THE HOUSE BY THE CREEK
Swedish paint colours, New England panelling and country house fabrics combine comfort with elegance in this family home on the edge of a Devon estuary
Country house fabrics and Swedish styling combine in this Devon family home
Forty years ago, Susie Watson bought a little 1930s house overlooking Bowcombe Creek near Kingsbridge in Devon. It’s still there – the glorious views and dog-friendly furnishings continuing to tempt three generations of her family to spend Christmases, summer holidays and every available weekend there. But it’s now nearly half as big again, its walls pushed out into extra rooms, the windows opened up to draw in more light. If it were Grandfather’s axe, in that old story about replacing the head and the handle, you might say it’s no longer the same house. But the setting anchors it, and as each generation makes its own statement with additions and adjustments, Waders (as the house is known) roots itself more deeply into the family landscape.
For Susie, it also meets the challenge of making the new look long-established. “I’m used to living in an old, listed house,” she says, “and this is anything but – because we’ve built onto it whenever we could afford it.” Yet a lifetime of experience in interiors
– her business, Susie Watson Designs, creates fabrics and furniture, papers and paint colours – has taught her how to change things seamlessly without the joins showing: “Whole chunks are modern, but they don’t look it. The house has its own feel.” Tongueand-groove panelling softens the lines of plastered walls, painted floors disguise the cheap timber of new boards, and replacement windows actually look more authentic than the original Crittall fittings. “We created our own mongrel design. Not Georgian, but not modern either – much bigger than they were and definitely prettier,” Susie says.
The windows were the first alteration, shortly after Susie and her husband Hamish moved in with four small children. Then they turned the original dining room into a big kitchen with a window seat looking out over the estuary, to form a comfortable living space and make the most of the view. (The old kitchen is now a proper laundry room: “Because if we’re all here, with children and grandchildren, there’s always masses of washing and drying going on.”) The little sitting room grew to about six square metres (“great for games and dogs”) and a new attic bedroom now has eight beds and a cot under its steep-sloping ceiling: “Only high enough for kids – and of course no one sleeps!”
Susie’s children, now grown up themselves, have continued the house’s evolution between them. It’s her daughter Anna who painted all the floors, providing a simple background for woven rugs and creating a grey-and-white chequerboard in the hallway. It was Anna who extended the kitchen into the big L-shaped dining-living room that now wraps around the back of the house, with new bedrooms above it to accommodate extra children, and who added a Swedish-style balustrade along the big landing that leads to the attic. “That used to be a
“A home has to be somewhere you live. It’s lovely if it’s pretty, too, but it’s not a painting”
small bedroom, and I was worried about the waste of space when we knocked through it,” Susie says, “but it’s actually a wonderful feature in its own right.”
Paint colours and architectural details all help to define the building’s character. A little bit New England, says Susie, and a bit Swedish – and definitely country: “I’m not breaking the mould. I love English country houses. To me, it’s about picking the best from the past and using colour in a modern, individual way.” So, the pale, light-reflective greys and off-whites are splashed with deep pastels – cushions and lampshades in crushed raspberry and duck-egg blue – and the original ‘high-waisted’ 1930s doors, the kind with shorter panels at the top than the bottom, have been replaced with more elegantly proportioned designs, along Swedish lines again. Swedish style – especially Gustavian – suits Susie’s blend of comfort and elegance: “A home has to be somewhere you live. With so many children here, and their friends, and sometimes eight dogs in summer, we can’t fuss too much. It’s lovely if it looks pretty, too, but it’s not a painting.”
Years of scavenging in salvage yards and sale rooms have supplied furnishings, such as her curlicued metal bedhead (part of a larger frame), her bath, rescued from a farmyard and re-enamelled, and the little single bedsteads that evoke an authentic 1930s dormitory feel. And if the house has a more co-ordinated, ‘finished’ look these days – because it’s also furnished with many of her own designs and used as a backdrop for the brand’s photography – it’s still, above all, a family home. Her paint colours are muted and easy to live with; her fabrics and handpainted ceramics add pretty but unobtrusive pattern. The farmhouse tables, Gustavian benches, carved chairs and capacious armoires are practical as well as beautiful: “If it’s not functional, then something’s not right with the design,” Susie says. Slimline benches and cane-backed sofas sit neatly against walls; mirrors bounce extra light into the house – and are less expensive than paintings. In fact, many of her designs are a response to a practical demand, such as the need for plenty of hanging space with drawers beneath: “I used to buy sale-room armoires for the children’s rooms – now we make our own.”
As the house continues to evolve, there are young ideas coming through, too. Susie’s grandchildren are all interested in their surroundings and she has a couple of keen amateur designers among the girls. Of course, they like pink, she says, but they have a good eye and know if a colour’s right or wrong: “One of them actually chose grey for her bedroom, although I think she may have had her mother’s help…” Susie even remembers her grandson (now 12 and designing spaceships) declaring at the age of four that his favourite colour was see-through blue: “Which I totally get!” So it looks as though the future of Waders is in safe hands, however many times it’s reinvented.
FOR MORE INFORMATION on Susie Watson Designs, visit susiewatsondesigns.co.uk.
“To me, it’s about picking the best from the past and using colour in a modern, individual way”