 1900s’


24 Period Living


Period Living 25

Above: For the master bedroom the couple chose a traditional Victorian style bed from Bedroomworld. The wardrobe dates from the 1930s and was left by the previous ownersLeft: Megan’s bedroom has a feminine feel. The artwork is a framed swatch of Cath Kidson’s Patchwork Digital wallpaperRight: Tongue-and-groove panelling gives the bathroom a vintage feel. Colourful accessories, retro signs and enamelware complete the look


26 Period Living

LOOK

ING

TOTH

E PA

ST

Sarah Dubois and Nigel Philips have breathed new life into a late Victorian house, and filled it with inherited and collected treasures

Words and styling Samantha Scott-JeffriesPhotographs David Parmiter

THE STORYOwners Sarah Dubois, who makes wedding dresses, and her husband Nigel Philips, a landscape and garden designer and horticultural lecturer (nigelphilips.co.uk). They have four grown-up children who are all musicians, and three grandchildrenProperty Late Victorian six-bedroom house in Lewes, East SussexWhat they did The couple have renovated the house, enlarged the kitchen by combining the original scullery and dining room, created a larger bathroom and converted the attic rooms for the children

26-37_Dubois.indd 26 21/08/2017 11:57

Period Living 27

26-37_Dubois.indd 27 21/08/2017 11:57

28 Period Living

y her own admission, Sarah Dubois is an old-fashioned kind of girl. ‘I love period furniture and being in a place with a

sense of history,’ she enthuses. When she

and husband Nigel Philips decided to look for a family

home, a priority was finding a large enough period house to accommodate the furniture she had inherited from her parents.

Sarah’s grandmother was an avid collector of Booths and Wedgwood china, and ‘had a great eye for furniture’ as her own father had been a cabinetmaker. Her mother was a dressmaker who worked for a couturier in Old Bond Street, while her father worked for a shirt company. As a result, Sarah, herself a wedding dressmaker, attributes much of her style to her forebears, especially her mother, who loved going to auctions and regularly came back with beautiful bargains. ‘I like the warm, lived-in look and using old things, but I’m also a little bit obsessive about being tidy,’ she admits.

In 1999, when the couple first took on the home that so readily possessed these values, however, it painted a very different picture. ‘When we came to view the house, it was typically 1970s, with a lot of bold William Morris wallpaper, architraves that had been added halfway up the walls and banisters that had been boarded up on the staircases. It also had – quite typically of a Victorian property – a tiny scullery, which was wildly impractical with four children ranging from 10 to 21 years old.’ Despite this, they loved the house. ‘We could see that the work we wanted to do to make it ours was achievable,’ says Sarah.

B After the family moved in, they immediately got stuck into the messy renovation tasks. ‘First we removed the carpets, which were glued down, and the linoleum tiles in the scullery were scraped off,’ Sarah recalls. The couple discovered terracotta tiles and floorboards in good order beneath them, ‘but they were smothered in a thick, black substance like creosote, so we went through a lot of sandpaper to remove it’. They then removed the wallpaper with steaming machines from a local hire plant and knocked down a makeshift conservatory attached to the back of the house, which blocked the view of the garden.

The kitchen itself was dark and small, ‘so we took down a wall and joined the original scullery with the dining room,’ Sarah says, a decision which entailed the floor being raised to create one level from what had previously been three distinct areas. They then inserted French doors leading from the new larger kitchen to the outside space that Nigel would eventually transform into a family-friendly garden. ‘We put up huge sheets of polythene while we did the messy work. It was tricky, especially with the children, but it was summer, so they could be outside, away from the work,’ Sarah recalls.

The kitchen had an old gas fire in it, ‘but I wanted an Aga like the one my mother had in her house in the country, for its wonderful warmth,’ Sarah says. The couple managed to find a second-hand model and had it converted from solid fuel to run on the gas that was already in situ. They installed it in a fireplace opening they discovered after hacking away at the chimney breast late one night. Nigel and Sarah then designed the kitchen with the Aga as a central focus, creating two separate dining areas – one for informal cups of tea by the range and a second to host their large family.

Upstairs, the couple decided to knock the original long, narrow WC into the bathroom next to it, to create one large family bathroom. They installed a roll-top bath, kept the original position of the toilet and added a basin from a local trade plumbers. They laid a practical linoleum chequerboard floor with a Victorian look, ‘as the floor slopes and has such a scoop in the middle that tiles wouldn’t have been an option’.

The next major task was to convert the attic rooms, which would once have been occupied by the maids of the house, for the children, and create

Right: The couple had solid wood kitchen cabinets made when they moved in, and recently added marble worktops. At the heart of the design is a second-hand Aga, which gives off so much warmth that a laundry airer hanging on the ceiling above (there is another one in the bathroom) avoids the need for a tumble dryer. Along with antique free-standing pieces and vintage utensils, it showcases Sarah’s love of ‘using old things’. The kitchen floor has been refinished with durable yacht paint by International Paint

26-37_Dubois.indd 28 21/08/2017 11:57

Period Living 29

a shower room for them on the same floor. Once this was completed, the rest of the work was largely decorative. A large 1970s stone-clad fireplace was removed from the drawing room and replaced with a Victorian model, inserted into the existing marble surround. ‘I was very taken by the film Sense & Sensibility and the house where the sisters lived with their mother,’ says Sarah. ‘I had it in mind when we added a picture rail to our drawing room, as I loved the way that the wood was painted a slightly warmer colour to the emulsion on the walls, and was keen to recreate the look.’

With the house decorated, the couple prioritised finding the right spots for their inherited pieces and then built on their collections. ‘I have a Regency chaise longue which my mother found for £8 at auction,’ Sarah details. ‘It’s one of those you can only sit on perched at the edge, and my mother used to get very annoyed when people said it was uncomfortable!’ Nigel also had pieces they wanted to display, including the portrait of an ancestor who was related to Horatio Nelson.

While the main renovation took the couple three years to complete, for Sarah the house is an ongoing project. She often returns from a simple trip to buy groceries with a new antique find, and is constantly refining the rooms. ‘I just have an instinctive urge to make things pleasing; a desire to fit a shelf on to a wall at 11 o’clock at night, to the sound of my long-suffering husband groaning before getting out the drill to help me!’

Sarah currently has one eye on reupholstering furniture with bolts of fabric she has stowed in the room where she makes wedding dresses, and another on repainting the front of the house. ‘But I do love it as it is,’ she concludes, ‘and my favourite room is the kitchen, which is now so light and so often filled with children.’

26-37_Dubois.indd 29 22/08/2017 15:55

30 Period Living

Sarah and Nigel found their long dining table at Pastoral Antiques. They bought the pew from their former local church and teamed it with fiddleback chairs

26-37_Dubois.indd 30 21/08/2017 11:57

Period Living 31

‘I’m not very good at being minimalistic, but luckily this cottage is very versatile – it just has to pack up and unpack as we need it’

26-37_Dubois.indd 31 21/08/2017 11:58

32 Period Living

Main image and top right: Sarah has teamed her mother’s famously uncomfortable chaise longue with an inviting sofa from Laura Ashley, topped with a lilac mohair throw from Cologne & Cotton, and a green velvet wing chair sourced from Lewes Antique Centre. A portrait of Nigel’s ancestor, who was related to Nelson, hangs above. The Moroccan table, along with the two glass- fronted cabinets, belonged to Sarah’s grandmother. The flowers throughout are by local florist Areta Richards

26-37_Dubois.indd 32 21/08/2017 11:58

Period Living 33

Painted in a light, muted shade, the hallway is decorated with sconces and china displayed on the wall. The figurines came from a bric-a- brac shop in nearby Uckfield

26-37_Dubois.indd 33 21/08/2017 11:58

34 Period Living

The master bedroom is home to a beautiful antique bed, given to the couple by a friend, and many personal keepsakes, such as Sarah’s family cameos above the fireplace and her old ballet shoes. The antique mirrored wardrobe was sourced locally

26-37_Dubois.indd 34 21/08/2017 11:58

Period Living 35

26-37_Dubois.indd 35 21/08/2017 11:58

36 Period Living

Top: Formerly an office with a boarded-up fireplace, this is now a comfortable guest roomLeft: The antique mirrored wardrobe in the master bedroom was sourced locally

Above: Inside Sarah’s home workshop, where she makes wedding dresses

26-37_Dubois.indd 36 21/08/2017 11:58

Period Living 37

The newly configured bathroom is home to a roll-top bath with claw feet that the couple salvaged from a local back yard. The taps are engraved with the name of their town, Lewes. A selection of perfume bottles and apothecary jars adorn the shelf behind the bath

26-37_Dubois.indd 37 21/08/2017 11:58

38 Period Living

This page: The dining room has an outdoor feel, with wicker chairs from Country Life Interiors, and both real and pictorial bouquets bringing the outside in Opposite: Lilac Cottage is named after a lilac tree in the garden, and this is also the inspiration behind the name of Louise’s shop, Love & Lilac

38-45_Lingwood.indd 38 22/08/2017 16:20

Period Living 39

A FINE VINTAGEFilled with secondhand finds, Art Deco pieces and eclectic treasures picked up on her travels, Louise Lingwood’s Hertfordshire cottage

is a holiday scrapbook come to life

Words and styling Natalie Flaum | Photographs Alison Hammond

38-45_Lingwood.indd 39 22/08/2017 16:21

40 Period Living

ouse-hunting is never simple, and when Louise Lingwood was looking for a period home in the countryside, her property search seemed destined to end in disappointment. However, the place she now calls home is a former Victorian worker’s cottage in Bushey, Hertfordshire, which Louise, who owns a vintage and antiques shop, has filled with curiosities and beautiful finds gathered on her travels around the world.

‘I’d spent quite a while driving around roads in the village and noticed a “for sale” sign outside this house,’ Louise explains, ‘but when I spoke to the local estate agent, they told me it was no longer available, so I put it to the back of my mind and resigned myself to looking at other properties.’

As luck would have it, Louise received a phone call a few weeks later to say the cottage was back on the market. ‘I was thrilled, and as soon as I walked in through the door I could see that it ticked all the boxes,’ she adds. ‘The cottage was in good condition, with original Victorian features, including sash windows and four fireplaces.

‘I’ve called it “Lilac Cottage” after a lilac tree in the garden that didn’t flower until the third spring that I was here,’ she explains. ‘When it’s in bloom, the scent is so heady and amazing that people stop to admire it as they’re passing. Inside, though, these cottages are tiny, and you have to use your imagination to make the most of them.’

Louise moved in during spring 1999 and didn’t hesitate in putting her stamp on the cottage. Her first task was to replace the worn carpet with wooden flooring in the downstairs rooms and she upcycled the existing dark brown kitchen units by painting them in a cream shade.

To create cosy spaces full of interest, Louise has filled the rooms of her much-loved home with eclectic treasures and interesting antiques found in fleamarkets, car boot sales and on Ebay. ‘Everything I sell through my vintage business is handmade or lovingly sourced, and these are the type of pieces I like to have in my home, too,’ she explains.

H Louise also likes to source home accessories during trips to the east and west coasts of the United States. ‘I love American vintage and I’m lucky enough to be able to stay with friends in Los Angeles, which is a rich source of unusual objects for interiors,’ she says. ‘I’ve also just come back from a trip to Lisbon in Portugal, where I picked up several beautiful finds, and I love to visit the French town of St-Rémy-de-Provence.’

Closer to home, Louise likes nothing better than getting up early on a Sunday morning to visit local secondhand fairs, rummaging through boxes to find hidden treasures for her home and garden. ‘I’ve always been fond of the romantic lines of the Art Deco period and I adore green Depression-era glassware and American vintage,’ she says. ‘I’m particularly drawn to any practical pieces that were originally made to be used in the kitchen rather than simply for show or display.’

With a house full of interesting features and fascinating finds, Louise eventually decided it was time to replace her kitchen. After considering several other retailers, she discovered a kitchen design that caught her eye at a shop on her local high street. ‘I’m passionate about supporting our local high street, tradespeople and businesses,’ she says. ‘I wanted a country-inspired kitchen with lots of cupboards and traditional features including a butler’s sink and painted units. I was keen to find a classic timeless design, the sort of kitchen you might find in an old Georgian house, and these cabinets were perfect.

‘When it came to appliances, it was quite a challenge to fit everything in such a compact space,’ she adds. ‘I sourced everything myself on the internet, from the mini range cooker to the window ironmongery. The only hiccup was that when the American-style fridge-freezer arrived, the fridge door couldn’t open by more than around eight inches because the step down to the kitchen was in the way. Thankfully my builder, Stephen Innes, was easily able to remedy this for me by cutting back the step.’

Upstairs, Louise’s master bedroom has a pretty, feminine feel, with colour, interest and curiosities including vintage fabrics and her beloved pink Art Deco mirror above the original fireplace.

‘At the time of the move I began noticing vintage fabrics popping up for sale everywhere,’ Louise

38-45_Lingwood.indd 40 21/08/2017 12:26

Period Living 41

THE STORYOwner Louise Lingwood, owner of vintage and antiques shop Love & Lilac (loveandlilac.co.uk), which sells upcycled and vintage furniture and accessories at Hertfordshire Craft Collective (01923 858330; hertfordshirecraftcollective.co.uk)Property A two-bedroom 1890s cottage in Bushey, HertfordshireWhat she did The kitchen and bathroom have been updated, the downstairs flooring and the front bay sash windows have been replaced, and Louise has also transformed the garden

Above left: Louise takes tea on her leather sofa from Darlings of Chelsea. The Art Deco mirror above the living room fireplace is one of her favourite finds, from an antiques shop in BrightonAbove: Vintage crockery and glassware are perfect for setting the table in the relaxed dining area. An armoire from Laura Ashley is used to store books and vintage fabrics

recalls. ‘I used to love visiting Cath Kidston’s first tiny shop in Notting Hill, where she used to be every day with her dog, Stanley. To me, it was the perfect shop, full of treasures and vintage fabrics. I bought one of the first ever Cath Kidston floral wallpapers there and couldn’t wait to put it on my bedroom wall. I still love it today.’

