Christmas with Luke Edward Hall and Duncan Campbell in their Cotswold cottage

The idea of finding a place in the countryside to retreat to at weekends is one we’re all familiar with, but every so often it happens that the place meant for an escape becomes your main residence. This is precisely the case for Duncan Campbell and Luke Edward Hall, who started out renting a former shepherd’s cottage among the rolling hills of the Cotswolds as a weekend getaway and now find themselves there full time. ‘It’s a super simple little cottage,’ says Duncan. ‘I always think it looks like a kid’s drawing of a house with a door, two windows upstairs and two windows downstairs’. Inside, it’s a jewel box of a house with a charming open plan layout to the living spaces; everything flows naturally and works well for when the couple host guests, something they do often and even more so at Christmas.

Though they rent the cottage, the couple are lucky in that ‘our landlord let us go a bit wild with painting and decorating,’ as Luke explains. ‘ We played around with lots of our favourite colours so we’ve got plenty of green, pink and yellow.’ The decoration happened naturally over time and is still evolving. Nearby antiques shops in Tetbury – such as Lorfords and Brownrigg – as well as Station Mill in Chipping Norton have been a wonderful resource for building up the house. ‘We love finding pieces,’ muses Duncan. ‘One of our favourite things to do is to go and search bits out and you always spot things when you’re not expecting them. I think because of that the house feels quite layered, and it doesn’t feel too designed.’ For two people who both work in the interiors and design worlds and create products, it has been and continues to be a wonderful testing ground for ideas. The living room when we visit has a gold slipper chair that Luke designed, which the couple have adopted, as well as a deep blue ottoman with green fringing and a lacquered red side table which Duncan designed for Campbell Rey, the interior design practice he runs with Charlotte Rey.

The house already has so many layers of wonderful pieces that catch the eye that it’s hard to imagine adding more for Christmas. But the couple love Christmas – every aspect of it – and bring even more colour and life into the space during the festive season. ‘Like most things in our life, we like things to feel abundant, generous, over the top and not too organised. We’re not the kind of people who will have a united colour scheme of decorations or make everything feel super neat and in place. We like to pile it on and see what happens.’ What happens is a rich, ebullient house full of twinkling baubles, soft candlelight, glittery mushrooms that catch the light, and tinsel wherever Luke can sneak it in without Duncan noticing. ‘Duncan’s not so much of a fan,’ says Luke ‘so we have to agree to disagree on that one’. ( One year Luke snuck tinsel onto the tree while Duncan was in the bath.)

‘Even for us, we started planning for Christmas pretty early this year,’ Duncan confesses. ‘I think we started playing carols in mid-November.’ These are not always what you would expect, however; Luke has a well-edited playlist of medieval, renaissance and Elizabethan early Christmas music that sets the tone. ‘I love a lute and a hurdy gurdy,’ he laughs, ‘but also a classic carol and 80s music. When we have a party, I do my playlist in stages so you start with a Christmas lute and end up with George Michael. And a brass band as well, you need a bit of brass band.’ The dulcet tones of renaissance lutes are the backdrop as they set about decorating their tree this year, first adding strings of warm white lights before layering up baubles collected over their 15 years together. ‘Whenever we go travelling in winter we always try to pick something up wherever we are so all the baubles around the house are an amalgamation of all that hoarding from lots of different trips,’ Duncan says. Some of their best finds came from a Christmas market in Venice, while others are picked up from Choosing Keeping and nearby Cutter Brooks. ‘Anything that is a fruit, vegetable or animal gets a look in’, before ribbons are tied on the end of branches in a jaunty array of colours. A star by Luke is the final touch.