PUTTING THE HEART BACK IN A picturesque stone cottage in a Wiltshire village has been restored to its former glory

Thanks to the efforts of its interior designer owner, a picturesque stone cottage in a quiet Wiltshire village has been restored to its former glory and filled with an eclectic mix of personal pieces

Clare Nash admits to being an inveterate mover: she can’t resist buying wrecks to do up. But when she bought Watersmeet House a few years ago, it dictated its own terms. It wasn’t a wreck, and it had already been done up, so the challenge for Clare was to undo the work and rediscover the house’s beautiful early-19th-century bones.

Clare bought the property – whose name reflects its position at the confluence of two brooks in a Wiltshire village – on impulse, seduced by its possibilities, its easy distance from members of her family, and the Indian bean tree whose huge, pale leaves spread a dappled green across the windows in summer. ‘I’ve always wanted an Indian bean tree!’ she says. ‘I found the house online, rang the agent and bought it as soon as I’d been to see it. I didn’t even consider anywhere else.’

Originally two cottages, one of them the village post office (still with the old polemounted red postbox outside), the property is only one room deep, its pale stone front stretching along the village street behind pretty painted railings. An out-of-control wisteria and a rose scramble up the walls, and inside are calm, beautifully proportioned rooms with huge fireplaces and deep windowsills.

Stone-flagged floors run throughout the downstairs area and there are lovely wide floorboards upstairs, but when Clare moved in, these had been largely hidden under fitted carpet and vinyl. The overhead beams had been stained dark brown in a 1980s version of period style – whereas, in fact, she says, historically they could well have been painted in pale colours. So for Clare, who runs her own interior design business, it was just a question of putting the heart back into it. ‘It was never going to be a light house,’ she says, ‘but I’ve made it slightly brighter by stripping it back.’

The result is mellow and welcoming. Stone-coloured walls and plain Swedish linens blend quietly with the old flags and floorboards, the rush mats and neutral woven rugs, the exposed stone of chimney breasts and the natural wood of the original panelled wall cupboards. The only rooms where Clare has used deeper colours are the study, which has an olive-green ceiling – ‘I like painting ceilings dramatic colours’ – and the dining room, where one wall is the dark green of pine trees. That colour was created, Clare says, from a mixture of other shades that

had turned out to be mistakes. It’s only used for eating at night and in winter, and Clare’s policy with dark rooms is not to fight the gloom, but to work with it and add character.

However, both rooms are enlivened by accents of a strong citron yellow that recurs throughout the house in accessories such as lamps and cushions. In the dining room, it appears in the ceramic glaze of a fruit bowl, an enamel lightshade, and the bold stripes of the floor-length Neisha Crosland curtains. And it is echoed, in a slightly softer hue, in the 100-year-old doors of the china cupboard, which Clare discovered – already painted – in a Lillie Road antiques shop in Fulham, west London. She then hung the doors on a basic MDF structure to create the effect of a traditional armoire.

That’s a trick she repeats in the kitchen where, having relocated the sink to provide a more practical layout, she fitted the carcasses of Ikea cabinets and commissioned a local carpenter to make simple doors for them. She installed Carrara marble worktops, with a splashback of white tiles behind, and hung pretty cotton curtains below them to hide the dishwasher and other clutter. The furniture here has the comfort of a sitting room, with an old squashy leather armchair creating Clare’s favourite spot: ‘I can spend most of the day here. The Aga keeps it really warm in winter.’

The same sense of comfort, simplicity and individuality pervades the house, giving Clare and her two daughters the perfect retreat from their London home. She has collected mid-century furniture for years, and it looks made to fit here, sitting easily alongside car-boot finds and pieces inherited from her grandparents. Fibreglass Eames chairs mix with old rush-seated designs around the French farmhouse table, and a coffee table topped with handmade tiles (which were brought back from Sweden by Clare’s grandfather in the 1930s) is home to a collection of colourful ashtrays.

In the bedrooms, Clare combined handmade quilts with high-street rugs, while a classic Saarinen resin Tulip table sits comfortably alongside her granny’s satinupholstered slipper chair. A little Lloyd Loom nursing chair that Clare has owned since she was a teenager has found a perfect home in the bathroom, alongside the traditional fittings that she salvaged from a reclamation yard near Bath. Because it

didn’t need refiguring or any major structural changes, Clare was able to live in the house while the work was carried out. The occasional bouts of chaos involved were easily offset by the usefulness of being on hand to answer the builders’ queries and confirm what she wanted. She also benefited by using a local family firm, which had been established in the area for a century or more and knew all the houses. They were familiar with the huge fireplaces that needed re-lining; told her when they came across interesting nooks that could be put to new use; and had imaginative ideas for recycling materials. ‘They would never throw away a nice piece of wood,’ Clare explains. So when they found a useful alcove in the kitchen, near the door to the larder, they fitted it with shelves made from offcuts from another job.

Clare herself became builder’s mate when necessary: they would tell her what they needed, and she’d go and buy it. It meant the whole project was satisfyingly organic – much more interesting than working from technical drawings and abstract plans.

And the house has got its heart back, just as Clare hoped it would.

For more information, visit clarenash.com