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A former rectory in the West Country decorated for Christmas
People often claim fate as the agent of a house move. ‘It was meant to be,’ they say, and sometimes it is hard to disagree. Twelve years ago, the owners of this West Country rectory were starting to think of moving from Bristol to somewhere more rural, when they spotted its particulars online: they decided to attend the open day, even though the location would mean a long commute for them both – she was working for the BBC, he was a criminal barrister.
‘We turned up in our old jalopy to find ranks of shiny four-by-fours and a queue of people waiting for tours of the house in 10-minute slots,’ she says. ‘We thought we didn’t have a chance, especially as our townhouse wasn’t even on the market. But when we stepped through the front door, all our doubts about the location dropped away. It was beautiful and felt like coming home.’
From that moment, despite the competition, everything ‘magically fell into place’. The then owner of the rectory wanted it to go to a family with young children. Meanwhile, someone knocked on the door of their house in Bristol to say they would like to buy it. ‘We had two young children and a six-week-old baby,’ says the owner. ‘But when our offer on the rectory was accepted, we didn’t think twice. We moved into a rented cottage in the village and applied for planning permission.’
Built in the early 1840s for a rector with nine daughters, the house is classical and symmetrical from the outside, its front door opening onto the path that leads to the adjacent church. Inside, its grandest feature is a broad central hall, punctuated by three arched openings, which stretches from the front door, past the sweeping staircase to a window at the back. In the original layout, the three rooms leading off it to the right were reception rooms and the rooms to the left were the rector’s office at the front, and beyond it a series of smaller service rooms – the kitchen, scullery, larder and pantry. The rectory had been divided into two when it was sold off by the church in the Fifties, so the current owners have created a new layout to reunite it as one house.
Of the three reception rooms, the biggest and brightest was the drawing room at the back, with windows on two sides looking onto the walled gardens. ‘We knew straight away that this had to be our kitchen,’ explains the owner. Fortunately, despite the Grade II* listing, the planners agreed. The new arrangement of rooms makes perfect 21st-century sense. The dining room and drawing room are now at the front of the house, facing each other across the hall. Between the drawing room and the kitchen isa study, and the former service rooms are now a utility room, flower room, cloakroom and boot room. While building work progressed, the hunt began in salvage yards for chimneypieces of the right period to replace those that were missing, and for vintage fittings for the bathrooms that were being created from bedrooms.
The kitchen, with its generous central island and big, glazed china cupboard, was created by a joiner friend, Luke Haughton, who had made their kitchen in Bristol. ‘He used an old walnut tree that had come down in the village where I grew up, which he had then stored and seasoned,’ says the owner. An Aga was installed in the chimney breast and the floor was paved with slabs of Blue Lias stone to match the massive flags of the hall.
Throughout the house, the aesthetic is spare and unfussy, complementing the clean lines of the architecture. ‘I don’t like frills,’ says the owner. ‘And I tend to steer away from pattern.’ Curtains are antique linen sheets, most in shades of grey, hand-dyed by Polly Lyster. Walls, too, are plain, pale and neutral. ‘I used to paint everything white, or off-white, but as I get older I am more inclined to use colour, so the hall and the dining room are two different shades of pink.’
In December, the hall glows in the soft light from a Christmas tree framed in the alcove opposite the door to the drawing room. ‘This is one of the times when we use the dining room instead of eating in the kitchen,’ she says. Candles are lit along the mantelpiece and on the table and the pink walls take on an extra-rosy warmth. ‘Our decorations are simple. We all go out and gather things from the garden and hedgerows – ivy and old man’s beard, the wilder and more wayward the better’.
Michael Sinclair1/5The glass pendant light is from Jim Lawrence. Polly Lyster of Dyeworks made the curtains out of antique linen sheets, which she coloured using vegetable dyes. ‘I love their mottled, sun-faded colours,’ says the owner
Michael Sinclair2/5At Christmas, the family gathers pine cones and branches of old man’s beard to decorate this room at the front of the house, which has walls painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Setting Plaster’.
Michael Sinclair3/5Blue Lias stone was sourced from a local quarry to make the floor.
Michael Sinclair4/5The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Setting Plaster’. A four-poster from an antique shop in Sherborne, Dorset, has a bedcover from Toast. The armchair was found locally.
Michael Sinclair5/5All the bathroom fittings were sourced at reclamation yards. The portrait over the bath is by the Bristol-based artist Peter McGrath.
