Page 103 - Homes & Antiques (February 2020)

HOMES Tudor House

THIS PAGE FROM
FAR LEFT Vivid red
accents in the bed
linen add colour to the
cosy guest bedroom;
the chest was from
Goose Home and
Garden. BELOW
A secret ‘smugglers’
door’, set into the
wall of the couple’s
dressing room, was
once an escape route
into neighbouring
houses. The vintage
chaise is from Strand
House Interiors,
re-covered in thick
linen. A vintage work
shirt is hung as a
decorative detail.

curtain rods and rings for the house.
‘His designs combined a simplicity of
shape with the slightly rough, visibly
hammered !nish that we wanted,’
he says.
The couple hired a local carpenter
with experience working on listed
buildings to make the bespoke kitchen
and simple, rustic shu"ers from
salvaged planks. ‘We wanted someone
who understood the quirks of the
building and would approach the work
in a sympathetic way,’ Barrie explains.
Part of their painstaking restoration
involved literally peeling back the
layers of the house and its history. In
the upstairs bathroom, the walls were
taken back to the original wooden
laths and reconstructed with
increasingly !ne layers of plaster,
mixed with horse and goat hair.
‘At one point, you could see through to
the room next door,’ recalls Barrie.
‘And because the exposed laths were
made from chestnut timber, they !lled
the house with an amazing, rich smell.’
Local antiques dealers and restorers
were also a great help to the couple.
Once he saw their style and understood
their aims, Darren Hadden of Antique
Hadden kept an eye out for medieval
and primitive oak furniture that would
suit the house. The antiques business
Strand House Interiors is very close by

February 2020 Homes & Antiques 103