A Cornish holiday house

This house is the first phase of a much wider project, restoring the estate around a Grade I listed castle on the south Cornish coast. A former estate manager’s house was to be remodelled to provide extended family accommodation suitable for the owners to live in while the main house was being restored – and then to form a beautiful holiday home for longer-term guests.

Our work started with significant exterior remodelling, and obtaining planning approval for two new ground floor extensions to improve the balance of accommodation. The house was in very poor order and we ultimately took a decision to re-wire and re-service the building entirely. New windows were installed throughout.

Our new rooms were completely remodelled, creating, in the process, one of our favourite kitchens of all time, as well as a new glazed garden sitting room, new bathrooms and boots and laundry room. The decoration is intentionally simple and robust, with a quiet palette enlivened by flashes of rich orange, olive and turquoise blue.

The house sits in an extraordinary position overlooking an estuary. Beautiful new gardens planted by Julian and Isabel Bannerman draw one to the landscape beyond.

The Old Parsonage

This is Ben and Charlie’s own house in Dorset, which has been widely published in The New York Times, The Telegraph, House & Garden Magazine, and in Ben’s renowned book, English Decoration.

The house is a simple, early 19th century former Parsonage, and when Ben took a long lease for the house in 2008 he put in place a simple but thorough restoration of the whole building and garden. The Parsonage sits in a superb location, next to the church, facing south across a wooded valley.

Over the years the interiors have evolved to form a restrained, soft, comfortable backdrop to a collection of ordinary and inexpensive English antique furniture, pictures and prints. Decorative ideas have come and gone, but the whole place – unhurried, gentle, and very English – has a powerful and enduring spirit.

A Suffolk Farmhouse

This is an ancient, timber framed farmhouse in Suffolk, which in the early 18th century had been given a ravishing new ‘polite’ front of soft red brick and sash windows (with deliciously thick glazing bars).  The house had been taken over by new owners, who were carrying out a sympathetic and sensible restoration.

We were engaged in a consultancy role to assist with the decoration of key rooms and to advise generally on building works, as well as to engage Historic England on the aspects of the renovation which required listed building consent (the house is Grade II*).  Over a period of some years we worked slowly through the rooms to create a house that has a gentle, quiet and untroubled atmosphere, all brought together by the owners’ lovely collection of paintings and antique furniture.

Tucked away in a hidden valley, it is a house that time has forgotten – a wonderful place and the happiest people to work with.