Story of my life
UPDATING THIS FIVE-BEDROOM COUNTRY PILE MEANT GOING BACK TO ITS PAST. EMMA WELLS TAKES A LOOK...
FOR interior stylist and period house obsessive Jane Ashton, designing a decorative scheme isn’t about having the latest kitchen or new-season hues. Instead, it’s about discovering a home’s past, and finding the best ways to add the next chapter to its story.
‘A house may be old, but its narrative is not yet complete,’ Jane says. ‘My designs tell the story of both the history of a home, as well as the one of the people who live in it today.’
Nowhere has she put this into practice so eloquently than at her own six-and-a-half acre Hertfordshire home, which she bought a decade ago with her financier husband, Richard.
Having already renovated several period properties over the years, but now with a professional interior design qualification in hand, grade
II-listed Gannock Green Farmhouse – a five-bedroom, five reception-room house in a rural hamlet near Sandon, about five miles from the royal market town of Royston – presented the perfect opportunity to develop her signature ‘lived-in luxe’ style.
Built originally in the 17th century, then extended and tweaked by Georgian and Victorian master craftsmen, the property was full of fabulous original features – including an inglenook and cast-iron fireplaces, Georgian sash windows and 19thcentury panelling – but hadn’t been updated in more than 20 years.
‘Not everything was in the best condition, but I am not one to just rip things out. I love the look of bashed up old floors and doors, and all the imperfections of period houses, as they are all a vital part of the narrative,’ Jane says. ‘People are often not sure what to chuck and what to cherish, and give in to builders who tell them it would be easier to start afresh. You have to stand your ground.’
Jane, who has two grown-up children, says her restoration of the farmhouse, which sits beyond a gravel courtyard edged with box hedging and lavender, was partly inspired by a tale told to her by a neighbour about the home’s original owner, the son of a landowner whose young second wife had lavish tastes. Jane says: ‘I imagined her walking through the house examining all the traditional pieces, and wanting to inject her own more fashionable, contemporary aesthetic.’
Childhood memories of three ‘quirky and creative aunts’, who introduced her to the glamour of Hollywood movies, and the beauty and romance of antiques, were also inspirational in Jane’s transformation of the property. And the makeover has been so successful, it has been hired for shoots by the likes of Laura Ashley.
Jane’s first focus in the 4,500sq ft interior space she had to play with was the kitchen, which she extended – keeping the original Victorian quarry floor tiling, of course – to allow for a dining space and a snug. Having always lusted after Mrs Patmore’s kitchen in Downton Abbey – ‘I just love the copper pans against that greeny-grey backdrop’ – she commissioned bespoke cabinetry by kitchen classicists Armstrong Jordan (armstrongjordan.co.uk) and handpainted it in Farrow & Ball’s greenbased Mouse’s Back. The modern Downton vibe was intensified by copper pendant lighting (inset) by Cox & Cox (coxandcox.co.uk).
Next on the agenda were a pair of attic rooms, previously boarded up, which Jane converted into a spacious bedroom suite. Part of her passion for storytelling, it has a vintage-style iron bedstead and trunk, and three patterns of wallpaper, giving the sense that layers of history were peeled back during the renovation.
‘I was thinking of young maids who may have once lived up here, and wanted to create a narrative for them,’ Jane explains. Next door, the bathroom features rose printed wallpaper and an orange rolltop bath.
‘I love romantic, feminine styling, but don’t like things to get too fluffy or frou-frou,’ says Jane, who charges clients around £350 for a two-hour at-home style consultation.
She is also determined that her look never becomes predictable. ‘I wanted my continuation of the home’s story to add a really warm, comforting chapter,’ she says. ‘It needed to be elegant, but not so uptight or stuffy.’
In the traditionally styled plastercoloured sitting room, for example, with its sedate grey furniture, ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ is stencilled in gold in an alcove above a masked female bust. Across the hallway, in the dining room, the glamour factor is ramped up:
dazzlingly decadent, Farrow & Ball’s rich Hague Blue is on the walls, paired with deep green floorboards, period chandeliers bought at Lots Road Auctions in Chelsea and sheepskin throws draped over the dining chairs.
Artwork throughout the home, such as Young & Battaglia’s print of a stately French queen cheekily defaced by a splodge of pink paint (mineheart.com/ art/madame-blush-canvas/) provides those historical twists Jane loves so much, alongside eccentric vintage paintings and ceramics unearthed at Cheffins auctions and Kempton Park Racecourse’s antiques markets in Sunbury-on-Thames.
Outside, despite the immaculate
‘I’m not one to just rip things out – I love the look of bashed up old doors and floors’
formal gardens, collection of specimen trees, swimming pool and vaultedceilinged granary, Jane’s 1970s caravan, ‘Brigitte the glamavan’, named after French sex symbol Bardot, steals the show. ‘We bought it in 2015 from eBay for about £200,’ says Jane, who went on to spend about £20,000 on its refurb. ‘It was old, brown and unloved, and we have completely revamped her so we can take her on holidays to St Tropez.’
Jane – who also owns a flat in Spitalfields, east London, and a farmhouse in the French Alps – says she is also keen to find another renovation project at some point. When she finds the right property, she’ll be taking aboard the key pieces of advice she always gives her clients.
‘I always tell them to first clear their minds, and imagine how they want a room to feel,’ she says. ‘But whatever you do, don’t forget to bring in your own unique personality.’