DELICIOUSLY BEAUTIFUL
Cookery writer Skye Mcalpine’s Victorian terrace oozes traditional English style
When bestselling cookbook author Skye Mcalpine wanted her new house in southwest London to feel immediately lived in, who better to call on than architect and interior designer Ben Pentreath for help? Together with Ben, a master of combining comfort with patina, Skye and her husband Anthony decided to strip their then newly purchased four-storey Victorian terrace house back to its very bare bones and start again from scratch.
The house, part of a row of Victorian terraced houses ‘cheaply and soullessly renovated’ by a property developer in the 1990s, had been on the market for a long time. Emptied of all its contents, ‘it looked incredibly sad,’ recalls Skye. ‘But it had a really good energy, which Ben felt too, with great ceiling heights and views of the park beyond an albeit busy road, which gave it a generous feeling of space.’
Set to a tight timeline – six months from receipt of the keys to when Skye and Anthony’s second baby Achille was born (Skye literally moved in straight from her hospital bed) – they worked to ‘a blank canvas,’ she says, reinstating chimney breasts, fireplaces, sash windows, parquet flooring and decorative cornicing. ‘The only details kept were the floor-to-ceiling shelves in the study and the staircase because it felt too big a project to install a new one.’
Walls were removed and floor layouts reconfigured to create a flow of practical but light-filled family spaces. This includes a long, open kitchen and dining area on the ground floor – ideal for Skye to throw the many lunches and dinners she loves to host over the festive season, adding trestle tables to the dining table to seat up to 30. And there’s a sophisticated but child-friendly sitting room where everyone will gather for mulled wine, mince pieces and carols around Anthony’s beloved Yamaha baby grand piano and open stockings, with mugs of hot chocolate and panettone on Christmas morning.
For daily life, the couple wanted nothing in the house to feel too precious, so Ben encouraged them to think about ‘colours we wanted to live with and textures that would wear better with age,’ says Skye. The three-toned yellow kitchen was inspired by the 1950s kitchen in the house they rent in Venice (the city where Skye grew up and returns to regularly). The pink textured plastered walls of the sitting room – ‘perfect for hiding bumps and scratches’ – provide a softening contrast to the deep gloss red of Skye’s study.
A riot of vintage florals by GP&J Baker, Jean Monro and Antoinette Poisson, and a mural of hand-painted birds and vines stretching up through the stairwells, team sympathetically with new and antique finds, from Murano glass and tolle metalwork chandeliers to big squishy sofas and ottomans. ‘I love old things with a sense of history, partly because they’re really beautiful but mostly because they feel unique,’ says Skye. ‘I don’t mind if it’s a bit chipped or cracked, that just adds to the story. They feel like special treasures.’
At Christmas, Skye loves the house to feel cosy, ‘but also really over the top and extravagant,’ she says. There are three trees – one each for the kitchen, sitting room and the boys’ top-floor landing, decorated with vintage Venetian glass baubles and gilded birds in cages bought years ago at John Derian in New York – and she calls on florist Milli Proust to dress doors, mantelpieces and tables with ‘show-stopping’ wild flora and foliage, including holly, rosemary, berries and ivy, grown and foraged at Milli’s West Sussex farm. ‘It feels very personal and made with love.’
Skye’s second cookbook A Table for Friends is out now (Bloomsbury). For Skye’s tableware collection with Anthropologie, visit anthropologie.com; @skyemcalpine. See Ben’s work at benpentreath.com