Victoria British Syle 2016

Don’t Forget For even more inspiration for gracious living, visit our website, victoriamag.com. You’ll find photos, tips, and how-tos on our social media sites, so follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter. P.S. Make sure to visit my blog,theribboninmyjournal.com. Traveling the highways and byways of England, we found homes with exquisite charm and manors that captivated our imaginations. For this issue, we compiled some of our favorites, from classic estates with majestic dwellings and manicured gardens to snug cottages that overflow with evidence of the owners’ preferences and imagination. We showcase interiors that salute the warm, relaxed spirit that is symbolic of cottage style and take a look at the formal interiors that shelter centuries of history. From houses both large and small to some of our favorite inns, these spaces will inspire…

Just two hours from London, yet virtually a world away, Tim and Lizzie Thornton-Allan’s impeccably restored seventeenth-century home in Oxfordshire blends gracefully and organically with the landscape, as if its sole purpose is to provide elusive structure to the wild, sprawling gardens that wind across the historic pastoral property. “We fell in love with this house straightaway,” Lizzie recalls. “Its age and rambling gardens are what sold it to us—we knew it would make a perfect family home.” For the past 10 years, Lizzie and her husband, Tim, had lived and worked in London and would retreat to their cottage in Oxfordshire on weekends. But when the couple were ready for a dramatic change, they decided to pack up the kids, leave city life behind, and live in their country cottage full…

Tucked within a quiet village green between London’s Holland Park and Portobello Road, Helena Gavshon’s 1920s cottage home looks decidedly understated from the outside. Yet inside, her interiors gleam like a jewel box, every room a brilliant montage of color, texture, and pattern. As many who have tried will attest, combining color and pattern—not to mention pattern on top of pattern— can be a daunting task for even the most experienced home decorator. But for Helena, a skilled textile designer of 30 years, this elusive art form has become her signature mark and the talent for which she is most renowned. Even her husband, David, a counselor at Great Ormond Street Hospital, claims to be baffled by how remarkably she achieves such a harmonious and eye-pleasing effect in the midst of…

Echoes of the past reverberate in the Mill House, an architectural treasure on the outskirts of Staffordshire, England. Art and enterprise intertwine in the historic waterwheel at the core of this five-story charmer. Mechanisms visible through glass enclosures reveal the estate’s provenance as a former corn mill, while thoughtful details showcase the loving care that has gone into its preservation. The agrarian structure, erected in the early 1800s, narrowly escaped demolition two decades ago after it was nearly destroyed by fire. Shrouded in yellow tape, the area’s only surviving mill had already been condemned when a developer recognized its uniqueness and decided to restore it. In 2010, Kay and Mike Petrouis bought the property and began a twelve-month renovation that continued these efforts. Finding someone to repair the barely functional wheel was…

As the owner of Coverup, a women’s clothing shop in the London suburb of East Sheen, Sara Green’s business life revolves around the latest trends, colors, and looks. It would be easy to assume she’d bring that same transient style to her interior décor, but that assumption would not ring true. Lake Lodge, the country retreat she shares with her husband, Steve, exudes a sense of longevity, of belonging—a feeling that everything used, collected, and displayed here has been lovingly curated over time. The couple had been searching for rural properties when they came across a unique dwelling, formed by melding two cottages into one. Unfazed by the structure’s dowdy and dated appearance, they could see its true potential. Seven years of renovations followed, with Steve, an osteopath by profession, handling…

Set against the backdrop of Wales’s Black Mountains and rising from the pastoral slopes of the Wye Valley, magnificent Llangoed Hall once breathed élan into the daydreams of a legendary fabric designer, the late Laura Ashley. The renowned arbiter of romantic taste, revered for Victorian-inspired frocks and English Country manor– style décor, first captivated the world decades ago with her nostalgic, feminine aesthetic. Laura once said her work was not really a question of inspiration but an expression of her affinity for life in the country. Her career trajectory from the 1950s to the 1980s was extraordinary—growing a modest cottage industry that produced silk-screened scarves and kitchen textiles into an international brand with more than two hundred boutiques. Yet, the entrepreneur revealed that the simple joys of motherhood, cooking, and sewing…