25 Beautiful Homes November 2021

A surprising number of the houses we see at 25 Beautiful Homes are from homeowners who had spent years moving around and were looking to put down roots. This issue is no exception. Nancy Garland was living in Hong Kong when she found a Georgian townhouse in Bath that she knew had the potential to make a perfect family home (p62). Despite having to manage the refurbishment from 6,000 miles away, she has transformed the interior, blending Eastern influences with classic English style. Similarly, Catherine Martel had travelled all over the world and her priority was to ‘settle down and create a family home for generations to come’. See the results on p23. Holly and Al Hartley had also been on the move for years. The farmhouse they settled in…

DESIGN TIP ‘Start collecting art. It doesn’t have to be expensive but accumulating it and hanging it over time will add soul to your home’ LAST WORD ‘Make your home your own. I’ve never understood why people want to live in somewhere that looks like a hotel lobby’ Leonoor van Bueren can’t explain what it was that captured her imagination so clearly when she first viewed the home she would share with her husband Thijs Hovers and their combined family of six children. ‘It wasn’t the prettiest house from the outside and the hallway was very dark, but I immediately had this feeling that it could be a fantastic home for us,’ Leonoor recalls. ‘There were so many crazy things going on, like an extra kitchen and corridors everywhere, but I…

When Helena Forbes and her husband Michael decided to return to the New Forest, where they had both grown up, they viewed a house which dated back to the 1550s. However it was the adjoining Tudor barn that really caught their attention. Formal records revealed that the barn had been transported from East Sussex in the late 1990s to its current site and was painstakingly rebuilt down to the last wooden beam. ‘The property was in really good condition and lovingly looked after by its previous owners,’ says Helena, ‘but it needed updating and we wanted to create a contemporary, country look to complement the traditional Tudor features.’ Helena had some colours and ideas in mind but it was interior designer Jess McDonald of Bergamot Interiors who was instrumental in bringing…

Step across the threshold of Catherine Martel and her husband Damian’s late Victorian home and you instantly feel welcomed into its warm embrace. A chequered tiled hallway leads through double doors to the huge expanse of the ground floor, where the sitting room, study, kitchen and dining areas flow seamlessly into one another. At the far end, the family’s Hungarian Vizsla, Sidney, can often be found under an impressive oval dining table. ‘We love to entertain,’ says Belgian-born Catherine, who has four children, Mathilda,13, Clémentine, 11, Celeste, 10, and Balthazar, seven. ‘As soon as we had finished the renovation, we invited the neighbours over for drinks. We were struck by how many of them had lived here for years, yet hadn’t met each other. We started our supper clubs to connect people.’ The atmosphere…

Though moving to a picturesque part of the Suffolk coast meant downsizing, it was a challenge that Sarah Ward and her husband Carl were keen to take on. The couple were looking for the right home for the next chapter of their lives and this rural escape held special memories. ‘I spent part of my childhood in the area, during the 1960s,’ says Sarah. ‘So there is an appealing familiarity to this coastal stretch.’ Even though the couple first viewed the farmhouse during the winter, it didn’t take much imagination for the interior designer to know that a great deal could be made of its features, from the charmingly uneven walls and the original Georgian glass windows to a garage ripe for conversion into an overspill cottage. With a less open-plan layout…

Melissa Jolly and her husband Charlie never imagined they’d find their new home on their doorstep when they began their search. ‘We were living close by, in a village near Reading,’ says Melissa, ‘and were looking for another house to renovate. We owned a Victorian semi and wanted somewhere detached, with a larger garden for our two children, Sam, now 19, and Amelie, now 16. Melissa and Charlie began house-hunting and then fate took a hand. ‘A local farmer happened to tell my mum he was selling his father’s old farmhouse - the house I’d grown up next door to,’ says Melissa. ‘Mum booked a viewing without even telling us about it.’ When Charlie and Melissa went to view it , they both agreed it was too good an opportunity to…