Miami comes to Castleford
Siobhan Murphy stars in BBC2’s Interior Design Masters and her towering Art Deco house reflects her skill and flamboyant taste. Sharon Dale reports.
If ever a house and a woman were made for each other, it is surely Chatelaine and Siobhan Murphy. Both are truly remarkable and both stand out from the crowd in the best possible way. Their marriage made in heaven began when Siobhan and her husband, Nick, decided to upsize from her small semidetached house.
“We couldn’t agree on anything as his ideal home was a minimalist apartment and mine was a big Victorian terrace property. Then we found Chatelaine and that was it. We both loved it.
“I was so emotional when I first viewed it, I cried. I felt a strong connection with it and there was a real sense that this is where I needed to be,” says Siobhan, who credits her makeover of the house with helping her win a coveted place on the BBC2 series Interior Design Masters.
The show, which is hosted by Alan Carr, follows 10 contestants competing for a prestigious contract with a luxury hotel. Each week, they are given a project to complete and at the end of it one person is eliminated by series judge Michelle Ogundehin, former editor of Elle Decoration magazine, and a guest judge.
“I loved every minute of it. I had a week while working full-time to find everything I needed for my project and then they sent a van that I had to drive down south for the first episode,” says Siobhan.
“All the contestants stayed in a hotel while filming and we formed a really nice friendship group.”
After leaving school, she studied fashion at Leeds College of Art but says that as “a plus size girl” she could never find clothes she loved, so she made interiors her hobby because “then it didn’t matter at all whether I was size 8 or a size 18”.
Since taking part in the TV series, she has dropped from full to part-time hours as an NHS digital communications manager, so she can pursue creative enterprises, while continuing to work on her home.
Her Art Deco house has long been a Castleford landmark thanks to its standout architecture. The huge angular building with a circular tower is a magnificent
1930s “Grand Design” and is delightfully incongruous among the new builds and the old red brick terraces and semis that characterise the rest of the town.
Inside, it retains many original features including oak parquet flooring and a magnificent sunken black bath with mosaic tiling.
Now, just 18 months after buying the property, Siobhan has managed a major transformation with bold interiors that reflect the spirit of that inter-war