Ben Pentreath tells the story of his Dorset parsonage as he bids it farewell
It is strange looking back at this wonderful film. House & Garden commissioned a little study of Charlie and me at the Parsonage, the beautiful house we’d rented for fifteen years in Dorset, this summer. Now it is autumn, and we’ve made the move to our new house, Westness, on the island of Rousay, in Orkney. It couldn’t really be possible to have gone further.
I’ve been looking back recently at photographs I’ve taken of the house and garden over the course of the last year or so, a form of visual diary, or keepsake – and this little film falls somehow into the same mould. It’s strange how somewhere which was so totally present in our minds and lives is now absent. Everything you see here has moved to new places, adjusting, settling in to its new setting some 700 miles away. And quite quickly the Parsonage becomes a memory, a dream.
We left this magical house because it felt like time for a change. Littlebredy is the most wonderful village. I used to think I lived in the most beautiful house in the most beautiful village in one of the most beautiful counties of England. Could it be the best house in England, therefore? It is a place that time has forgotten… until now. After centuries as the home of a wonderful, historic Dorset family, our kind landlords have taken the heart-wrenching decision to sell their house and estate – and the village with it. It’s a strange moment… the end of not just an era, but of one of the great ancestral estates of this ancient county. The time had come for them to move on, and doubtless a new owner will place much-needed investment into land and buildings, but Charlie and I decided that we just couldn’t cope with that degree of change, however benign a new regime. So we started house-hunting quite seriously a year or more ago. It took us a long time to find our dream – and when we did, it was ours within a week. That was summer – around the time this film was taken. A few short weeks later, and all these rooms are empty, and the house will doubtless shudder through some significant change.
The Parsonage was built to serve the tiny parish church of St. Michael and All Angels, next door – we even have a tiny parson’s gate leading from our garden, under a buttress, directly into the churchyard. Built in the 1820s, the house is simple and rectangular – a plain block, about 8 x 18m, three down, three up, with a tiny attic room for the maid. It sits high on a sloping garden, facing south, with beautiful views across the little valley to the woods beyond and most of the cottages in the village tucked into the trees below. The tiny river Bride – little more than a fast-running stream – makes its way from the remarkable, picturesque, spring-fed lake that sits outside the main house, down towards the sea although it vanishes below ground before making the coast.
The house is built into a hillside, with a steep flight of stone steps leading down to the front door, and in heavy rainfall, water cascades down the steps and around the old brick-floored yard to the side. There’s something about this position, completely tucked away from the road, revealing itself slowly as you move around Charlie’s ravishing garden, which is what makes the house special. On its own, it’s a handsome 19th-century building, plain and simple in its way, but unremarkable. Drop this into the astonishingly beautiful landscape of the village, and the house becomes like something in a picture book. You can’t quite pin down its magic, but there is a feeling of happy narrative in its bones.
I first came here decades ago, because when I was a little person – aged seven until 13 – my best friend Ben lived at the Parsonage. His parents rented the house for some 15 years, just like I did, 30 years later. So I knew the house incredibly well as a child. The rooms we went into then we hardly go into now – Ben’s bedroom was up in the attic, and we were not really much allowed into the drawing room and dining room, I do remember. It was a strange experience indeed coming back here for the very first time to look around. The house had been a little abandoned by the previous tenants, who’d needed to leave in a hurry. It was in a sad state, attic windows blown out, the garden overgrown, and a mould appearing on various walls and ceilings as the place had been left cold and shut up over a winter. But, a bit like a house in a story book, it was longing to be loved and nurtured. It was so amazing when the landlords agreed to rent me the Parsonage on an initial 10 year lease and together we drew up plans for the renovation. I am glad to say that we have left some gifts to that house – the oval window above the stairs, which had been an ugly Edwardian rectangular insert, or a good fireplace in the drawing room – which should, I hope, stand the test of time.