The most recent addition upstairs is the elegant bathroom Louise has put together with the help of her builder. ‘Having lived for years with a pink bathroom suite that screamed 1980s, it was very important to create a beautiful room that wouldn’t date,’ she admits. ‘I knew I wanted a roll-top bath and a large walk-in shower, and I love the look of tongue-and-groove panelling in bathrooms: classic, traditional features to create a timeless feel. Stephen also came up with the idea of using ceramic floor tiles that appear like timber flooring – they’re a practical, stylish compromise.’

It’s not only the inside of the house where Louise has been working hard: her pride and joy is her cottage garden, which she refers to as her ‘sanctuary’. ‘When I moved here there was quite a bit of planting to do, and the garden is fairly high-maintenance,’ says Louise. ‘I love packed and chaotic gardens, and mine attracts a huge amount

of wildlife; next door’s cat is a particular fan!’ Louise also took out the tall trees located at the bottom of the garden as they blocked out too much light. In their place, she created a new planting bed and a raised area using reclaimed flagstones and railway sleepers, finishing by painting the summerhouse in a creamy shade. ‘Early evenings and summer afternoons are absolutely gorgeous there as it catches the sun at the end of the day,’ she says with a smile. ‘I like to sit and do my hand-sewing there, or enjoy afternoon tea with friends when they pop by.’

When she’s not busy tracking down beautiful treasures for her home and business, Louise enjoys organising regular pop-up vintage fairs at nearby Coco Café and weekend excursions to English country villages.‘For me, happiness is visiting beautiful cottage gardens. I exhibited my own during an annual summer open gardens event that raises money for a local hospice. I love visiting sleepy villages that have a real ambiance of 1950s England. Hertfordshire has some beautiful towns and villages, so I’m spoilt for choice.’

Now, with her cottage exactly how she likes it – warm, comfortable and full of character – Louise is very happy when she stays at home, too.

38-45_Lingwood.indd 41 22/08/2017 16:21

42 Period Living

Louise found her kitchen units at local shop Country Life Interiors, and painted them in Dulux’s Jurassic Stone. The splashback tiles are by Fired Earth

38-45_Lingwood.indd 42 21/08/2017 12:26

Period Living 43


38-45_Lingwood.indd 43 21/08/2017 12:26

44 Period Living

38-45_Lingwood.indd 44 21/08/2017 12:26

Period Living 45


This image: A roll-top bath from Bath Empire, and fixtures and fittings from Victorian Plumbing, give the bathroom an elegant look. The tongue-and-groove panelling from B&Q is painted in Bone by Farrow & Ball, and the floor tiles from Topps Tiles have a wood-effect finishOpposite top: The guest bedroom has a hint of coastal style with ‘Beside the Seaside’ cushions bought in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, and bedlinen from Cologne & Cotton. The desk and chair are upcycled vintage findsOpposite bottom: Louise’s bedroom features vintage Antique Rose Cath Kidson wallpaper, gingham fabrics and Art Deco accessories. Louise made the bedspread, and the folded quilt was a holiday buy from Norfolk

38-45_Lingwood.indd 45 21/08/2017 12:26

46 Period Living

Built in 1862, on a site where a watermill has stood for 800 years, Tina and Simon’s home gives beautiful views of the grounds, lake and surrounding countryside. Even though it was an industrial building, the mid-Victorian builders who created it showed admirable attention to detail, with decorative brickwork, classical styling and impressive arched windows

46-55_Faulkes.indd 46 22/08/2017 15:39

Period Living 47

ON THE WATERSIDEWith their carefully considered renovation of a former Victorian

watermill, Tina and Simon Jones have preserved a piece of English heritage and created a beautiful home fit for modern living

Words Owen Collins | Styling Pippa Blenkinsop | Photographs Darren Chung

46-55_Faulkes.indd 47 21/08/2017 17:05

48 Period Living

earching for a characterful old property to restore, German-born Tina and her

American husband Simon knew they need look no further

when they saw the old millhouse – an idyllic setting to bring up their

three youngest children. The Grade II-listed former flour mill is set in two

acres of grounds, with the millpond a bonus for the fishermen in the family.

The mill was built in 1862 but had fallen into disuse by the 1920s, becoming completely derelict before being restored into two weekend homes in the 1960s. By the time Tina and her family took it on, there were decades of additions to unpick.

‘Years of substandard building works meant that the mill had to be stripped right back to the bricks and our six-month plan to complete the renovation fell by the wayside,’ recalls Tina. ‘We also had issues with the listed building consent. They didn’t allow us to replace the 1960s windows with cast-iron multi-pane designs in the original style, and also suggested adding a garage that would have been completely at odds with the mill’s architecture.’

After six months, Tina decided she needed to be there every day so the family moved in to what was essentially a construction site, confined to the kitchen. With new builders, who understood exactly what was needed in a project like this, the work was finally completed 18 months later.

The ground floor is home to the restored mill wheel, complete with working gears, separated from an oak-beamed study by a glass screen, as

SOwners Tina and Simon Jones live here with their children Finian, Rhiannon and Conlan. They also have four grown-up children who live abroad. Tina is an interior designer and Simon is a lawyerProperty A six-bedroom, Grade II-listed watermill, built in 1862, near Guildford, SurreyWhat they did The mill had to be stripped right back to correct shoddy construction work. The wiring, plumbing and heating were all replaced

THE STORY

well as a laundry room and workshop. After a lot of debate, Tina ensured the original heavy oak doors were retained, despite building control wanting to replace them with modern fire doors.

The living spaces are on the first floor, where Tina removed multiple layers of flooring to reveal the original pine boards. Five inches of screed in the kitchen had caused so much damage that the floor had to be replaced with reclaimed pine. A glass panel in the living room gives a view of the mill gears below, a constant reminder of the building’s past.

Tina’s interior design training has helped her seek out authentic period details while still ensuring the mill is equipped for modern family living. She enlisted Churchwood Design to create a bespoke kitchen to suit both the period and the proportions of the mill. ‘Made in solid timber and showcasing traditional skills, the new kitchen looks as though it’s part of the building’s original architectural fabric,’ says Tina. She sourced an antique cooking range, which has been restored and now cleverly integrates two modern Smeg ovens and an induction hob. ‘The beauty of being the interior designer for your own home is that you don’t have to compromise your ideas; you can do exactly as you please,’ she adds. Her inventive approach prompted her to repurpose the mill’s old coal shaft, which runs the full height of the building, to install a lift for when elderly relatives visit.

Tina has enjoyed subtly reflecting her and Simon’s backgrounds in her interior choices. Echoes of Germany’s North Sea coast and classic New England styles are carefully fused with English design cues to create a look that’s eclectic yet in perfect harmony with the mill’s strong heritage.

46-55_Faulkes.indd 48 21/08/2017 10:17

Period Living 49

Converted Victorian Mill

This image: Tina sits at the vintage pine kitchen table. The chairs came from German company Marktex. Tina made the cushions and had blinds made up in a Robert Allen fabric. An antique brass oil lamp, bought in Amsterdam at a fleamarket, has been converted to an electrical fittingOpposite left: The waterwheel and gear wheels have been fully restored in their original position on the ground floor, which now also accommodates a studyOpposite right: A closer look reveals the craftsmanship of the Victorian bricklayers, with the original cast-iron windows

46-55_Faulkes.indd 49 22/08/2017 15:39

50 Period Living

Tina commissioned a bespoke kitchen from Churchwood Design to suit the mill’s unique period features. Plenty of cupboards – with a rail-mounted ladder to reach the high ones – and a clever mobile island unit, painted in Farrow & Ball’s Oval Room Blue, give useful additional storage and a workspace that can be pushed out of the way when not in use. Arch details on some cabinets echo the shape of the mill’s windows. The sink is from Villeroy & Boch, with taps from Perrin & Rowe and Grohe. An original Victorian range has been converted by David White Fireplaces to include two Smeg ovens and an induction hob, and the tile mural above was designed by German artist Regina Bakker. Try Jamjar Lights for a similar cluster light. Additional silk flowers were supplied by Bloom

46-55_Faulkes.indd 50 21/08/2017 10:17

Period Living 51

46-55_Faulkes.indd 51 21/08/2017 10:17

52 Period Living

Left: Ikea’s Ektorp sofa has been matched with an antique rug. The sideboard and ceiling light are from Maisons du Monde Above: The window seat fabric was a remnant from France; for similar, try Izabela Peters. For grain sack cushions, try Parna. The other cushions are by Lexington. For similar lights, try Hector FinchBelow left: A feature wallpaper mural adds a nautical dimension to the dining room. For similar, try Wallsauce.comBelow: A quirky gallery display of map printsOpposite: In the living room, a Stovax Regency stove offers a cosy spot to sit. A glass panel in the floor reveals the millwheel mechanism below. The chair, footstool and table are antiques

46-55_Faulkes.indd 52 21/08/2017 10:17

Period Living 53

46-55_Faulkes.indd 53 21/08/2017 10:17

54 Period Living

46-55_Faulkes.indd 54 21/08/2017 10:17

Period Living 55

Above: The pretty guest room, with vintage Habitat bed, Laura Ashley quilt, and pillowcases by Ralph Lauren. The curtain fabric is Diamond & Baratta’s SilhouettesBelow: The basins and cabinets are salvage yard finds. For similar lights, try Broughtons, and for tiles, try Bert & May Left: Simon is a keen caver and the framed maps are caves he has charted over the years. In a wire basket at the centre of the display is a vintage caving lanternOpposite: Tina bought the daybed in her native Germany; try Swoon Editions for similar. Dressed with a mix of cushions from vintage and high-street shops, it’s perfect for the feminine scheme in the guest room

46-55_Faulkes.indd 55 21/08/2017 10:18

56 Period Living

THE OLDSUNDAYSCHOOL

Helena Garcia and William Briggs’ pretty Victorian home started life as a convent building,

but there’s little trace of that to be found in its sumptuous French boudoir-style dècor

Words Karen Darlow | Styling Sophie Warren-SmithPhotographs Jeremy Phillips

56-65_Garcia.indd 56 21/08/2017 12:48

Period Living 57

Liz and Tim’s pretty two-up, two- down cottage is in a prime spot overlooking Dorset’s Jurassic coastline (top right) and the village pond. The couple have put a gate into their garden wall so that they can keep an eye on the ducks

With views over a park and Leeds beyond, the Victorian red-brick villa made such an impression on Helena that she was prepared to wait several years before finally making it her own

56-65_Garcia.indd 57 21/08/2017 12:48

58 Period Living

ingle-minded, optimistic and determined is how

Spanish-born Helena Garcia is characterised by her friends,

and it’s a description that certainly fits the way she went about securing

this charming Victorian home for herself and husband William.

Ten years ago, when Helena noticed the house was up for auction, she knew she couldn’t afford to buy it. The trouble was, she’d fallen in love with the characterful red-brick villa with its open view of the park, not far from the centre of Leeds. ‘So I asked around to see if anyone would invest in it with me as student accommodation,’ she says. ‘Luckily, my friend Max and his mother agreed that it had investment potential and I went along to the auction and put in the winning bid.

‘We hadn’t realised what a dreadful state the house was in. Everywhere was damp. Tatty 1950s wallpaper was peeling off every wall, many of the old floorboards were rotten, windowsills were crumbling and the gutters all needed realigning.’

Undaunted, Helena systematically worked through the property, painting the walls magnolia, installing a basic Ikea kitchen and preparing the

S house for its first group of students. All the while, however, she harboured a desire to make it a home for herself and William one day. ‘But I knew I was going to have to be patient and wait until I could afford to buy Max’s share,’ she says.

It took four years of student lettings before the couple finally owned the whole place and relocated from their small two-bedroom property nearby. They moved into the villa in June 2010, and at last Helena could transform it into a home.

Divided into separate bedsits, the interior was disjointed and Helena felt it needed a harmonious theme to make it whole again. She wanted to keep the décor true to the building’s Victorian origins and was intrigued to learn that the property had started life as a Sunday school for a nearby convent.

‘To look at it now, it’s quite difficult to imagine the house ever being used for that purpose,’ says Helena. ‘But in the cellar there are still the original lines of hooks for the children’s coats.’

Thankfully, she’d taken care of major structural work before the students moved in, so the roof, gutters and fabric of the building were sound, and damp was no longer an issue. However, as she ripped up the carpets, she discovered that many of the floorboards needed replacing, which was a painstaking task. In the hallway, there was a simple fix: to lay reproduction Victorian-style tiles, which look as if they’ve always been there.

Helena also papered over the student-friendly magnolia walls. For the hall and landing, she found the perfect cameo design, but there was a slight logistical problem: it was only available in the United States. True to form, she wasn’t going to give up on the perfect wallpaper, so had it delivered to a friend’s address in New York then patiently waited for her next visit and brought the eight rolls home in her luggage. ‘My friends in the States must think I’m a pest because I’m always asking them to bring things over, but there’s a much bigger choice of Victorian-style furnishings on American websites.’

