Right away, I got started on my mood boards, filling scrapbook after scrapbook with pictures of Georgian rectories and cottage gardens. When we began designing the house with our architect, the brief soon became the not-very-imaginative “fake old Cotswold farmhouse.” We wanted the feeling of a home that had been around for a few centuries, combined with the functionality of a brand-new building. We would keep the old farm cottage, turning it into a boot room, nursery, and utility area, and add a new front.
Over many months, the architect proposed various designs, but none were quite right. In the end, Toby and I took him to Abbey Farm in the famously beautiful Slad Valley, immortalized by Laurie Lee in his book Cider with Rosie. It has a charming stone facade—a Jacobean central block and porch, a Georgian wing at one end, and a converted barn at the other. The house is only one room deep, cottage-size, but it has wonderful proportions. It became our chief inspiration.
William Morris “Willow Boughs” wallpaper adds to the coziness of the Arts and Crafts–inspired drawing room.Photographed by François Halard, Vogue, November 2016
I won’t bore you with too many details about the part that happens between designing a house and decorating it; two exhausting years were spent contemplating concrete breeze blocks, roof tiles, stone samples, double glazing, plumbing, and drainage. Disasters befell us, as they do all self-builders: Our worst moment was when, after we got the roof on and the house watertight, a huge rainstorm battered it only to reveal that every stone window leaked bucketfuls of water. In tears, I asked the architect to come up with a solution to fix them. He quit the project. The builder was fired.