A flavour of France

Known in the antiques trade as ‘The French Lady’, Jane Emery has lived up to her name by filling her renovated Edwardian semi with continental antiques and vintage finds

Be transported to the continent by Jane Emery’s Edwardian semi

Roots run deep, and anyone who has enjoyed a happy country childhood will understand antiques collector and dealer Jane Emery’s longing to settle back into the lakeside village in Staffordshire that has been home to her family for generations. But prices were high, so she and husband Ron were resigned to living in the nearby town.

‘I always loved it here and wanted to come back,’ says Jane, whose reputation has been made through decades of dealing in antiques from France and Belgium, ‘so when we were walking past this house one day and I saw the former owner’s son, I asked him about his plans for it. We were so lucky – it was a quick sale, it didn’t even go on the market. By then our own son Anthony was about 12 and all his friends were in this village as well as our family, so we were already spending all our time here.’

The tile-hung and pebbledashed Edwardian semi, set into a hillside, was more than ready for updating, putting it safely within their price range but leaving little spare for renovations. ‘I liked the room sizes and could see the potential, even though nobody else could,’ Jane admits. ‘Everyone thought we were mad, but I just wanted to get back to the country, so I think I had a rose-tinted view. I could see it would make a really nice family home.’

With no time to waste, they pitched in, rewiring, adding central heating and replacing ugly roof tiles. As their son grew up, Jane and Ron steadily worked their way through the house, refitting the kitchen and bathroom and decorating throughout. Then, in the early 1990s, Anthony’s Navy career was ended by a serious accident, and they had to adapt the family home to give him his own independent space.

‘He was in hospital for six months,’ says Jane, ‘and we started building that year.’ A new twostorey extension gave him a living room, with a lift up to his bedroom, bathroom and dressing room. ‘He’s now married,’ she says, ‘and has a bungalow two doors away with his wonderful wife and their three dogs, so we’ve taken over the extension now.’

In its latest phase, the upper level has become their master suite; below an informal living room opens onto the garden. ‘At auction we bought some limed oak flooring for Ron to lay,’ says Jane. ‘What we’d forgotten, though, was there was a slope to the doors for the wheelchair - he ended up having to take up the whole of the old floor.’

One of the joys of their house is its views over the garden and countryside beyond, so a conservatory was always on their wish-list. ‘We managed to buy one second-hand,’ says Jane. ‘It was far too big for the space we had so we adapted it with the help of a friend.’ Extending out left the original dining room enclosed and darker, but all the more intimate for it, so they emphasised that by making it a cosy, dramatic space, with baroque furniture, a beamed ceiling and stash of Nordic and French antiques.

Reworking the bathroom is their most recent project. ‘It’s a small space, so difficult to plan,’ Jane points out, ‘but we managed to fit in both the slipper bath and a beautiful basin we bought from our antiques dealer friends. I always think you should follow your heart – even if your ideas seem impractical, you’ll always find a way.’

A huge part of the charm of their home is the way Jane plays with scale, never fazed by the need to shoehorn beautiful yet oversized pieces into its more modest rooms. Many of her favourite pieces come from bigger, grander spaces, yet with goodhumoured persuasion prove perfect and suit her theatrical style and sense of fun. ‘The living room fireplace came from a vast old house somewhere,’ she points out. ‘I’ve made it even bigger and more imposing by adding to the top of the mirror.’

Everything in the house comes with a story – often an adventure in logistics. ‘We had to carry a grandfather clock the length of the village,’ says Jane, ‘and every time we have been abroad I’ve set Ron a challenge of how to get something back. Once when he was at work, a friend and I got stuck on the stairs for two hours with our pine fourposter. I was at the top, he was at the bottom and we really couldn’t move. Eventually we wedged it into position, he went to make us coffee, came back and it suddenly slipped – just enough so that we could finally free it and carry it up.’ Now, dressed in toile de Jouy drapes, its over-the-top glamour is loved by guests, just as Jane hoped for.

There’s a romance and an irrepressible delight to Jane’s style. ‘I’ve always harked back to the Napoleonic times,’ she says, ‘or turn-of-the-century La Belle Époque, Moulin Rouge days. I love the colour, the shabby greys and whites, and pale blues.’ She also loves gathering objects to set it all off, gems whose hidden past will never be known. ‘I like that the things around me are lived in,’ she says. ‘They have a tale to tell, even though it’s often a mystery.’

Her own home’s secrets are entirely benign, she is sure. ‘Some houses have an aura about them,’ she says, ‘and this is a very peaceful, placid house. I can’t imagine ever leaving it and moving on.

All our friends are here: our son and his wife, my sister too, are all close by. We are very settled - it’s a really good place to be.’