THE STORYOwners Helena Garcia, who runs an online jewellery and accessories business, and William Briggs, a product managerProperty A three-bedroom red-brick property built in 1814 as a Sunday school for a conventWhat they did The property had been split into bedsits and had to be converted back into one home. Gutters, windowsills and rotten floors had to be replaced

56-65_Garcia.indd 58 21/08/2017 12:48

Period Living 59

Above left: In the living room, an assortment of charity shop mirrors next to the magnificent bay window reflect light back into the space. The armchair was a £50 Ebay purchase, which Helena has reupholstered in a velvet damask fabricAbove: Library- style shelving adds to the gentlemen’s club feel. The chandelier is from Newark Antiques Centre

For the kitchen, Helena chose a classic floral print Cath Kidston wallpaper, and is also gradually replacing the basic Ikea units with freestanding furniture, as she explains: ‘We were on holiday in France when we found the glass-fronted cupboard and a beautiful Provençal dresser, which cost me just £150. It would have cost me £800 or more if I’d bought it over here.’ They now look the part filled with antique china and old apothecaries’ artefacts. In the evenings, a chandelier casts soft light over the old oak dining table, which Helena found in Leeds’ famous Swiss Cottage antiques centre. Chapel chairs give a nod to the home’s ecclesiastical past, while a collection of vintage advertising signs makes an interesting display.

A fortunate discovery during the renovation set the decorating theme for the living room. As the wood-burner was being installed, Helena found out that a drab brown-painted mantelpiece was in fact made of high-quality marble, and so set about removing three layers of thick paint. The room has a more masculine feel than the rest of the house, with its leather Chesterfield-style sofa and high-backed armchair. Dark stained library-style shelves, complete with a ladder, add to the gentlemen’s club feel. However, she couldn’t resist including a few feminine touches: a soft shade of white on the walls, a pink rug and fringed lamp.

Upstairs, the master bedroom is a calm space, with white walls and a cast-iron bed from Laura Ashley, dressed with cushions collected by Helena over the years. The décor in the spare bedroom was inspired by a trip to Versailles. ‘You have to have fun with your house. There are no rules,’ she says. The magnificent Louis XVI-style bed was an Ebay find, while antique-print wallpaper and carefully grouped portraits and cameos, together with grand mirrors, give an opulent feel.

For the bathroom, it took a bit of shopping around before Helena was happy with the look. ‘I wanted a darker space,’ she explains, ‘and I’ve

always preferred brass fittings to chrome, but they are so hard to find. I found the roll-top bath on Ebay and it took me eight months to decide on the tiles, but I’m really pleased with them now.’

In a small bedroom at the top of the house is one of Helena’s treasures: a bedspread that once belonged to her great-grandmother. With a heavenly blue headboard painted with swags and garlands, and a romantic voile coronet, it’s a restful sanctuary. ‘My workroom is just on the other side of the landing and if ever I’m feeling stressed or tired, I come in here for a few minutes’ break, and I soon feel better,’ she says.

The workroom Helena is referring to is the place where she masterminds her accessories business. With dormer windows overlooking the city, the room makes an inspiring space to work. In one corner is a Victorian corset mannequin. ‘I’d had my eye on it for a while at the Swiss Cottage antiques centre and eventually decided to buy it,’ she says. ‘The wife of the owner was out at the time and when she came back, she was annoyed that it had sold because it was just for display. But we’ve since become friends and she always teases me about how I pinched her favourite mannequin!’

Then again, Helena had set her heart on it, just as she had with her home, and, as her friends know, she finds a way of making things happen.

56-65_Garcia.indd 59 21/08/2017 12:48

60 Period Living

56-65_Garcia.indd 60 21/08/2017 12:48

Period Living 61


Opposite: The glass fronted cabinet and open-shelved dresser were holiday bargains, picked up in ProvenceThis page: Helena has updated the Ikea kitchen by installing solid oak worktops and adding a Rangemaster oven and freestanding Provençal cabinets. An antique table and chairs add to the comfy, mismatched look. The wallpaper is by Cath Kidston, while a chandelier from a local antiques shop is an elegant finishing touch

56-65_Garcia.indd 61 21/08/2017 12:48

62 Period Living

The inspiration for the spare room came from a trip to Versailles. The Louis XVI-style bed was an Ebay purchase

56-65_Garcia.indd 62 21/08/2017 12:48

Period Living 63

56-65_Garcia.indd 63 21/08/2017 12:48

64 Period Living

Helena chose a dark, Gothic-inspired look for the bathroom, and hired a plumber to adapt an original Victorian washstand to fit a basin from B&Q. The striking black and white striped wallpaper came from Wallpaper Direct, and the floor and wall tiles are from Walls & Floors

56-65_Garcia.indd 64 21/08/2017 12:48

Period Living 65

Right: The mirror and lamp in the master bedroom were sourced from a local junk shopBelow right: All is calm in the master bedroom, with walls in Dulux’s Antique White. The cast-iron bed is from Laura Ashley, and the bedlinen and bolster are from Helena’s online shop, Candy Candy Below: The bright, spacious room at the top of the house is used as a workroom. The 19th-century mahogany filing chest was originally from a bank and came in three parts. Helena uses it to store tissue and packaging materials for her business

56-65_Garcia.indd 65 21/08/2017 12:48

66 Period Living

Words and photographs Amanda Turner | Styling Clair Wayman

IN GOOD TASTE

Lottie Wern-Ooi and her husband Yang have lovingly renovated a former bakery and created a rambling home full of character

66-75_Wern.indd 66 22/08/2017 16:21

Period Living 67

Pretty vintage garden furniture at the side of the house offers a place to sit and chat to the ducks, Tilly and Hattie. Parked outside the stables is Lottie’s prized Morris Minor, which she shares with son Tom

66-75_Wern.indd 67 21/08/2017 14:13

68 Period Living

hese days you’re more likely to catch the strains of music, or the swish of a paintbrush coming from the old bakery, than the scent of fresh bread and pastries, since its days as the village shop are long over.

Back in 1995, Lottie and her husband Yang were looking

for a house close to Yang’s surgery in Evesham. ‘We commented on how lovely the double-fronted brick house was, with its sash windows and adjoining village shop,’ says Lottie. Shortly afterwards, she spotted the details for it on the estate agent’s desk, and the couple were lucky enough to be one of the few to view it. They made an offer and it was theirs in 1996.

The house used to be the village bakery and was divided into two sections: an Edwardian villa with a walled garden, and the bakery wing, housing the shop, grain store and bakery. ‘It was a big project for us, but we weren’t daunted by the work,’ says Lottie. ‘The main house was liveable, so we could get on with renovating the rest.’

Until the day the couple moved in, the shop had been open and was still full of metal shelving. ‘There were some wonderful things, however, such as vintage shopping bags, packets of Seidlitz powders and a collection of old shop signs, all of which I have kept,’ says Lottie.

Once Lottie and Yang had emptied the shop and converted the space into an entrance hall, they turned their thoughts to the bakery wing, now a library and music room. ‘I remember the winter’s day when I first set foot in the grain store. It was

T snowing inside as much as out! We had to re-roof it and rebuild the chimneystack,’ says Lottie. ‘At the same time we worked on the stables, replacing the roof and rebuilding two walls, keeping the original brick floor and feeding troughs.’

The next task was to rewire the house, which still had original Bakelite switches that Lottie and Yang carefully preserved where they could. After the electrics were complete, they lifted the carpets to discover beautiful pine floorboards, which they sealed with linseed oil. Lottie was delighted to find original Victorian Minton tiles in the hallway, but it was a different story in the living and dining rooms, where the fireplaces had been replaced with an incongruous stone-clad fire surround and TV shelf, and an empty hole in the dining room. ‘The stone cladding had to go,’ says Lottie, ‘so we fitted slate fire surrounds and cast-iron inserts in both rooms.’

The kitchen took more time to think through. ‘Initially we lived with the wood-effect units, just giving them a quick coat of paint, and I removed the white ceramic floor tiles and was thrilled to discover quarry tiles underneath,’ says Lottie. It all started to come together, though, when Lottie found an old dresser in the garage, which she could use to display her favourite plates. The couple eventually replaced the kitchen with solid wood units, designed and painted by Lottie and made by Jeremy Moore Carpentry.

She has created a studio in the old shop, where she runs Annie Sloan painting classes, as well as courses in handcrafting bespoke lampshades. The north-facing shop front makes a perfect light-filled studio fit for the purpose.

The garden has also been altered beyond recognition, the most recent addition being the large pond, which the couple had built after a duck abandoned her eggs in the garden. ‘We incubated the eggs and now Tilly, the brown duck and Hattie, the white duck, have their own pond,’ smiles Lottie. Plans for the future include building a coop for a hen that walked into the shop and promptly sat on Lottie’s lap. Like many human visitors to the old bakery, the ducks and the hen have just settled in and made themselves at home – no wonder, with such welcoming hosts as Lottie and Yang.

66-75_Wern.indd 68 21/08/2017 14:13

Period Living 69

THE STORYOwners Lottie Wern-Ooi, who owns Lottie & Friends, a painted furniture shop, and her husband Yang, a GP, live here with their black labrador BabyProperty A four-bedroom detached house, connected to a former bakery and village shop, built around 1900 near Pershore, WorcestershireWhat they did The house was rewired and the roofs were replaced over the course of 10 years. The wall between the shop and the bakery was reinstated to create a studio and music room. A staircase was added up to the library – the old grain store – and a dormer window was added

Sandy neutrals and sea blues create a relaxing feel in the living room. Laura Ashley sofas face the Clearview stove (pictured opposite) that Liz and Tim fitted to take the chill off the ancient flagstones. The stable door is the original and was restored by local joiner Colin Mutter, who also replicated the original windows. The rug is from The Braided Rug Company, and above the fireplace is a seascape collage by local artist Sarah Wootton. The china (pictured opposite) was a wedding present to Liz’s parents in 1946

Above: The sunken garden, at the front of the house, is designed around a pebbled circle, and is a riot of colour and foliage

66-75_Wern.indd 69 21/08/2017 14:14

70 Period Living

66-75_Wern.indd 70 21/08/2017 14:14

Period Living 71

Lottie and Yang designed the solid pine kitchen units, which were custom made by Jeremy Moore Carpentry. Lottie painted them in Drab, and the dresser and walls in Off White, all Farrow & Ball, and tiled the splashback in the chimney breast with Mexican ceramic tiles

66-75_Wern.indd 71 21/08/2017 14:14

72 Period Living

Above: To give the living room fireplace more character, Lottie created a marble paint effect on the slate fire surround. She found the blue 1960s cushions for the Lloyd Loom chair at a local house sale and the walls are painted in an archived Farrow & Ball colour, Powder BlueLeft: A chest of drawers from Station Mill Antiques has been repurposed as a vanity unit in the bathroom and painted in Farrow & Ball’s Brinjal eggshell Right: Lottie’s studio is filled with intriguing objects to inspire her students

66-75_Wern.indd 72 21/08/2017 14:14

Period Living 73


Originally a shop front, the studio window gives Lottie plenty of light for her work. Hanging from the ceiling are items stored ready to sell in her shop, Lottie & Friends, near Evesham

66-75_Wern.indd 73 21/08/2017 14:14

74 Period Living

Marking the boundary between the flower garden and vegetable patch is a bespoke gate made by the couple’s son Toby at his nearby Green Wood Workshop. He also makes chairs, fencing, plant supports and other traditional coppice products

ABOVE The bedstead in the main bedroom came from Georgian House Antiques and the wardrobe is a Dutch Biedermeier, inherited from Lottie’s mother. The armchairs belonged to her grandmother and were the sole survivors of a set destroyed when her house was hit by a German mortar attack in World War II, whichleft the family homeless. The wallpaper and fabric are in a discontinued Laura Ashley print RIGHT A chest of drawers from Station Mill Antiques has been repurposed as a vanity unit in the bathroom and painted in Farrow & Ball’s Brinjal eggshell

The bedstead in the main bedroom came from Georgian House Antiques and the wardrobe is a Dutch Biedermeier, inherited from Lottie’s mother. The armchairs belonged to her grandmother and were the sole survivors of a set destroyed when her house was hit by a German mortar attack in World War II, which left the family homeless. The wallpaper and fabric both feature an old Laura Ashley print

66-75_Wern.indd 74 21/08/2017 14:14

Period Living 75

Tim renovated a ramshackle greenhouse to create a garden room where Liz can enjoy her handicrafts. He built bench seats around two sides of the room, with cupboards where Liz stores her materials and crochet yarns. Warm – ‘too warm sometimes,’ says Liz – and bright, it’s the perfect craft studio

ABOVE The bedstead in the main bedroom came from Georgian House Antiques and the wardrobe is a Dutch Biedermeier, inherited from Lottie’s mother. The armchairs belonged to her grandmother and were the sole survivors of a set destroyed when her house was hit by a German mortar attack in World War II, which left the family homeless. The wallpaper and fabric are in a discontinued Laura Ashley print RIGHT A chest of drawers from Station Mill Antiques has been repurposed as a vanity unit in the bathroom and painted in Farrow & Ball’s Brinjal eggshell

66-75_Wern.indd 75 21/08/2017 14:14

76 Period Living

DISCOVERED TREASURE

For Michelle Lewin, finding a house close to work was the start of a journey that would see her restore a local architectural gem, which she has filled with one-off pieces and charity-shop finds

Words Ely Price | Styling Katie Day | Photographs Jody Stewart

76-83_Lewin.indd 76 22/08/2017 17:16

Period Living 77

Liz and Tim’s pretty two-up, two- down cottage is in a prime spot overlooking Dorset’s Jurassic coastline (top right) and the village pond. The couple have put a gate into their garden wall so that they can keep an eye on the ducks

Floral wallpaper by Sanderson contrasts with walls painted in Farrow & Ball’s Cooking Apple Green. A wood-burner from Chesney’s keeps the room warm and cosy. The armchair is from Laura Ashley and the hare print cushion was a moving-in gift

76-83_Lewin.indd 77 21/08/2017 14:15

78 Period Living

hen Michelle Lewin decided that she

needed to move closer to Kendal town centre

for work, her main priority was her six cats.

