25 Beautiful Homes June 2019

Most of us hanker for more time in nature. We dream of homes in the rolling hills, save our pennies for out-of-town trips, and make a beeline for any slice of greenery the moment the sun peeks out from behind the clouds (or the rain stops!). That feeling of being in the great outdoors can be quite unbeatable. But how to recreate that sense of freshness at home? With this question in mind, our focus for this issue is on homes that offer ideas for connecting inside and out. We also wanted to cover how to bring indoor style outside and how to create an outdoor feel inside. Our cover story, Sarah and Andrew Charlesworth’s Kent home, strikes all of these notes (page 56). Its focal point is the conservatory;…

When Sophie de Bajac’s husband, Pierre, asked her to view a former hunting lodge on a large estate in the Périgord region of France, she was dubious about the idea. ‘I wasn’t sure that we needed a house with so much land, but the moment I saw it, I was under its spell,’ she says. ‘The location is really special, as is the house itself, although at the time it was partly overgrown and in a poor state.’ The couple also own a flat in Bordeaux, an hour’s drive away, and for many years they had owned a seaside villa in Cap Ferret. ‘We were getting tired of the summer crowds and my husband craved peace and quiet,’ says Sophie. ‘We both love walking and we wanted a place where we…

Most of us hanker for more time in nature. We dream of homes in the rolling hills, save our pennies for out-of-town trips, and make a beeline for any slice of greenery the moment the sun peeks out from behind the clouds (or the rain stops!). That feeling of being in the great outdoors can be quite unbeatable. But how to recreate that sense of freshness at home? With this question in mind, our focus for this issue is on homes that offer ideas for connecting inside and out. We also wanted to cover how to bring indoor style outside and how to create an outdoor feel inside. Our cover story, Sarah and Andrew Charlesworth’s Kent home, strikes all of these notes (page 56). Its focal point is the conservatory;…

When Sophie de Bajac’s husband, Pierre, asked her to view a former hunting lodge on a large estate in the Périgord region of France, she was dubious about the idea. ‘I wasn’t sure that we needed a house with so much land, but the moment I saw it, I was under its spell,’ she says. ‘The location is really special, as is the house itself, although at the time it was partly overgrown and in a poor state.’ The couple also own a flat in Bordeaux, an hour’s drive away, and for many years they had owned a seaside villa in Cap Ferret. ‘We were getting tired of the summer crowds and my husband craved peace and quiet,’ says Sophie. ‘We both love walking and we wanted a place where…

When Sally Green and her husband Simon Wallace needed a larger home, closer to where they were both working in Leeds, they found a detached house near the city centre yet on the edge of the countryside. ‘It needed updating, but gave us the best of both worlds,’ says Sally, a part-time interior-design consultant. What began as a cosmetic revamp quickly turned into a major renovation. While the house was being dismantled around the couple, it was business as usual. ‘We were sleeping on mattresses on the floor and getting dressed for meetings in the middle of a building site during the worst part of the renovation,’ recalls Sally. ‘It was quite stressful, but you just have to keep focused.’ It took a year to give the ‘ordinary house in an extraordinary…

Back in 2011, moving to the remote Scottish Highlands was not on Iona Drysdale’s to-do list. ‘I was working as a doctor in New Zealand and hadn’t planned to return to Scotland in the foreseeable future, when my uncle was taken ill,’ she says. ‘I came back for six months to spend time with him.’ One of Iona’s uncle’s unfinished projects was an old fishing net store. ‘My uncle had bought it as a ruin and was planning to convert it into a house,’ she says. ‘He’d got as far as having the site cleared and levelled when he fell ill. He asked me if I’d like to take it over and I agreed.’ The first step was to work out the design. ‘I knew I wanted the house to feel spacious…