Over the years the Parsonage became a test-bed for my decorative experiments, as I tried out bolder colours and ideas; one minute, it was cloaked head-to-toe in the papers and fabrics that I had such fun designing for Morris & Co, some of which we decided to keep forever; while outside, Charlie wove his remarkable and ever-changing magic in the garden – a tiny plot, really, less than half an acre, which through the powers of his genius touch and of Instagram has become really one of the most famous smaller gardens in the country – maybe the world? We had visitors from all over – New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Canada, America and Europe – on the rare occasions when he’d quietly open the gates to interested groups.
And so it all comes to an end. On our last day at the Parsonage, in October, the removals men had completely packed up and left; we’d said a final goodbye to some of our close neighbours and friends, and we walked for one last time through completely empty rooms, through the garden, into the churchyard, to say goodbye for now to Mum, who we buried here a few years ago now. Going back to the house, tears streaming down our faces, we pulled down the blinds and shuttered the shutters, and closed the door one last time. The end of an era. In my new book I have talked about how it’s people that make places, and never did this feel truer that at this moment. Farewell to all that. A chapter ends – but a wonderful new one begins.
Ben Pentreath1/24The entrance hall with a Gothic oak hall chair, one of a pair. The wallpaper is ‘Malahide’ by David Skinner, famously used by my hero David Mlinaric at Luggala in Ireland.
Ben Pentreath2/24The drawing room is painted in a colour made famous by this room, ‘Parsonage Pink’ from Papers and Paints, specially mixed for me by Patrick Baty.
Ben Pentreath3/24The curtains are in brown ticking from Ian Mankin and the floor is covered in seagrass. The blue armchair is an original from Howard & Sons, bought for a song at a junk auction; the linen was dyed by Polly Lyster of Dyeworks. The room is cluttered, supremely relaxed and filled with sunshine.
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Ben Pentreath5/24The kitchen is where we spend much of our time. The old AGA was already in the house when I moved in. The dresser and kitchen table I bought on eBay. The floor is painted ‘Hardwick White’ from Farrow & Ball. I laid the floorboards over the existing concrete floor when I first arrived. Now they are beautifully worn, and feel as though they could have been there for centuries.
Ben Pentreath6/24The kitchen is painted in a gloss egg-yolk yellow from Dulux. Charlie’s china cupboard groans with junk-shop finds. The kitchen chair is upholstered in joyous ‘Aralia’ by Josef Frank for Svenskt Tenn.
Ben Pentreath7/24On an old sofa inherited from my parents, the dogs snooze. The fabric is a discontinued pattern from Sanderson.
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Ben Pentreath9/24The dining room is papered in the olive and turquoise colourway of ‘Willow Bough’, which I designed as part of my first collection for Morris & Co. The curtains are in ‘Brer Rabbit’ from the same Queen Square collection. The drawing above the fireplace is by our friend Oisin Byrne, and adds to the vibrant colour in the room.
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Ben Pentreath11/24We can’t stop buying junk-shop china, and the habit is extremely out of control. This is a rather beautiful set of Flight & Barr nineteenth-century china, inherited from my grandmother.
Ben Pentreath12/24A corridor with a collection of Peter Hone plasters leads to Charlie’s flower room.
Ben Pentreath13/24The clutter continues in Charlie’s flower room.
Ben Pentreath14/24The stair landing in my sky-blue ‘Willow Bough’ wallpaper.
Ben Pentreath15/24An antique creamware candlestick in Charlie’s and my bedroom.
Ben Pentreath16/24The main guest bedroom is painted in dark olive green ‘4-050’ from Papers and Paints, described by my old boss Charles Morris as the colour of a freshly laid cowpat. I love it and use it in many projects.
Ben Pentreath17/24In our small guest bedroom, Morris & Co.’s ‘Marigold’ wallpaper, in my chocolate and cream colourway from the Queen Square collection, makes a beautiful backdrop to Charlie’s antique fern and leaf prints, bought at Portobello Road Market.
Ben Pentreath18/24On the chair is one of my blankets for Johnstons of Elgin, and in the chimneypiece, a collection of Peter Hone plaster fragments.
Ben Pentreath19/24The bathroom, papered in my colourway of Morris & Co.’s ‘Bird & Anemone.
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