‘At the time, I lived in a little cottage in the middle

of nowhere, so they were used to being able to roam

around as they pleased,’ she says. ‘So when I started looking

for a new house, it was vital that there was still that feeling of being in the countryside.’

Finding somewhere that was in the perfect location, with enough space for her and the cats, proved a tall order. ‘I came across plenty of lovely houses but they were all on busy roads, and that just wasn’t suitable,’ remembers Michelle.

When she discovered a large Grade II-listed Georgian house at the end of a quiet private road, she felt as if she had hit the jackpot. The beautiful grey-stone property was part of a row of homes that sit on the edge of town and which were designed and built by renowned local architect George Webster, responsible for creating many of the notable buildings in the area.

The house was not without its problems, however, as not only had it not been touched in over 60 years, meaning it required major renovation work, but the owners, who had lived there for many years, were also reluctant to sell.

During her second viewing of the house, Michelle had a chance encounter with one of the owners, and got chatting to them about their mutual love of animals. With that, they decided that she was the right person to buy the house and promptly accepted her offer of £350,000. Ever cautious, however, Michelle requested to bring the council’s listed building representatives to the property before the sale was finalised, as she wanted to make sure that she could carry out the work that she wanted. With a nod from the council, the sale was completed in 2010.

W ‘I’d never owned a listed building before, so it was all new to me. I have carried out projects, such as changing a layout or putting in a kitchen, but nothing of this size,’ says Michelle. ‘I knew that I would need professional help, so I got in touch with local architect Bob O’Neil, who specialises in period properties. He was fantastic throughout the project and also helped me with the necessary planning applications. I would discuss my ideas with him and he would help to formulate a design, draw up detailed plans and then work with the builders, organising everything. He also knew some fantastic local tradespeople who had worked on listed buildings before.’

As the house hadn’t had any work done to it in such a long time, it was in a somewhat bad state. Originally Michelle’s house and the one next door would have been one large family home, but this had been split into two homes during the Victorian era. As the division hadn’t been carried out in a very sympathetic manner, many of the mouldings in the rooms were lopsided, and the skirting boards differed in height from room to room. On top of this, the house needed a new central heating system installed and additional groundworks done to make it habitable.

When Michelle moved into the house at the beginning of the project, the scale of the work started to hit home, as she was working full-time while project-managing. ‘It was quite stressful; at one point the plumbing wasn’t working properly, so I was washing my hair using the outside tap while there was ice on the ground. Luckily, as I work at a school, I had time off in the summer and during the half-term and Easter holidays. I also had some very supportive colleagues, who helped me to keep everything on track.’

In terms of the structural changes, given the Grade-II listing, Michelle didn’t have free rein to do as she pleased to the house, but the one room that she was adamant needed to change was the kitchen. ‘That was the deal-breaker,’ she recalls. ‘If I hadn’t been able to remove the dividing wall, I wouldn’t have even bought the house.’ Previously the space was split in two, meaning the original kitchen felt small and dark, so she wanted to take down the wall and open up the room to create a large kitchen-diner.

THE STORYOwner Michelle Lewin, a learning resource centre manager at a school, lives with her six cats, Basil, Margot, Nogs, Googie, Fancy-pants and Jumble-saleProperty A Grade II-listed Georgian house in Kendal, CumbriaWhat she did Removed a wall in the kitchen to create one open space, replaced the central heating system and repaired original skirting boards and mouldings

76-83_Lewin.indd 78 21/08/2017 14:15

Period Living 79

Sandy neutrals and sea blues create a relaxing feel in the living room. Laura Ashley sofas face the Clearview stove (pictured opposite) that Liz and Tim fitted to take the chill off the ancient flagstones. The stable door is the original and was restored by local joiner Colin Mutter, who also replicated the original windows. The rug is from The Braided Rug Company, and above the fireplace is a seascape collage by local artist Sarah Wootton. The china (pictured opposite) was a wedding present to Liz’s parents in 1946

Top: Sanderson’s Ione Lacecap wallpaper creates a subtle feature wall in the dining area, which is furnished with a charity-shop table and chairs, painted in Farrow & Ball’s Mizzle; the dresser, from a local antiques shop, displays vintage kitchenalia and trinkets Above: Michelle chose a clean, modern kitchen from B&Q to maximise the sense of space

Once the wall had been removed, Michelle, her architect and a team of builders set about restoring the original features throughout the property. ‘Luckily, Bob knew a fantastic local joiner and carpenter who has worked on this row of houses for years, so he knows exactly how things should look. He was able to replicate anything that was broken, so the finish is seamless,’ she explains.

Another major challenge was the bathroom. ‘When we removed the wallpaper, the whole wall just came down with it,’ remembers Michelle. ‘It was completely decayed.’ On top of rebuilding the walls, the stained-glass feature window, which is original to the house, was also in need of some TLC. ‘The window would have been positioned at the top of the stairs before the house was divided, but it was so beautiful that I knew that I wanted to restore it and keep it in the bathroom.’

When it came to decorating the house, Michelle’s love of charity-shop hunting meant that she had accumulated most of her furniture over the last 15 years and was able to fill the space with one-off pieces. ‘The house is full of bargains. For instance, the bathroom basin was £5 from Ebay and the guest bed was £10 from a charity shop,’ she says.

Having lived in one room for 15 months, Michelle finally completed the house at the start of 2013. From a dark, somewhat decayed building, to a light and spacious four-bedroom home, she couldn’t be happier with the finished result. ‘I absolutely love it; it’s a wonderful place to come home to after work and the cats are happy here, which was always my number one priority.’

76-83_Lewin.indd 79 21/08/2017 14:15

80 Period Living

76-83_Lewin.indd 80 21/08/2017 14:15

Period Living 81

Opposite: Michelle found the small linen cupboard in a charity shop and painted it white. It stands out against Aqua Pastel paint from SandersonAbove: Orchid wallpaper from

Cole & Son adds ambience to the master bedroom and highlights the original mouldings, windows and shutters. The cushions are from Dunelm Right: An antique pine

console table adds warmth to the landing. Squirrel and Dove wallpaper by Sanderson is set off by Little Greene’s Grey Spectrum paintBelow: Tabby Basil is one of six cats

76-83_Lewin.indd 81 21/08/2017 14:15

82 Period Living

Right: The guest room features a bed that cost £10 from a charity shop. Laura Ashley’s Summer Palace wallpaper is teamed with walls painted in Straw Boater by Crown Paints and exposed pine floorsBelow right: The shabby- chic bedside table lamp was a jumble sale findBelow and opposite: A simple modern bath from Victoria Plumb offsets the original stained-glass window, which has been restored. The basin, bought on Ebay, was installed onto a charity-shop dressing table by Michelle’s builder

76-83_Lewin.indd 82 21/08/2017 14:16

Period Living 83

76-83_Lewin.indd 83 21/08/2017 14:16

84 Period Living

The kitchen was formerly a barn, which was converted and linked to the living space in the 1950s. Chris and Alison reconfigured the room and brightened the highly varnished pine cabinets with a lick of paint – for similar shades, try Farrow & Ball’s Pointing and Old White. The splashbacks were retiled and they fitted new worktops made from salvaged tables, some of which came from their daughter’s house complete with graffiti by their grandchildren. For similar floral fabrics, try Peony & Sage

BUILT IN A DAYChris and Alison Young fell in love with a quintessential English thatched cottage and have slowly uncovered its hidden secrets

Words and styling Pippa Blenkinsop | Photographs Jody Stewart

84-95_Young.indd 84 21/08/2017 10:39

Period Living 85

84-95_Young.indd 85 21/08/2017 10:39

86 Period Living

e’re never living in a period

property,’ said Chris Young to his

wife Alison, after helping to renovate

their daughter’s 16th-century home.

But when it came to relocating from Cornwall to Wiltshire to be closer to family in 2010, Chris and Alison were charmed by the original features of a 1700s chocolate box thatch, which they have since discovered has far more to it than meets the eye.

Set in a quiet village behind a picket fence and enveloped by garden, the cottage is at its best on a glorious summer’s day; its front borders brimming with a mix of rose bushes, petunia-filled hanging baskets, fuchsias and hollyhocks bobbing in the breeze. Inside, the house has all the ingredients of a rural English cottage: low ceilings with rustic beams, a deep inglenook and flagstone floors, bound with a timeless country charm.

It’s hard to imagine that this cottage originally consisted of just two rooms, an upstairs and a downstairs, cobbled together within a day. ‘We commissioned a historical survey and it found that the cottage had been built using squatter’s rights under Common Law in the 1700s, which declared that if a house could be built within 24 hours, with smoke coming from its chimney, then the builder could claim the land as his own,’ explains Chris. ‘It was a hurriedly constructed timber-frame building with wattle and daub walls – luckily these features are still intact today, so it’s a rare gem.’

The survey also revealed details of the cottage’s piecemeal evolution, including a wing added in the 1800s and the conversion of an adjoining barn into a kitchen in the 1950s. Unlike previous generations, Chris and Alison were determined to limit structural changes to essential maintenance, seeing themselves as custodians tasked with preserving the property’s pretty period features.

Instead the pair have made their mark by refreshing the tired interior and transforming it into a homely, welcoming space, in-keeping with the age of the property. Fascinated by pieces from the past, and keen archaeologists, Chris and Alison enjoy wandering antiques shops and fleamarkets for vintage finds to bring their home to life. ‘We try to only buy things that have a purpose,’ says Alison. ‘We want it to look lived in, not like a museum, but sometimes it’s hard to resist. We’re running out of space, so Chris has set a rule that we can only buy something if it fits in my handbag!’

The pair have also focused their efforts on turning the uninspiring outdoor space into a pretty garden befitting the charm of the house. Step outside and you notice the garden is a continuation of the living space, cleverly zoned by strategically placed plants, fencing and furniture into a series of outdoor rooms. Everywhere you look quirky planters and garden antiques are dotted to create humour and interest. ‘We can’t imagine living anywhere else – it’s perfect. Except we’re even starting to run out of space in the garden now!’

WOwners Chris and Alison Young, both retired, live here and are often visited by their children and grandchildren Property A two-bedroom thatched cottage originally built around 1725 with later additions, set in a small Wiltshire villageWhat they did The couple updated the kitchen, added a new bathroom and made essential structural repairs. They have decorated throughout

THE STORY

84-95_Young.indd 86 21/08/2017 10:39

Period Living 87

84-95_Young.indd 87 21/08/2017 10:40

88 Period Living

Opposite: The dining room occupies a later addition to the property. In summer Chris and Alison love to have the doors open to enjoy the garden, which is an extension of their cottage This page: On the opposite side of the dining room is a vintage daybed, perfect for admiring views of the garden. Beside it is a table upcycled from a Singer sewing machine stand

84-95_Young.indd 88 21/08/2017 10:40

Period Living 89

84-95_Young.indd 89 21/08/2017 10:40

90 Period Living

84-95_Young.indd 90 21/08/2017 10:40

Period Living 91

Opposite: The bureau in the hallway is from Bressington’s antiques shop in DevizesThis page: Decorated in a timeless country style, the living room occupies the oldest part of the house, which once formed the single downstairs room of the squatters’ cottage. To complement the low ceiling, Chris and Alison opted for a short, Howard- style sofa from Sofas & Stuff. For similar rose cushions, try Kate Forman

84-95_Young.indd 91 21/08/2017 10:40

92 Period Living

Above left: The couple exposed a section of the original wattle and daub walls to reveal a sense of the house’s historyAbove: A traditional kitchen dresser is filled with pretty floral china and old jam jars collected from various fleamarkets and antiques shops Left: Chris’ silver collection is beautifully displayed in the hallway – it started with a vesta case belonging to his grandfather; Opposite: Chris and Alison carpeted the living room to keep the space cosy, but in the hall they chose to leave a section uncarpeted to reveal part of an original brick floor. The inglenook originally housed the old range, which was removed in the 1950s

84-95_Young.indd 92 21/08/2017 10:40

Period Living 93

84-95_Young.indd 93 21/08/2017 10:40

94 Period Living

Above: In the master bedroom an exposed beam partway through the wall indicates the original roof line of the cottage before it was raised and new windows were installed by later generations. Chris and Alison opted for a simple but feminine scheme. The bed is from Dunelm and Alison upcycled the lampshades using pretty floral ribbonRight: Low ceilings and narrow access meant that it was tricky to accommodate big pieces of furniture, so Chris and Alison extended an existing wardrobe and picked up a selection of old leather luggage cases from fleamarkets, which can be easily stored above the wardrobe and under the bedLeft: In the guest room, floral quilts and cushions from Shepton Mallet fleamarket give a traditional English cottage feelAbove left: At the opposite end of the guest room is a pretty dressing table; for a similar rustic ladder, try Maisons du Monde

84-95_Young.indd 94 21/08/2017 10:41

Period Living 95

Next Month

84-95_Young.indd 95 21/08/2017 10:41

96 Period Living

The Oxblood limewashed exterior of the cottage, which is framed with a white picket fence

DOWN IN THE VALLEYSJane Beck’s Welsh cottage was a derelict shell when she bought it, but over 15 years of hard work have resulted in a total transformation

Words Sarah Bolton | Photographs Mark Bolton

96-105 beck_.indd 96 21/08/2017 14:16

Period Living 97

96-105 beck_.indd 97 21/08/2017 14:16

98 Period Living

ucked into the sheep-dotted hills of mid-Wales, Jane Beck’s restored cottage is testament to her sheer grit and determination. While many would-be renovators might have balked at the idea of taking on a house described by the surveyor as ‘uninhabitable’, with a young family in tow and very little

money to spare, Jane relished the challenge. ‘It felt like an amazing adventure – at least in the beginning,’ she says.

