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A Charleston conservator's Bloomsbury-inspired house in Sussex
As a conservator at the one-time homes of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf in Sussex, Kathy Crisp is surrounded by the creative and carefully curated interiors of Charleston and Monk's House six days a week. “It's still a very immersive experience for me," she says. “I’m often the first person to go inside into the darkness, opening up the blinds and shutters to reveal the colourful interiors.” What makes them so inspiring, as she explains, is that both houses have an authentic ‘spirit of place'. They are so full of original art and decoration mixed with family heirlooms and furniture found abroad." It's an approach to decorating that she has embraced at her own house nearby.
The house is an attractive double-fronted Victorian building with generous sash windows, built by the splendidly named local builder Trayton Funnel in 1870. As Kathy relates, “it was soon bought by Mr Mathews who started a cut flower nursery on the land behind. He found his workers a drunken lot so opened a Sunday School in our house, later building a chapel next door, when the congregation outgrew the house.” Later it had served as a rooming house, so that when Kathy and her partner Russell bought it in 2001, it still had Yale locks on the bedroom doors. But its appeal lay in the original features which had been mercifully retained throughout the house, including some beautiful chimneypieces. “I just fell in love with the large Carrara marble fireplace in the sitting room,” says Kathy, “and the very high ceilings with original mouldings.”
The house had been empty for a year when Kathy and Russell came to it, and there was mould growing on the carpets thanks to the lack of heating, so the first job was to strip them out and sand the floors one room at a time. Budget and time constraints meant that nothing was done in a huge hurry, the bigger jobs had to wait, and clever workarounds had to be found. “We did all the work ourselves,” Kathy explains," and so time and money set the pace, which is lucky in a way. By the time we created the kitchen ten years after we'd moved, we knew how the space needed to be arranged." Kathy and Russell found the Neptune kitchen on Ebay; it was in a house nearby and they brought it home, finding that it had enough units to give them a spacious kitchen as well as a utility room. “We reused nearly everything,” Kathy explains, “including two butler sinks and taps.”
The decoration of each room also evolved gradually over time, benefitting from Kathy's consistent habit of collecting. “I trained in textile design, so have collected a lot of decorative objects over the years,” Kathy says. Haunting car boot sales, charity shops, auction houses and Ebay has brought her many favourite finds, while others have been inherited, which all contributes to the sense of a lived-in, unaffected interior. “I often love homes where the occupants have lived there a long time," Kathy explains. "One is Ben Pentreath and Charlie McCormick's house in Dorset, where the interiors are a comfortable and layered backdrop for a collection of art and antiques. That's something I always aspire to, and then of course the amazing garden stuffed full of dahlias and vegetables in rows. I also love all the homes featured by Ruth Guilding at @bibleofbritishtaste, who is not a designer but knows what's what!”
Inevitably, Charleston and Monk's House have been huge sources of inspiration. Like Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Kathy has painted by hand many elements of the house, from coffee tables and fire screens to bookshelves and the walls themselves, as well as making curtains and lampshades (the latter of which she sells through her online shop, alongside vintage lamp bases). “I also buy a lot from the shop at Charleston, including fabric, pottery and even an original Quentin Bell sculpture a few years ago!” she says. The front sitting room feels particularly Charleston-esque, with its painted scallops around the cornicing, shelves bursting with books, and a glorious armchair covered in ‘West Wind’, a Duncan Grant design you can now buy at the Charleston shop. It's Kathy's favourite place to retreat with a book, and indeed the light that streams in from the south-east is magical. “It was an austere house when we moved in,” says Kathy, “and the opposite of cosy. But now it's a warm, inviting space, and I'm proud that we did it all ourselves.”
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Dean Hearne3/24The head of Hermes was bought at the Charleston shop. The lampshade is one of Kathy's designs for her online shop, Chapel House Studio, made up in a vintage William Morris fabric.
Dean Hearne4/24Kathy used Annie Sloan's chalk paint to decorate the side table.
5/24Kathy's studio, its walls painted in Farrow & Ball's 'Cooking Apple Green', occupies the other front room of the house. The desk was rescued from the Arts Council, and the chair has been with Kathy since her first flat in West Norwood, London.
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7/24Kathy's partner Russell made a frame in the fireplace to fit a set of haberdashery drawers found in the loft of their last house, which were believed to come from the old wool shop in the town.
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10/24Hanging from a shelf is a set of mugs by Victoria Walton, who was taught by Quentin Bell at Fulham Pottery and became the first curator at Charleston House in the early 1980s.
12/24The downstairs bathroom has a collection of dried seed heads on the mantelpiece. The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball's ‘New White’.
13/24The star lights in the sitting room are from Christopher Wray. The armchairs were inherited.
Dean Hearne14/24The coffee table is painted in Annie Sloan paint.
Dean Hearne15/24The clocking in clock came from an auction in West Norwood, where Kathy used to live.
16/24The main bedroom, with a bed that has accompanied Kathy through her various houses. The bedcover is made from two kantha quilts stitched together reverse side up.
17/24The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball's ‘Borrowed Light’. The cushion on the chair is made up in a Vanessa Bell fabric called ‘Abstract’ from the Charleston shop.
Dean Hearne18/24The couple's daughter's room was inspired by the spare room at Charleston. The bed is a secondhand Laura Ashley bed frame found on Facebook Marketplace. The lampshade and base were made for Chapel House Studio.
19/24The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball's ‘Strong White’. The 1940s sideboard and chair were both inherited from Kathy's parents.
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Dean Hearne21/24The head is a purchase from the Charleston shop.
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Dean Hearne23/24Kathy grows succulents, which are for sale via her Instagram account @sussexsucculents.
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