From the archive: how Amanda Brooks decorates her Cotswold farmhouse for Christmas

A Design Notes Christmas special. How the writer and Cutter Brooks owner Amanda Brooks decorates her home in the Cotswolds for Christmas.

Amanda’s home is now the testing ground for the pieces she stocks. ‘I wouldn’t have anything in the shop that I wouldn’t have in my house, but the joy I used to get finding things for myself, I have now transferred to the shop.’

The family now live on Fairgreen Farm in neighbouring Chipping Norton, where Christopher was born, and where he now manages the land, which is farmed organically for Daylesford. Jeremy Clarkson lives down the road, and Blur’s Alex James is a few fields over.

Owen Gale

Fairgreen is still something of a Brooks family compound, with his mother, siblings and their children in other properties dotted around the farm. Christopher had always kept a cottage there, which already had ‘layers of other people’s style’, having been lived in by various friends and family members over the decades.

‘The first time I came to Fairgreen Farm was in 1997. I had just turned 23, and I’d been dating Christopher for about two or three weeks. It was our first holiday together, and he spent the whole time on a tractor. I was like, what am I meant to do?! I was such a city kid. What I ended up doing was teaching myself to cook. I would take one of the old cookbooks down off the shelf and methodically work my way through the whole thing.’

Adapting to country life Amanda found her style and tastes changing. While living in New York, the couple didn’t have the time or energy to change the ancient wallpaper or the squashy ticking-covered sofa which felt tired to Amanda at first, ‘but which I’m now incredibly grateful I didn’t touch.’

Amanda’s layer of decoration now sits harmoniously alongside that of her predecessors. Her contribution is the injection of American comfort and practicality - closets and bookshelves and a new configuration of seating in the living room. A backgammon table - a family heirloom shipped from her parents old house in the Adirondacks - and her collection of art and ceramics.

Her Christmas decorations are disarmingly jolly and just the right amount of kitsch. Next to the tree nods a mechanical fox (‘he either horrifies or delights’), and outside a 10ft Douglas Fir is hung with hundreds of red glass mushrooms in various shapes and sizes, like a scene from a Brothers Grimm fairytale.

‘Christmas for me isn’t about good taste. It’s about having fun. I like to use a lot of natural things, garlands specifically, but I’m also not a snob about fake decorations. I think you should be able to use the same things year after year.’

Owen Gale

In the living room bushels of holly and bowls piled with shimmering glass cherries and apples dot the surfaces. These were sourced from third or fourth generation makers, hand-painted and mouth-blown. ‘When I first opened the shop I would search everywhere for vintage ornaments like this because there is something about the softness of the colours that I love.’

Quilted patchwork stockings line the fireplace, and a boyband of Santas in various sizes fill each windowsill on a bed of moss. ‘These are adorable. They’re hollow and you can fill them with candy. They’re wonderful for children's bedrooms. ’

The tree is hung with hundreds of tiny birds, coloured lights (‘only the old fashioned kind - if you can’t find a set with pink in it then forget it’), and the kind of skinny, bead lined gold and silver tinsel most often seen on old Christmas cards. ‘I grew up in the eighties. So that whole look is very nostalgic for me.’

Silka Rittson Thomas the founder of Tuk Tuk Flowers, is a neighbour and friend. Her studio have created a spectacularly bushy garland of greenery over the kitchen windows, and another dotted with glass pomegranates tucked around the mantlepiece.

The garden too is awash with coloured lights, while benches scattered with patterned cushions surround a flower-shaped fire bowl. ‘I wanted to create a beautiful, cozy space outside where my mother in law who is 89 could come and enjoy the tree and the fire without having to worry about the pandemic.’

‘I mean, it sounds ridiculous,’ she says. ‘But just to be in the perfect expression of your taste and style is very satisfying.’

www.cutterbrooks.com