‘My previous partner and I arrived back in 1997 with four small children, a Christmas tree, a few wrapped presents and £23 in our pockets. Our furniture consisted of just two leather sofas, which I still have,’ continues Jane. Previously the family had been living in Reading, but were desperate to escape to a more rural life. ‘My partner was from Wales, so it seemed the natural place to look.’

The search didn’t take long, as Jane made up her mind after seeing just one set of details. ‘The house was called Emporium, which seemed quite fitting as I’d always dabbled in buying and selling antiques,’ she explains. ‘The unusual name comes from a time when Welsh names had fallen out of favour and anything English was seen as fashionable; it actually used to be called Tan y Castell.’

The house had lain empty for over 10 years and had fallen into complete disrepair. Walls had crumbled, windows were broken and the garden had become so overgrown with huge, leafy laurels and a vast yew tree that it was virtually impossible to see the stone cottage beyond. There was no electricity, no water supply and no bathroom or toilet. ‘Not long after we arrived, smoke began billowing out of the old range into the sitting room, and we discovered that the chimney was crammed full of jackdaw nests,’ recalls Jane.

The cottage would originally have been a single-storey dwelling with a traditional crog loft (over half of the cottage) or mezzanine room in the eaves reached by ladder, where the occupants would have slept on a straw bed while their animals were housed below. In 1901 a proper staircase and two bedrooms were added, but that was the full extent of any previous modernisation.

By the time Jane and her then partner, a builder, took it on, a tin lean-to at the back still served as the kitchen and pantry, and the internal walls were

clad in hardboard. They began by knocking down the lean-to and replacing it with a proper extension for a new kitchen, plus three extra bedrooms and a bathroom above. They also pulled down part of the gable walls at each end as they, too, were badly in need of repair.

It was at this point that the couple decided to separate, and Jane was left to continue the renovation alone. ‘I was working in a fish factory in nearby Newquay from six in the morning until 10 o’clock at night to keep everything going,’ she recalls. ‘We had a polythene roof on the extension and my bedroom was open to the elements – one morning I awoke to find a jackdaw perched at the end of the bed!’

Undaunted, she continued living at the house and doing the work as and when she could afford it over the next few years, all the while looking after a flock of sheep and some chickens. ‘All part of the rural idyll,’ she smiles. By the third winter, there was a roof on the extension and a bathroom.

Things had definitely begun to look up for Jane – as well as making the house habitable, she found love again, and in 2001 married Trevor. She also started a new business, sourcing traditional Welsh blankets and antique quilts, and selling them from her front parlour and online. As her reputation grew, so did the piles of blankets and she now owns the largest collection in the world, all housed in a beautiful tin shed and shop across the road, which was built last year by local builder Alan Bailey. So successful has the venture been, that Jane and Trevor have been able to keep Alan on to help with the restoration of the cottage. ‘He has a great appreciation for the vernacular architecture and is putting everything right that, unfortunately, had probably been bodged before,’ says Jane.

A new kitchen installed two years ago to her own design was the last major piece of the puzzle. ‘Having lived without a proper one for so long, I knew exactly what I wanted.’ Acres of slate from a nearby quarry have been used for the worktops, in keeping with Jane and Trevor’s intention to source as much as they can locally. ‘It’s very important to use what’s around us. Most of the furniture in the house came from around here; much of it from this particular valley,’ says Jane.

The décor is deliberately simple: rough stone walls painted in earthy tones from matt paint rather than limewash and the original, restored quarry tiles now sit alongside simple wood panelling painted in neutral shades. Jane’s personal collection of over 300 quilts and blankets provides an ever-changing injection of colour and texture, not to mention warmth during the winter.

Jane still has more to do on the house, as some rooms have never been touched, but is kept busy with the business, constantly nipping back and forth across the lane to meet up with customers. ‘Alan is handling the renovations now,’ she says. ‘It’s a nice feeling to arrive home and, rather than rubbing down a beam, just enjoy living here.’

T96-105 beck_.indd 98 21/08/2017 14:16

Period Living 99

Owners Jane Beck, a Welsh blankets dealer (welshblankets.co.uk), lives here with her husband Trevor, a mental health worker. She has four children, one of whom, Ieuan, still lives at home, as well as two dogs, Binkie and Bob, and a cat, Hugo Property A 19th-century restored farm cottage in Ceredigion, WalesWhat they did The house has been completely renovated, with the gable walls rebuilt and an old lean-to knocked down

THE STORYAbove: In the hallway, Hugo the cat sits on a rug that Jane commissioned especially for her shop. An ornate radiator from Rob Thomas Reclamation complements locally sourced furniture and curtains made from 1920s Welsh blankets

96-105 beck_.indd 99 21/08/2017 14:16

100 Period Living

96-105 beck_.indd 100 21/08/2017 14:16

Period Living 101

Jane designed the kitchen herself and had the units painted in Farrow & Ball’s Elephant’s Breath and topped with slate. The kitchen table was found at a local auction and has been paired with inherited dining chairs

96-105 beck_.indd 101 21/08/2017 14:16

102 Period Living

Above: Colourful throws and cushions enliven the time-worn atmosphere in the sitting room, with its whitewashed walls and exposed beams. Jane bought the patterned floor lamp from EbayLeft: The cosy Roman window blind is made from a vintage 1950s blanketOpposite: Throws and blankets are stacked floor to ceiling, having outgrown their antique cupboard. A comfy winged armchair has been reupholstered in a 1950s plaid blanket. The original quarry tiled chequerboard floor has been restored

96-105 beck_.indd 102 21/08/2017 14:17

Period Living 103

96-105 beck_.indd 103 21/08/2017 14:17

104 Period Living

96-105 beck_.indd 104 21/08/2017 14:17

Period Living 105

Opposite: Jane added two new arched windows and painted the walls and ceiling in crisp white to maximise space and light in the master bedroom. The vintage toleware light fitting was bought at a local auction

Clockwise from top left: The rough stone walls are evident in the master bedroom; an antique mirror and chest of drawers were bought at auction. Jane made an upholstered pad for the windowsill to create a

comfy seat; vintage ironwork bistro chairs and tables in the garden are complemented by gypsy-style floral cushions; a selection of Jane’s blankets

96-105 beck_.indd 105 21/08/2017 14:17

106 Period Living

TIME FOR CHANGEKerrie Griffin-Rogers has evolved her ancient cottage over the years to keep it looking fresh and contemporary

Words and styling Karen DarlowPhotographs Jody Stewart

106-113_GriffRodgers.indd 106 21/08/2017 14:51

Period Living 107

THE STORYOwner Kerrie Griffin-Rogers, who lives here with her daughter Jasmin. Her other daughter, Hannah, is currently studying in America. Kerrie runs three businesses: The Interior Co, fashion company Feathers of Italy, and Turtledove Hide Away, a luxury holiday cottage for twoProperty A 500-year-old brick and oak-frame cottage in Shropshire, with some later additions. The property is not listedWhat she did The cottage had been mostly well-maintained when Kerrie moved in, although the dècor was dated. She has completely reconfigured the downstairs layout, moving the staircase, front door and kitchen to improve the flow

Left: Kerrie feeds the chickens in a shady corner of the garden. The hen house is from Framebow

Left: This was the view of the house that Kerrie first saw and fell in love with. The front door is now on this side, and the window frames are painted in Summerhouse by Farrow & Ball. Kerrie made the garden seat herself


108 Period Living

esourceful and creative, Kerrie Griffin-Rogers thrives on

change. Her 16th-century oak-framed cottage in Shropshire has been through many transformations in the 11 years Kerrie and

daughters Jasmin and Hannah have

been its guardians. ‘I love change,’ Kerrie reaffirms. ‘I’m always

painting walls different colours, moving things round, bringing in new furniture, upcycling old bits, and making things from scratch.’

Stunning from the outside, the home was in need of a certain amount of reinvention when Kerrie found it by chance, after taking a wrong turn on the school run. She fell in love with it and couldn’t stop thinking about it, but it had two small snags: it wasn’t for sale, and despite scouring the country lanes on an almost daily basis, she simply couldn’t find the house again.

Magically, a few months later, that all changed when an estate agent sent the sales particulars through. ‘I couldn’t believe I was looking at my lost house,’ says Kerrie. ‘I loved the fact that it was timber framed and had an amazing little window right up high,’ she says. ‘And when we looked round, although the whole house seemed to be facing the wrong way, I could envisage exactly how to make it work.’

First, though, she had to find a way to pay for all the renovations. On her own, with her young family to support, she started a fashion business and ran a luxury B&B in her home until the fashion line started paying off. Next she set up an interior design business and turned the garage into a high-end holiday cottage. Indeed, Kerrie’s fashion and interior companies go some way to explaining her ability to constantly reinvent her home with eye-catching furniture and accessories.

The ‘front’ door was tucked away at the side of the house, furthest from the drive. The utility room was bigger than the kitchen and the kitchen itself was dark and dated, ‘with a funny little serving hatch into the dining room,’ says Kerrie. ‘There was a shelf in there, too, the full thickness of the wall, and I had visions of people piling up the dirty pots in there after dinner, shutting the doors and forgetting all about them!’

Kerrie reworked the layout, moving the kitchen into the central hall space to put it at the heart of

R the home, relocating the stairs, creating a new front door, and sealing up three of the five doors that led off the new kitchen. ‘I did a lot of the hard graft myself, too,’ she says. ‘I took a sledgehammer to the partition wall between the new kitchen and the garden room, put in Jeld-Wen folding sliding doors to the garden, and took out a couple of windows, which I reused for the holiday let.’

The kitchen evolved gradually from odd pieces of furniture collected over the years. The island started life as a dresser in a friend’s kitchen and was temporarily transformed with a tabletop until Kerrie could afford to fix it up with a granite work surface. The dresser on the back wall was a sales bargain that Kerrie haggled for in a local timber merchants, while the open wall shelves were reclaimed from a skip outside a kitchen company, fixed with decorative brackets, which she made out of offcuts of timber.

‘I wanted to preserve the original black Welsh slate tiled floor, but it was so damaged and chipped that I couldn’t save it, so I rolled up my sleeves and fitted engineered oak – a more sensible option with two little girls running about,’ says Kerrie. ‘I’ve recently lightened the beams in here, too, washing them with a watered down mix of a sludge colour and a cream. The darker colour gives definition and the lighter colour lightens the ingrained areas. Working on a small area at a time, I’d then rub it off with a dry cloth. It was hard work, but totally worth it, as it’s really brightened the whole space and has given an amazing limed oak beam look.’

Other renovation tasks didn’t go quite so smoothly. Upstairs in Jasmin’s en suite, Kerrie peeled away four layers of flooring, linoleum, cork and tiles, and finally reached a layer of oak floorboards. ‘I should have stopped there, but unfortunately I lifted the boards and discovered I was through to the ceiling below,’ recalls Kerrie. ‘So I shut the door, locked it, and didn’t think about it for another 18 months – there were more urgent things to attend to!’

The living room ceiling was one example, a section of which inexplicably fell onto the sofa while Kerrie was out with friends on New Year’s Eve. ‘I’ve managed to patch it up for now, but it’s something I’m going to have to tackle again soon.’

Most rooms have been painted at least three times, as a new colour or accessory catches Kerrie’s eye. Floor coverings get a regular new look, too, and now that the en suite floor is safely mended she has ventured back in again, fitting a roll-top bath and an elegant shell-shaped sink with crystal taps bought at auction for £150, but since valued at more than £4,000. It’s a dream bathroom now and Jasmin is delighted with it.

So what next for the lady who relishes a project? ‘Well, I’ve just fitted a cream Arada stove in the living room, so that will be brilliant this winter,’ says Kerrie. ‘And I’m planning to change the kitchen worktops for paler ones to bring in more light.’

Knowing Kerrie, once those jobs are done it surely won’t be long before the paint pots are out, and the transformations will start all over again.


