The perfect Georgian country house of Robert Montgomery and Greta Bellamacina
Arriving at the home of the actress, filmmaker and poet Greta Bellamacina and her husband, Scottish contemporary artist Robert Montgomery, is a bit like emerging from the back of the wardrobe into Narnia. 'The house is very hidden!' Robert wrote in an email. 'To the right of number 25, there's a wooden gate and a lane that looks like it goes nowhere. Just follow that.' Pulling up at the end of a cul-de-sac, I find said gate, tucked between two 1960s semi-detached houses. After a short walk, as if out of nowhere, the lawn of a perfect Georgian house unspools, obscured from the surrounding roads by trees. It is like coming across a wedding cake in the middle of a conference centre. There is a swimming pool, with striped cushions and parasols, reminiscent of a Slim Aarons photograph. A small outdoor stage is flanked by two white rose trees in pots. Most striking of all is a poem in huge white letters, 2.5 metres high and six metres wide, mounted on a dark frame that blends into the trees behind it so that it appears to be floating:
You are still alive on this hurtling
Blue-skied planet spinning into a fragile unknowable future
The future is a cattle prod / The future is a dream of love
The piece is by Robert, who is well well known for his monumental installations of poetry, sometimes made into sculptures and illuminated with LED lights or fire, at other times painted on the side of buildings or printed on billboards. He also works in acrylic on large canvases, many of which hang in the house he shares with Greta and their sons, Lorca, eight, and Lucian, five.
The couple bought the house three-and-a-half years ago. It was in a state of genteel decay, having not been fully lived in for decades. 'Robert was thinking this is the dream place to have an art studio, while I was thinking this is a dream film location,' says Greta, who did indeed use it as the set for the recently released Tell That to the Winter Sea, which she both co-wrote and starred in. 'We are drawn to things with faded glamour - once grand things that are a little bit damaged.'
They had decided to leave London to gain more space for their growing family. 'We wanted to find somewhere on the edge of London, where we could scurry away to make things, but still have the city close by,' says Greta. Inside, the rooms are now decorated with bright decorum. 'The English country-side, by way of an Italian palazzo,' explains Greta, who was born in Hampstead and raised in Camden, as one of five siblings born to artistic parents with an Italian heritage.
'When we bought the house, it was lockdown and we were pining for Italy. We didn't spend huge amounts of money on the furniture, but we invested in paint,' she says, gesturing to the verdigris-coloured dining room. This connects to the children's playroom, painted in a striking shade of pink borrowed from designer Susie Cave (founder of fashion brand 'The Vampire's Wife') who, along with her musician husband Nick, has been a long-time supporter of Greta's poetry. 'Susie showed me some pictures of her house, which is painted in an amazing luminous colour she invented. Slightly lilac, it glows as if it has a hidden light in it. She kindly gave me her secret code for it at Paint & Paper Library.'
In the other rooms, they created what they describe as an amateur version of 'distemper', watering down paints with lime-wash and mixing them with colours from Robert's studio. The old sculleries in the south wing are now totally given over to studio space, with Greta's writing room across the corridor from Robert's painting studio and workshops. 'The children also have an art room. We all come to this part of the house during the day to work, and ask each other for help and opinions. When the children get home from school, they go straight into their room and start making things,' says Robert.
On the other side of the house is a grand music room, an addition built around 1820, which has 'perfect acoustics for giving concerts', says Greta. It now serves as the couple's main sitting room. 'We didn't have any instruments in here at first,' she recalls. ‘But then my literary agent Clare Conville came to stay and said, “I'm sending you a gift.” And this piano turned up.' Since then, they have hosted lots of mini concerts with friends like Florence Welch. 'It's a good room for a party.'
The house was furnished slowly, mostly using antiques. Designed on a shoestring, the kitchen features old French dressers in place of fitted cabinets. In the dining room is a sideboard inherited from Robert's mother. Her interiors shop in rural Scotland was, Robert says, 'the only one for miles to stock Colefax and Fowler and Morris & Co - everything I know about making a home and living a creative life comes from her'.
There are a few storied pieces in the house. The hall lantern, bought at auction, was salvaged from the Liverpool ballroom where John Lennon had his wedding reception with first wife, Cynthia. In the bedroom is a tiny drawing by Sylvia Plath with a love note from Ted Hughes on the reverse. There is a painting of Greta and Robert's wedding day by Faye Wei Wei, drawings by Sean Flynn, and religious iconography, both alongside and in Robert's pieces. Most notable is the large lightwork in the music room: a gold cross with the words ‘Salvage Paradise’. 'I stole the line from one of Greta's poems,' says Robert. ‘It became a mantra in my head when we were restoring the house.’
Everywhere there is writing on the walls. 'There's something about words in domestic environments that feeds into your soul,' observes Greta. 'When we first met, we wrote a lot on the walls, didn't we?' Robert continues, 'Poetry is fundamental to what we both do. Obviously, Greta is the real poet in the family, but my art has always been about making words and ideas concrete in the physical world - and our house has become the testing ground for that.' A newly adopted family motto - 'Ars, Labor, Amor, Vita' (craft, work, love, life) - borrowed from an almost-purchased house in Italy, is painted on the walls of the kitchen and the music room. 'We managed to forgo the house,' says Robert. ‘But we took the words home with us’.
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Tom Griffiths3/19The family motto 'Ars, Labor, Amor, Vita' and trompe l'eil details by Robert enliven the kitchen walls painted in Earthborn's ‘Ballet Shoe’
Tom Griffiths4/19Rustic flooring from the Handmade Terracotta Tile Company complements a painted antique table from The French Depot
Tom Griffiths5/19The cabinet is also from The French Depot
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Tom Griffiths8/19Lucian makes the most of the high ceiling, which is painted in the same bespoke Paint & Paper Library pink as the walls. The mural of a local harvest scene is believed to have been painted during the Second World War, when the house was used as an officers' garrison
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Tom Griffiths10/19Light streams into Robert's studio, which was once a scullery in the south wing
Tom Griffiths11/19Walls in Earthborn's 'Peachy Baby' and a vintage quilt enhance the scheme of the master bedroom.
Tom Griffiths12/19The portrait of Greta and Robert above the chimneypiece - a wedding present from artist Faye Wei Wei - echoes the tones of a painted antique bed from Barrows in Sandwich
Tom Griffiths13/19In the spare room walls, ceiling and curtains are enveloped in House of Hackney's 'Hollyhocks' spring floral wallpaper and fabric, set off by woodwork in "Nancy's Blushes' by Farrow & Ball.
Tom Griffiths14/19Ottoline's 'Improvisation 1' wallpaper contrasts with the bed canopy from Caramel above a Dragons of Walton Street bed
Tom Griffiths15/19Greta with Lucian on a swing decorated with silk roses
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