A restful waterside house by Turner Pocock with a garden full of surprises

A sturdy oak gate opens onto a narrow lane, overhung with trees and bordered by ferns, which winds down the gentle valley to reveal – at its lowest point – a lake fringed with rhododendrons whose reflections make a mirror image in the water. On the left, an elegant Georgian house overlooks the lake and, straight ahead, half buried in the opposite slope, is a long and low modern pool house, its façade a curve of glass. The only sound is birdsong and the occasional swish as a waterbird lands on the lake.

‘The owners fell in love with this place the moment they came down the drive,’ says Bunny Turner of the interior designer studio Turner Pocock, who, with her partner Emma Pocock, was tasked with making this Berkshire house a meeting place for a family who have relatives all round the world. It was not just the seclusion, but also the lack of ostentation that drew them to this very English scene.

Turner Pocock worked on this project with Yiangou Architects, who added the stone-pillared porch, which gives the house more definition. On opening the front door, you find yourself in a library, with a robust live-edged walnut central table lit by a pair of hefty lamps of a style often seen in college libraries. The owners met at Cambridge and, judging by the books lining the shelves, both they and their three children – aged between seven and 15 – have a great appetite for learning and reading. A pair of chairs by Soane, covered in pale blue leather, is the first gentle iteration of a blue and white palette that is continued in the drawing room beyond and over the whole of the ground floor.

‘We like to create a rhythm through a house,’ says Bunny. Here, you look over the back of a plump white, deliciously soft sofa, to a more shapely one by Ensemblier opposite, covered in blue linen, both flanked by buttoned armchairs, also blue. In one corner, a round table with a bronze top and concrete base – ideal for doing jigsaws or checking a laptop – is surrounded by a grid of cyanotype prints of plants, sourced for the house by art consultant Rebecca Gordon. ‘Our clients wanted the interiors to reflect the abundance of nature outside,’ says Bunny. ‘But they didn’t want soft florals – they opted instead for Fanny Shorter’s strong graphic patterns featuring plants and animals.’

The wallpaper in the sitting room next door is also by Fanny, where sofas and a pair of mid-century-style chairs upholstered in sheepskin are arranged around a low central coffee table with a handy shelf under it, used for storing board games.