Period Living 109

The Sisal flooring gets a modern twist with a hide rug from The Interior Co. Kerrie upcycled the table with grey-blue eggshell and replaced the cabinet’s broken glass with chicken wire for a country look. The sofas are old favourites from Tetrad, dressed with cushions from Biggie Best. All flowers are from Little Green Flowers


110 Period Living

Kerrie pieced the island together using a selection of cabinets and a dresser passed from a friend, finishing it off with a Carron sink and tap, and a coat of Farrow & Ball’s Mole’s Breath Estate eggshell. The enamel pendant lights are from The Interior Co


Period Living 111

The dining area is an elegant spot for dinner with friends. The curtain fabric was a remnant, dressed up with opulent pom- poms, the tablecloth is by H&M, and the feather painting on the back wall is one of Kerrie’s own works. The sisal flooring is by Crucial Trading and The Interior Co supplied the pendant, urn, lamps and sideboard


112 Period Living

Jasmin’s bed was from an antique shop in Nottingham, now painted in cream, and the desk and chair are also antiques. Walls are painted in Dove Tail by Farrow & Ball


Period Living 113

Showcasing the 500-year-old timbers, Jasmin’s en suite under the eaves features a roll-top from Victoria Plum


114 Period Living

SIMPLY BEAUTIFULWith painstaking craftsmanship and an eye for every

detail, Neil Mckay rescued his characterful farmworkers’ cottage from the brink of desolation

Words and styling Karen Darlow | Photographs Brent Darby

114-121 McKay_.indd 114 22/08/2017 17:16

Period Living 115

114-121 McKay_.indd 115 21/08/2017 15:06

116 Period Living

ext to the duck pond, at the heart of a sleepy Oxfordshire village, sits Neil and Helen’s part-thatched cottage, which appears as though time has stood still. In fact, quite the opposite is true as nothing much has stood still here, least of all Neil, whose single-handed renovation of this mid-17th-century home has kept him busy part time for 10 years.

Built as part of a row of seven farmworkers’ dwellings, the cottage hadn’t been lived in since the 1980s, and the main section had almost completely collapsed by the time Neil spotted it up for auction. ‘The walls were only visible to sill level,’ recalls Neil. ‘Other than that it was just a wooden shack with a crinkly tin roof, used as a coal shed and store.’

What Neil saw in the cottage went far beyond that crumbling shell. An architect by trade, he traced the marks that history had left on the building, gradually piecing together its story from the architectural clues. ‘There is some evidence that there may have been a dwelling on the site before the mid-17th century,’ he explains, ‘but there’s this large chimney and fireplace, which you wouldn’t expect to see in a peasant cottage before the mid-17th century, so it was probably either built from scratch in the 17th century using materials from another property or remodelled from an older house on the site.’

He also discovered that the central part of the cottage had been substantially rebuilt in the mid-18th century, ‘Part of the adjoining cottage had been used to enlarge this kitchen, which would explain why there’s another fireplace there. So we’ve worked with the floor plan as it was remodelled, and

whereas the living room and bedroom above it were more of a careful restoration, this side of the cottage has been a reconstruction to the 18th-century plan,’ says Neil. ‘Getting the plans approved was fairly easy – it’s what I do for a living – but there were still some tussles,’ he adds. ‘The conservation officer said my plans for the dining room windows weren’t traditional and preferred a two-light style, but luckily I had a late-19th-century photograph of the cottage showing a three-light window that had most likely been installed as part of the Georgian remodelling – so that resolved that particular issue.’

Other discoveries in the thatched section included the lino floor upstairs, which can be dated exactly, as beneath it are newspapers from the week of the Queen’s coronation in 1953. Behind a 1970s fireplace in the living room below, Neil and Helen were delighted to find a bread oven, now restored to working order, and a salt shelf. The joinery and distinctive door latch at the foot of the stairs were further evidence that, apart from the fireplace and lino, the last time any serious work was done on the cottage was around 1790. ‘It’s rare to find something that hasn’t had any significant alterations in that period of time, and it’s such a humble property,’ says Neil. ‘We’re not talking about a manor house or a stately home here, it was a farmworker’s cottage and it would have been very easy to take away the charm by doing something inappropriate. Because there aren’t any elaborate cornices, or joinery to stamp its character, the character comes from its simplicity and the small details of the property, and it’s very easy to lose that.’

Neil had a vision for the house that now, 11 years later, he considers truly realised. He rebuilt the main section using a reclaimed oak frame put together by the builders, with a skin of Cotswold rubble stone and lime mortar on top, infilled with Hemcrete – an eco-wonder material made from hemp and lime. ‘It’s breathable, flexible and offers a high thermal mass,’ says Neil, ‘and it allowed us to lay the stone outside in a completely traditional fashion, still giving us good insulation, which allows the ground-source heat pump to work at its best.’ The builders did the groundworks and got the basic shell of the building

NOwners Neil Mckay, an architect, and his fiancée Helen Davison, a graphic designer, live here Property A part-thatched cottage, built in the mid-17th centuryWhat they did The main section of the cottage, containing the kitchen and dining room, had collapsed and required rebuilding; the other side of the cottage was extensively renovated. Neil used modern equivalents of authentic materials and installed a heat pump, underfloor heating, and insulated the ceilings and outside walls

THE STORY

114-121 McKay_.indd 116 21/08/2017 15:06

Period Living 117

Above: Mid- century modern meets 17th-century simple in the living room, with Ercol sofas and flagstone floors, lifted to fit underfloor heating, and lime plastered and limewashed walls. Homemade linseed oil paint was used for the door. The patterned cushions and wool rug are from Vanessa Arbuthnott

up, then Neil called on specialists for the windows, and tiled and thatched roofs, finishing everything else himself using mainly reclaimed materials.

At the heart was Neil’s determination to keep a clear distinction between the rebuilt central section, and the renovated part of the cottage, the most obvious difference being in the roofing materials – Cotswold stone tiles for the rebuilt section, thatch in the other. ‘There is a tendency to want to tidy up history, and to have a row of cottages all looking the same,’ he says. ‘But the fact is that they have been there for 400 years, and in that time there were changes and boundaries moved around and rebuilt slightly differently, and that’s part of the character and the history, so I didn’t want to lose that.’

Once the fabric of the building was intact, Neil turned his attention to the finishing touches. Reclaimed flagstones, salvaged doors, a kitchen pieced together with a selection of auction finds, and shutters and worksurfaces made from reclaimed elm all find new life in the cottage against a backdrop of authentic lime plaster and paints. Neil mixed the paint finishes himself from the raw ingredients. ‘With equal quantities of linseed oil, egg and water, it’s more like mixing mayonnaise than paint,’ he smiles. ‘You just add some colouring, iron oxide, or titanium dioxide and a tiny quantity of lamp black – very fine soot. It’s touch dry within

an hour and lasts wonderfully. It’s breathable and has similar qualities to the wood and lasts well so reduces maintenance costs.’

Another addition, that brings character and a welcome extra source of heat in the dining room, is a mid-19th-century Yorkshire range, an auction buy that, after a little careful attention from Neil and a couple of replacement parts from The Yorkshire Range Company, is now in working order. ‘Like the bread oven, it just takes a bit of practice to work out how to use it,’ says Neil. ‘But on a winter evening, with the shutters closed and the range lit, this room is so cosy – not the draughty old cottage you’d expect.’

But then nothing about this cottage is as you’d expect. From the impressive environmental performance, with its ground-source heat pump and underfloor heating, for which Neil lifted and relaid the flagstones, to the Hemcrete insulation and rebuilt central section, there have been surprises at every stage. ‘The fact that people come to the property and can’t initially tell that this part is reconstructed is frustrating in some senses, but also an immense compliment,’ says Neil. ‘The difficulty with conservation work is that if you do it right, most of the time you can’t see that anything’s been done.’ But the hours of research, reconstruction of period details and patient repair of salvaged finds that define this project would say otherwise.’

114-121 McKay_.indd 117 21/08/2017 15:06

118 Period Living

Neil built the kitchen cupboards and elm shutters, and the door was a salvage find, along with the characterful shelves and table

114-121 McKay_.indd 118 21/08/2017 15:06

Period Living 119


‘It’s important to use what’s around us. Most of the furniture came from around here; much of it is from this particular valley’

Double stable doors open onto the back garden and bring extra light into the kitchen. Antique filing drawers provide a useful extra worksurface under the pretty wall-mounted shelving, found on Ebay. Vintage Woods ware (seen left) and china supplied by The Fourteas tearoom in Stratford-upon-Avon

114-121 McKay_.indd 119 21/08/2017 15:06

120 Period Living

114-121 McKay_.indd 120 21/08/2017 15:07

Period Living 121

Opposite: With its Victorian range, the dining room is cosy in winter. Neil used salvaged beams to give character to this rebuilt sectionLeft: Neil and Helen opted for more contemporary fixtures and fittings from UK Bathroom Warehouse and Ikea. For similar blue and white tiles, try Topps Tiles. The grey hammam towels are from Salt House Interiors

Above: The master bedroom now features a new dormer window. The cushions are from Vanessa Arbuthnott

114-121 McKay_.indd 121 22/08/2017 17:24

122 Period Living

Carrie and Michael with their beloved vintage car – it was one of the main reasons for moving as they needed a safe place to store it

122-131_Page.indd 122 21/08/2017 10:46

Period Living 123

VINTAGE CHARMCarrie and Michael Page have brought out the period character in their compact rural home with confidence, and finished it with unique finds

Words Naomi Jones | Photographs Brent Darby

They were lucky to inherit a handmade kitchen. This will be the last room to be tackled – Carrie and Michael plan to change the layout

122-131_Page.indd 123 21/08/2017 10:46

124 Period Living

n just three years, Carrie and Michael Page have transformed a dated two bedroom cottage into a warm and welcoming home with a vintage twist. Wisteria Cottage is a delightful home situated next to a picturesque village green in the Tyne Valley, Northumberland. Built in 1840 as a grain store for the local brewery, it was converted in the early 1900s into a characterful house with wonky floors, uneven walls and wonderful exposed beams.

Carrie explains: ‘Since we moved in, we have very carefully enhanced and restored the cottage to make it into an idyllic English country home. Michael and I are big fans of 1940s style – we even got dressed up for our wedding at the Pickering Wartime Weekend – so we’ve tried to incorporate that into the cottage, too.

‘Previously, we lived across the valley, about a mile away,’ she continues, ‘on a busy road with a shared garage; we’ve got a vintage car as well as our “runarounds” so we wanted to be away from the road and have plenty of safe parking space. We started looking on the internet and saw this house, but it had an asking price of £225,000; we simply couldn’t afford that.

‘A few months later we fell in love with another house that was about 20 miles away. We made an offer on that and put ours up for sale. Then, when ours sold within the week and we still hadn’t had our offer accepted, we knew that we had to start to investigate other options.

‘Wisteria Cottage was still on the market so we arranged a viewing with the idea that we could put in a cheeky offer. We loved it but as it was smaller than what we were looking for, we offered £210,000 – so were amazed when the vendors accepted! The buying process moved really quickly and we were in within a few weeks.’

While the cottage was structurally sound, Michael and Carrie have carried out extensive cosmetic repairs. Michael says: ‘The walls were bumpy with gravel or sand mixed into the plaster. With the help of a professional, I’ve skimmed the walls; it’s really helped bring more light in, because the texture had been creating shadows.

‘The beams were all covered with brown paint,’ he continues, ‘if they’d been left natural that would have been great, but to keep costs down we painted them white rather than strip them; the ceilings are quite low downstairs so the white has made the beams feel less imposing.’

‘Under the stairs was a bookcase,’ adds Carrie, ‘which wasn’t useful, and there was no place to put our vacuum cleaner. Michael turned the space into a utility cupboard and has covered it in tongue-and-groove panelling, so now we can make the most of every inch of space.’

She continues: ‘The bathroom was one of the worst rooms: all the pipes were on show and it had a dated bath; so we stripped all that out and hid the pipes underneath the floorboards. We’ve added a high level cistern to the original toilet and made the sink from various reclaimed bits, like the taps which we had made longer to fit. The bath, meanwhile, was salvaged from a friend’s house. Michael rang me up to say, “Ian’s throwing out his roll-top bath, do you want it?”

‘Very excited, I said, “Yes!” We had the bath re-enamelled and painted it to match the walls; it looks marvellous.’ New chequerboard flooring, more tongue-and-groove, and a period-style radiator all add to the shabby chic feel.

The rest of the work on the cottage has been mostly decorative. The interior, once magnolia throughout, has been refreshed with traditional furnishings, floral fabrics, and antique pine furniture from local auctions; wall coverings and paints are from William Morris, Laura Ashley and Farrow & Ball. Carrie explains: ‘We love visiting historic houses and living museums, so we decided to replicate styles and ideas we’ve seen, such as ledged and braced doors, and old framed postcards and prints on the walls.’

Outside, meanwhile, the couple have been busy, having painted the windows and doors to blend seamlessly with the sandstone walls, and have covered the pathways with slate to co-ordinate with the roof.

This enthusiastic pair are not quite finished making their improvements, though. Carrie says: ‘The only thing we’ve done in the kitchen is replace the oven; but we want to change the layout of the room. I like the units, though – they’re all handmade – so we’ll keep those.

‘Michael’s extremely good,’ she says proudly, ‘he built the useful cupboards, and he did all the work in the bathroom; and he’s just been on a course to learn about lime pointing so that we can repair the exterior; he’s a very handy person to have around the house!’

Although in their eyes still incomplete, Michael and Carrie Page’s cottage has a comfy rustic feel, filled with their collections of vintage kitchenalia and wartime memorabilia, and furnished with eclectic pieces that are an expression of their personalities – it may be bijou, but it is full of character and warmth.

I Owners Carrie Page works for the National Trust and her husband Michael is a furniture makerProperty Wisteria Cottage, in Northumberland, was built in 1840 as a grain store and converted into a home in the early 1900s. It has two bedroomsWhat they did The house was structurally sound, so the couple have carried out mainly cosmetic repairs, including replastering, redecorating and refitting the bathroom

THE STORY

122-131_Page.indd 124 21/08/2017 10:46

Period Living 125

Clockwise from top left: With a little help from vintage cookbooks – including one from the famous Mrs Beeton – Carrie is now an expert at whipping up old favourites, like coffee and walnut cake and cheese scones; the 1940s style demands gorgeous scents and daring red lipstick. Carrie wore the aeroplane brooch on her wedding day; the spare bedroom displays an old radio and typewriter; Carrie is a fan of creative arts so has a good collection of vintage buttons and pins; vintage packaging and storage tins collected at fairs; Carrie’s signature coffee and walnut cake; the couple have collected printer’s blocks to spell the name of the cottage; some vintage scales help set the scene in the kitchen

122-131_Page.indd 125 21/08/2017 10:46

126 Period Living

Above: A remnant of carpet has been stitched around the edges to create an inexpensive runner for the stairs. Brintons has a good selection of finished striped runners. The old-fashioned light switches were bought from Period FeaturesRight: The dresser had to have a wedge removed from its base to sit straight on the wonky floorsOpposite: The sitting room is full of cosy seating. An old- style radio fits the mood. For a similar lamp, try Broughtons

122-131_Page.indd 126 21/08/2017 10:46

Period Living 127

122-131_Page.indd 127 21/08/2017 10:46

128 Period Living

This page: The spare bedroom stores vintage clothes. William Morris wallpaper has been added to a couple of walls Opposite: A ceramic bowl on an old pine table with salvaged taps matches the reclaimed style of the bathroom. Black and white tile-effect flooring finishes the look with antique white tongue-and-groove panelling and Farrow & Ball’s Cooking Apple Green on the walls

122-131_Page.indd 128 21/08/2017 10:46

Period Living 129

122-131_Page.indd 129 21/08/2017 10:46

130 Period Living

Above: In the master bedroom they decorated with roses and gingham fabric and wallpaper. The Laura Ashley paper could only be applied to one wall as they are quite uneven. The Hastings bed and Freya bedlinen from Laura Ashley add to the country feelRight: Carrie enjoys embroidery and collects vintage sewing bits, including buttonsOpposite: A set of vintage luggage provides great storage at the end of the bed in the spare bedroom

122-131_Page.indd 130 21/08/2017 10:46

Period Living 131

122-131_Page.indd 131 21/08/2017 10:46

132 Period Living

BY ROYAL APPOINTMENTWendy and Peter Blakeman knew what was needed to transform a dilapidated cottage into a welcoming home: neutral paints, vintage finds and a lot of DIY

Words and styling Karen Darlow | Styling Anna Morley | Photographs Jody Stewart

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 132 21/08/2017 15:25

Period Living 133

Wendy’s garden cabin, Latte Lodge, is where she likes to sew or chat with friends over a coffee. Painted fencing rails give a rustic finish for the floor, a log burner keeps it cosy, while painted shelves, a dressing table filled with vintage fabrics and piles of homemade cushions add to the homely look

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 133 21/08/2017 15:25

134 Period Living

tand still long enough and you’ll get painted in this house,’ jokes Wendy

Blakeman. There has been no danger of that, though, for

Wendy and husband Peter – since buying the 240-year-old farmhouse,

they haven’t stood still for a minute. In a whirlwind few years, the couple brought the house back to life from near dereliction, added a small two-storey extension and turned over an acre of rough farmland into a series of stunning garden vistas, complete with two summerhouses and views of Derbyshire’s Peak District.

Built in 1772 and bought by Queen Victoria in 1890, the property’s royal connections meant that before the Blakemans could get their hands on the keys, the sale had to be approved by the Duchy of Lancaster, the main landowner in the area. ‘We had to sign with the Queen for it, and the deeds came back with a big red seal,’ explains Wendy. ‘Sadly we didn’t have to go to Buckingham Palace, but if we had, we were going to tell her just how much work we needed to do to it!’ As the property had been empty for two years before they bought it in 2005, and was lived in by tenants for more than 100 years before that, there was certainly a lot to tackle.

A former nurse, Wendy felt an overwhelming obligation to take this neglected house under her wing. ‘I think houses call you, don’t they?’ she says. ‘It just needed love. It needed caring for and putting back to how it should be, and I could see what had to be done.’

It was a long to-do list, but Peter had just retired and was ready for a new project, and with plans duly submitted to the Duchy and the local planning office, they set to work. ‘I’ve never done so much DIY. It was a real learning curve,’ says Peter. ‘Looking back, it turned out to be a lifesaver – a project to keep me busy when I might have found it hard to adjust to not going out to work every day.’

In fact, for the first six months after buying the farmhouse, Peter did go out to work every day – not in the record store he’d once owned, but at the house itself. He and Wendy worked from 8am until 6pm alongside the local builder, returning exhausted each night to the house they were renting until their new home was habitable.

The house was rewired and damp-proofed, rotten windows were renovated and occasionally repositioned, but never discarded. Peter project- managed the whole operation, pitching in where he could – knocking walls down, putting walls up, sandblasting the black beams and plasterboarding between them. ‘Not an easy job,’ he explains, ‘as the beams are all different widths and shapes, and there are scores of them throughout the house.’

In the snug at the side of the house, the lath and gypsum floor had completely rotted away and you could see right down to the cellar. Undaunted, and asking the builder for advice when he got stuck, Peter replaced the floor, built a fireplace with bricks they’d found in the garden, and added alcove shelving.

Six months later, with the essential repairs almost complete, the couple were at last able to move in. Work then began on a small two-storey side extension to the property to house a garden room, breakfast room and upstairs bathroom. Wendy decided that the kitchen would work best without a table, so the round table in the breakfast room is where Peter and Wendy eat. Tongue-and-groove panelling, painted in Farrow & Ball’s New White, is the perfect complement to the handmade Shaker-style cupboards, along with contrasting granite worktops.

In the breakfast room, Peter made the doors for the dresser top, which Wendy then painted, and travertine flooring is used in the hall, kitchen and

SOwners Wendy and Peter Blakeman are both retired and have two grown-up children, Charlotte and Robert, who live nearbyProperty An 18-century farmhouse in Derbyshire with four bedrooms What they did A full programme of renovation, including damp-proofing, rewiring, replacing floors and restoring beams, windows and doors. The roof space has been opened up to create a bedroom, living space and en suite

THE STORY

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 134 21/08/2017 15:25

Period Living 135

Above: The tiled, gabled porch is one of the latest additions to the house, yet fits in as if it has always been there

breakfast room to link the newly built section to the oldest part of the house. Farrow & Ball’s Pointing, a gentle off-white, is used on every wall – Wendy’s philosophy being that ‘with a neutral base you can just add a colour and change the look’. If she did fancy a splash of colour, however, Wendy could simply step outside to the barn and choose from the piles of cushions stored there. ‘I have an illness,’ she confesses. ‘Cushion-itus. I have hundreds of them.’ Wendy never buys cushions, making them instead in Kate Forman and Cabbage & Roses fabrics or, in the case of those in the breakfast room, using printed tea towels from Thornback & Peel.

The Blakemans aren’t afraid of more radical changes of style, however. Their previous home was filled with traditional, dark oak furniture. Since moving here, Wendy has painted every last piece of it off-white. ‘It’s much easier to live with than all that dark wood,’ says Peter, gesturing at the corner cupboard and cabinet in the new garden room, now enjoying a second lease of life thanks to Wendy’s trusty pot of eggshell.

To keep the garden room cosy through the harsh Derbyshire winters, a log burner was installed in a brick fireplace and framed with an old beam, found in the garden under years of overgrown shrubs. The log burner from Robey’s was one of Peter’s favourite buys and keeps the whole house warm.

In the bathroom, a reclaimed cast-iron fireplace and a freestanding roll-top bath, which was so heavy it took six men to carry it up the stairs, give the room authenticity, helping to seamlessly link the old part of the house with the new.

Next on the to-do list was the loft. ‘We opened it up as much as we could so our son Robert could have a living room up there as well as his bedroom,’ Wendy explains. Peter also put in a stud wall to make space for a tiny bathroom.

The finishing touch to the front of the house almost didn’t happen. The beautifully proportioned, tiled gable porch was an afterthought that the couple felt they couldn’t really afford. However, they stretched the budget, deciding that the house deserved a welcoming entrance after all it had been through.

When the couple finally turned their attention to the garden, it really was a blank canvas. What do you do with over an acre of rough scrubland? The answer, according to Peter and Wendy, is plant 120 saplings and a small topiary garden, pack your flower borders with so many plants that the weeds don’t get chance to grow, then put up two summerhouses.

Latte Lodge, the garden cabin where Wendy likes to sit and sew or chat to friends over a coffee, is an impressive space, with views right across the Derbyshire hills. Inside, in keeping with the shabby chic theme, there’s a comfy sofa, a dressing table overflowing with textiles and lace, and Peter installed a log burner so they can enjoy the

summerhouse all year round. At the other side of the garden, Gull Cottage was a small tool shed that friends were throwing out, but Wendy has turned it into her very own Southwold beach hut with seemingly effortless inspiration. Shells, seaside accessories and bric-a-brac were sourced on the couple’s frequent trips to the Suffolk coast and to her all-time favourite shop, Tinkers in Walberswick, which she says is a ‘treasure trove of vintage finds’.

With the lids firmly back on the paint pots and the house now looking so well cared for, Wendy feels a great sense of satisfaction with what she and Peter have achieved. ‘I like it to look as if it’s all been lived in,’ she says of their cottage. I’ve always bought houses that needed love, and I try to keep the character as well – I think that’s the most important thing.’ Surely, even their Majesties Victoria and Elizabeth would have to agree.

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 135 21/08/2017 15:25

136 Period Living

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 136 21/08/2017 15:26

Period Living 137


‘It’s important to use what’s around us. Most of the furniture came from around here; much of it is from this particular valley’

With its calm colour scheme and original Georgian sash windows, the drawing room is a pleasant place to while away the hours – or watch them tick by on one of Wendy’s many clocks. Wendy made the cutains and matching cushions in Kate Forman’s Blue Roses fabric

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 137 21/08/2017 15:26

138 Period Living

A keen cook, Wendy wanted the kitchen to be a bright room, with plenty of work space. Travertine flooring is the perfect choice for this bustling area of the house, and works well with the handmade Shaker-style cupboards and worktops from Plan It Granite

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 138 21/08/2017 15:26

Period Living 139

Above The breakfast room is part of the side extension to the house. Peter turned the old back door from the kitchen into an extra cupboard for crockery and made doors for the dresser. Wendy has refreshed the pine table with Annie Sloan’s chalk paint in Paris GreyRight: The corner cupboard and bench started life as heavy dark oak pieces; Wendy made the cushions herself from teatowels

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 139 21/08/2017 15:26

140 Period Living

Top: The magnificent French-style bed in the main bedroom, from a friend’s boutique, is complemented by Cameo Rose curtain fabric by Kate Forman used for the coronet and at the windows. The chandelier is from Laura Ashley and the dressing table, from the couple’s previous home, has been repainted

Above: Space was tight in the loft bedroom, but the Blakemans shoehorned in a living area and bathroom

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 140 21/08/2017 15:26

Period Living 141

The main bathroom is in the extended section of the house, but a reclaimed fireplace from Chase Reclamation and a bath from Norton Canes Bathrooms help the room to tie-in with the rest of the house

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 141 23/08/2017 09:00

142 Period Living

Wendy has given an old shed destined for the skip a new lease of life as Gull Cottage, a beach hut filled with seaside accessories including a Bronte blanket from Sweet Little in Barton Under Needwood

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 142 21/08/2017 15:26

Period Living 143

Clockwise from left: Outside Gull Cottage; its rescue and renovation included installing windows recycled from the house; views onto the orchard across the topiary garden where Wendy has designed a formal planting scheme using box to transform the original scrubland

132-143 Blakeman_.indd 143 21/08/2017 15:26

144 Period Living

MILESTONE COTTAGEWords and styling Karen Darlow | Photographs Jeremy Phillips

Alison Lewis planned to mark her 50th birthday by buying a diamond ring, but instead she bought this gem

of a house – and has never looked back

144-153 Lewis.indd 144 23/08/2017 09:01

Period Living 145

The thatched farmworker’s cottage, dating back to the early 1700s and extended in Victorian times, was Alison Lewis’ 50th birthday present to herself

144-153 Lewis.indd 145 21/08/2017 15:41

146 Period Living

he picture-perfect Lincolnshire cottage belonging to Alison Lewis almost wasn’t hers. She had always promised herself that when she turned 50, and her children were grown up,

she’d pay off her mortgage and buy herself a diamond ring. ‘The only way I could afford the ring was to sell the barn conversion I was living in at the time,’ she says. ‘But somehow I found myself sidetracked by looking for another project, and the diamond ring was forgotten.’

She started her search for a rural property in Norfolk. ‘The idea was to have a country bolthole, within easy reach of the coast,’ she adds. ‘Somewhere to escape to with my labrador Flora, and that I could eventually turn into a holiday let.’

Property prices were on the rise, though, and Norfolk seaside homes were edging beyond Alison’s budget. A friend suggested she consider the largely undiscovered Lincolnshire coastline, around Anderby Creek, so she headed north.

Hill Farm Cottage, not far from Louth in the heart of the Lincolnshire Wolds, was the result: a two-bedroom, early-18th-century thatched house, with a pretty garden surrounded by gently undulating countryside. ‘When I first walked inside the cottage, it hugged me and instantly I knew I had found my gem,’ she says.

The property had belonged to an antiques dealer and his wife, and when Alison viewed it, it was difficult to see round the heaps of antique furniture crammed into the tiny rooms. Yet she knew that with a lick of paint, and some minor repairs here and there, she could soften and refresh the look of her slightly tired new home.

Alison loves to collect furniture from antique centres, junk shops, and family, often painting them in soft, chalky tones to give them a new look. As you come into the house through the kitchen, you see three such pieces – the butcher’s block, pantry cupboard and corner cabinets, which combine for the perfect unfitted look, along with

the Aga Rayburn and flagstone floor. In the dining room, the impression is of an almost circular space, accentuated by the ‘witch’s hat’ fireplace, typical of the area. Alison still needs to carry out further repairs to get this into use, but for now it makes a quirky focal point in this cosy room. When she’s ready to make those repairs, she knows just the man for the job: Robert E Ley, a local woodworker and artisan craftsman, who is no stranger to the cottage, having restored it eight years and two owners ago, following a fire.

The yellow-brick Victorian addition to the cottage, which houses the downstairs bathroom and living room, took the brunt of the fire, and so Robert had new bricks made by the original brickyard, still in existence, to replace those damaged by the heat and smoke. Beautifully restored, the living room is now a comfortable space, to which Alison has added feminine accessories, with a sofa and paintings.

At the top of the stairs, Alison papered the wall with a book-print wallpaper from B&Q. ‘Instead of a visitors’ book, I ask my guests to nominate their favourite book,’ she explains, ‘then I write it onto the spines of the blank books on the wallpaper. I’ve had some great recommendations for bedtime reading!’

And what better place to curl up with a good book than in the master bedroom? Alison has given an ordinary pine bed a coat of on-trend grey paint to suit the quiet, muted tones of the room, with its glorious views of the garden from windows on two sides.

She admits to being something of an interiors addict: ‘Strangely, it all started as a young girl, when I had so much time away from home, at boarding school,’ she says. ‘I spent weekends with friends who lived nearer to the school, in all kinds of properties – from grand country houses and London townhouses to tiny cottages, which spurred an interest in interiors that’s never left me.’

She is currently renovating a Victorian house in Grantham, and comes up to Hill Farm Cottage at weekends ‘to enjoy a bit of luxury after all the dust on my building site during the week,’ she says. It’s also a chance to catch up on some gardening and reading, and to have friends over for afternoon tea in the inherited shepherd’s hut in the front garden, once full to the roof with the antique dealer’s excess stock. It’s a different story now, though, with a pretty table and chairs always at the ready for impromptu guests.

Flora the labrador is getting used to her two homes and, like Alison, relishes the long weekend walks and the occasional paddle at a nearby beach. However, once the Grantham house is finished, Alison plans to use Hill Farm Cottage as a holiday let, so that other people can enjoy the calm and unspoilt views from this gem of a cottage in the Lincolnshire Wolds. And then, perhaps, she might finally be able to buy herself that coveted diamond ring.

T144-153 Lewis.indd 146 23/08/2017 09:01

Period Living 147

Owner Alison Lewis, who heads an equality and access training organisation, lives here with labrador Flora. Alison lets the cottage for weekends and holidays (hillfarmcottageinthewolds.co.uk)Property A mud and stud cottage, built in the early 1700s as a farm tenant’s dwelling, extended in Victorian times. What she did Although the cottage has undergone dramatic restoration due to a fire, this work was completed before Alison owned it, and her changes were mainly cosmetic

THE STORY

The tiled, gabled porch is one of the latest additions to the house, yet fits in as if it has always been there

Above: Flora finds a cosy spot in front of the Rayburn. Annie Sloan’s Paris Grey also coats the larder cupboard from Notion Antiques

144-153 Lewis.indd 147 21/08/2017 15:41

148 Period Living

Tucked into a corner is a small cupboard that Alison painted in Moonstone Grey from Craig & Rose

144-153 Lewis.indd 148 21/08/2017 15:42

Period Living 149

The unusual ‘witch’s hat’ fireplace in the dining room is a real talking point with dinner guests. The table, from Silver Apple Furniture, is painted in Paris Grey by Annie Sloan to match the dining chairs, covered in a vintage chintz fabric by Jean Monro

144-153 Lewis.indd 149 21/08/2017 15:42

150 Period Living

144-153 Lewis.indd 150 21/08/2017 15:42

Period Living 151

Alison put together a pretty, feminine look for the living room. The curtains came from her previous home, and were adapted to fit the large sash window by Clare Tye, who edged them with a vintage Osborne & Little fabric. A fire insert painted in Farrow & Ball’s Pelt stands out against walls in Wevet. The sofa is from Silver Apple, the armchair from an antiques shop in Winchester, and the rug is from TK Maxx

144-153 Lewis.indd 151 21/08/2017 15:42

152 Period Living

Above: Alison painted an old pine bed in Dove Grey by Laura Ashley to match the neutral master bedroom scheme, and updated the floorboards with Johnstone’s Morning Mist. The antique French linen curtains are edged in a vintage fabric from Osborne & Little

Right: Alison freshened up the downstairs bathroom with a lick of paint. The sanitaryware was fitted by the previous ownersOpposite: She decorated the second bedroom with younger guests in mind. The bedside cabinet is from The White Robin, and the curtains and antique bedlinen are from Decorative Country Living

144-153 Lewis.indd 152 21/08/2017 15:42

Period Living 153

144-153 Lewis.indd 153 21/08/2017 15:42

154 Period Living

Above: Val and Norman relax in their pretty summerhouse. The couple renovated a stone cottage in Wearside as a holiday home; they eventually plan to retire Opposite: Once damp and dated, the living room is now cosy and welcoming. Both the sofas are from Laura Ashley, as is the Malmaison rug. Val made the curtains from an old Laura Ashley fabric and the couple installed a Dovre 2000 multi-fuel stove in the original inglenook. Above the stove hangs a clock from Achica

HOME FROM HOME

Words Pippa Blenkinsop | Styling Katie Day | Photographs Jeremy Phillips

With some creative thinking and clever upcycling, Val and Norman Rennie have transformed an unloved cottage into a dream rural getaway

Owners Val Rennie, a complaints administrator for a high-street bank, and husband Norman, a chemical plant operator, bought the property in 2012 as a holiday home, but plan to settle here permanently when they retireProperty A terraced, two-bedroom stone cottage in a small market town in Weardale, County DurhamWhat they did The property was completely overhauled. The layout has been improved and the cottage replumbed, rewired and replastered. The space was reconfigured to create a larger kitchen, utility and living/dining room on the ground floor, with two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs

THE STORY

154-162 Rennie.indd 154 23/08/2017 09:01

Period Living 155

154-162 Rennie.indd 155 21/08/2017 15:52

156 Period Living

or many, location is the driving force behind buying a holiday home, whether in a favourite destination that holds happy memories or somewhere you’ve always dreamt of going. But when Val and Norman Rennie set out to buy their second home four years ago, they had no idea where to start looking. ‘It was just a case of seeing what was

around,’ says Val. One thing, however, was clear: having lived in an industrial port town on Teeside for most of their lives, the couple were itching for a taste of country living.

While its exact location had yet to be decided, the couple had a clear vision of the type of property they were after. ‘Living in a modern four-bedroom detached house, I’d always dreamt of having a cosy old cottage,’ says Val. ‘We didn’t want anything too big, or with a lot of land that needed maintaining, as we were only going to be there at weekends, but we still wanted a bit of outdoor space. We also wanted a property where we could add our own creative stamp.’ However, with a tight budget and a plan to carry out all the work themselves, the couple were aware that the project had to be achievable. ‘Norman had been in the building industry previously and will pretty much put his hand to anything. When I set him a challenge he doesn’t usually disappoint!’ laughs Val.

After an 18-month search for the perfect location that stretched all the way from Northumberland to Wales, the couple eventually realised that somewhere closer to home was the most practical solution, ideally within an hour-and-a half’s drive so that they could easily manage the project. They also decided to widen their scope in terms of property type. ‘We were initially hunting for two-bedroom properties, but we couldn’t find anything, so we started looking into the option of a one-bedroom home with the potential to upgrade or extend. That’s when we found the current house.’

Val and Norman finally settled on a property in a small market town in Weardale, County Durham, on

the edge of the North Pennines. ‘We’d never actually heard of it before, but it’s only 50 minutes’ drive away. It’s close to the River Wear and surrounded by woodland, so it’s ideal for walking.’ Having stood empty for two years, the house was in a sorry state. ‘The paper was falling off the walls, it was damp and decorated in brown,’ Val recalls. ‘But we didn’t mind, as we could see its potential, and the fact that you couldn’t live in it while the work was being done was not a problem for us.’ From their first visit, it was obvious what needed doing. ‘We basically went in and gutted it. The carpet came up, the plaster came off and we took it right back to the four stone walls and started again,’ says Val. The first things to go were the ugly false ceilings upstairs, which, to their delight, uncovered a characterful, beamed roof structure. Opting to leave the whole upper storey open to the rafters, Norman then reconfigured the upstairs to maximise the space, creating a master bedroom, guest bedroom and bathroom, which had originally been downstairs.

On the ground floor the stairs were ripped out and relocated to the living area to create a more spacious kitchen. Rather than replace the staircase with a new bespoke design, Val’s first instinct was to go online. ‘The stairs actually came from a blacksmith’s cottage in Cambridge; we bought them on Ebay and Norman installed them himself.’ The feature is just one of many reclaimed finds in this house, which is a catalogue of upcycling inspiration. The kitchen, for instance, started life as old wooden doors found on Ebay. ‘We bought 13, stripped and painted them, then simply found carcasses to fit,’ says Val. ‘We also found an old dresser top on Ebay, which fitted perfectly into the recess by the window. It was much cheaper than buying wall cabinets and the glass front helps reflect light into the room.’ Add into the mix reclaimed and repainted chairs, a secondhand Belfast sink, an old pub table and handmade textiles, and Val has

FRight: Val and Norman have replaced the cottage’s windows with sashes more in keeping with the age of the property

154-162 Rennie.indd 156 21/08/2017 15:52

Period Living 157

The tiled, gabled porch is one of the latest additions to the house, yet fits in as if it has always been there

Flora finds a cosy spot in front of the Rayburn. Annie Sloan’s Paris Grey also coats the larder cupboard from Notion Antiques

A small dining area in the corner of the living room is furnished with chairs painted in Annie Sloan’s Chalk paint and a waxed table. A large mirror from Achica helps create the illusion of space while Laura Ashley’s Gosford Meadow wallpaper creates a pretty feature wall

shown that a characterful country-style kitchen can be achieved on a shoestring.

Eager to get the house ‘just right first time around’ and determined to find the perfect piece at the right price, the couple have travelled the length and breadth of Britain to source their vintage items. ‘We’ve had some lovely weekends away – the wardrobe doors in the bedrooms actually came from Brighton!’ she laughs. ‘Unfortunately we don’t have many fleamarkets round this way. There are some salvage yards, but you tend to pay a bit more there and budget was important for us; I’d rather travel to get the right thing for the best price than pay over the odds for something average.’

By Easter of 2014, the project was complete and it seems all their hard work and patience has paid off, as the couple couldn’t be happier with their new rural retreat. ‘Norman wanted to do all the work himself and I’ve had my heart in my mouth with some of the things he was tackling, but it’s

pretty much gone to plan, and looking back we wouldn’t have done anything differently,’ says Val.

‘We did have one accident, though. In order to take the weight of the freestanding bath upstairs, the floor needed additional support, so Norman planned to replace rotten beams above the kitchen. However, one of the beams dropped and fractured the water pipe, flooding the entire ground floor. We had to turn off the water at the mains, but this covered next door, so we cut them off, too! Fortunately they were so kind and accommodating – they didn’t mind at all. Moving to somewhere you don’t know is always a gamble, so it was reassuring to know that we’d joined a lovely community, especially since we’re planning to retire here.’

In the meantime, the couple take every opportunity to visit, travelling down most weekends and embracing life in the country. ‘Since completing the project we’ve bought a puppy, Hugo, so we’ve got a companion that comes down with us now, and he loves walking over the fields,’ says Val.

154-162 Rennie.indd 157 23/08/2017 16:06

158 Period Living

The classic combination of natural wood with cabinetry painted in Farrow & Ball’s Cornforth White gives the kitchen a traditional English country feel. Val rejuvenated an old pub table, still with its metal number disc, by sanding it down and refinishing it with wax

154-162 Rennie.indd 158 21/08/2017 15:52

Period Living 159

The unusual ‘witch’s hat’ fireplace in the dining room is a real talking point with dinner guests. The table, from Silver Apple Furniture, is painted in Paris Grey by Annie Sloan to match the dining chairs, covered in a vintage chintz fabric by Jean Monro

154-162 Rennie.indd 159 21/08/2017 15:52

160 Period Living

The master bedroom is papered in Laura Ashley’s Summer Palace design and the Victorian-style bed is by the Original Bedstead Company. Some of the replastered stone wall has been left exposed to add character; the wardrobe (opposite) was created using old doors

154-162 Rennie.indd 160 21/08/2017 15:52

Period Living 161

154-162 Rennie.indd 161 21/08/2017 15:52

162 Period Living

A slipper bath painted in Farrow & Ball’s Incarnadine brings warmth to the bathroom. The console basin and taps were bought on Ebay for just £70

154-162 Rennie.indd 162 21/08/2017 15:52

154-162 Rennie.indd 163 21/08/2017 15:52

period living - vintage home style

Documents