The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Welcome to the house of fun
From a big-top-themed playroom to Union Jack flags and bunting, designer Alex Gore Browne’s Cotswolds home is anything but beige. Words and photography by Mark C O’flaherty
A knitwear designer’s theatrical home
KNITWEAR DESIGNER Alex Gore Browne first fell in love with the circus when she consulted on Alexander Mcqueen’s fairground-themed 2001 What a Merry-go-round collection. She was so inspired, she then took the theme home, to Tidmington House in the Cotswolds. ‘There are lots of circus elements in the rooms,’ she says, sitting in her kitchen, which is festooned with bright bunting. ‘I love everything to do with the circus: the vintage look of it – the 1930s period in particular, the bright reds and the stripes. I often have Pierrot collars on my designs too.’
This is a house that can handle all things theatrical. Gore Browne had the ceiling of the children’s vast playroom painted to resemble a big top, and the impact is both playful and stylish. It is a family home where fun seems always to be on the agenda: she and her two children – Tilly, 10, and Teddy, eight – hold regular craft sessions at the kitchen table, and there are vintage rocking horses around the house, a nod to her husband Jo Bamford’s previous career as a champion horse rider. They live 20 minutes away from his family’s Daylesford estate, and all of the bathrooms at Tidmington have a row of their green-bottled Bamford body products.
The core of Gore Browne’s fashion business, which she launched in 2000, is now based here, in her home studio. ‘I love being here,’ she says. ‘I have our dogs – Moon, a labrador, and Tigger, a whippet/labrador cross – with me, and I’m around for the school run, but when I’m on a major deadline and there’s lots to get done, I can just stay up late and work after the children have gone to bed. I try not to work during the summer holidays, because I want to spend time with the family as much as I can.’
Her obsession with fabrics is evident
Previous page Alex Gore Browne in front of the giant Vivienne Westwood Union Flag, which is actually wallpaper mounted on board; the huge curtains were inherited from the previous owners of the house. This page, clockwise from right The playroom, with its big-top ceiling, has a sofa covered in fabric from Tissus d’hélène (tissusdhelene.co.uk); the star pendant is from Charles Edwards (charlesedwards. com). The chairs in the kitchen are by Oka (oka.com), covered in Hungarian sacking cloth from The Cloth Shop on Portobello Road (theclothshop.net). The ‘Tailleur’ sign in the large entrance hall was found at the Battersea Decorative Antiques Fair (decorativefair. com); the cushion on the sofa is Yastik (yastikbyrifatozbek. com), and the sofa fabric is from Lelièvre (lelievreparis. com). The hares on the dining room table are by sculptor Tanya Brett; the antler chandelier is from Lorfords in Tetbury (lorfordsantiques. com), while the dining chairs are from Howe in Pimlico (howelondon.com)
throughout the house, particularly in her collection of cushions. ‘I studied textiles at St Martins,’ she explains. ‘I love the structure, the patterns and the colour. Those are the first points for me when I’m designing, and that follows through to what I have done in the house. I’m drawn to brighter things for the home, though – such as Rifat Ozbek’s Yastik cushions, and cushions and lampshades by [designer and textile specialist] Susan Deliss, who creates amazing things in velvet and striped linen. I can’t do things like that with my label because I have to think commercially. But if I could just focus on making one-off pieces for clients, they would be as bright as the fabrics in the house.’
It was Bamford (who studied architectural history) who first spotted Tidmington House, and was drawn to it for its provenance – it is a manor house that dates back to the medieval period, and mixes Elizabethan elements with a Queen Anne façade. ‘I remember one day we were out driving and he told me he really wanted to show me this house, so we took a detour to look at it,’ says Gore Browne. ‘Then, two years later, it was up for sale. We moved in 10 years ago.’
The couple kept many of the original interior-design features when they set up home here – including some of the lavish curtains that the previous owners had made, and a stained-glass window in the kitchen. ‘The house was filled with colour when we came to see it,’ recalls Gore Browne. ‘It was a time when everything in interiors seemed to be taupe and beige, and it felt like such a breath of fresh air, so we kept a lot of it as it was.’ They did, however, add the Vivienne Westwood Union Flag wallpaper mural that hangs in the hallway (pictured, first page), which fits the quirky nature of the rest of the house. ‘I love the colour of that image, the deep red,’ she says. ‘We don’t really go for oil paintings, but I love the impact of the flag.’
It is a house that calls for big, comfortable pieces, and much of their furniture has come from regular visits to auctions in
Staffordshire. ‘A lot of what we have put in the house is dictated by the building’s original features – the slightly wonky wooden floors and the flagstones,’ says Gore Browne. ‘We wanted everything to be in keeping with the architecture. It was all actually much easier to furnish than a blank space would have been.
‘We never invited a designer to come in and help us; it just evolved like this over time,’ she continues. ‘I never had a home like this when I was a child. I grew up in London, and my parents divorced when I was 16, so it’s wonderful to have this house and give our children the experience of a family home. It’s just so cosy here. Everyone who visits says they feel the house has a warm feeling. You walk through the door and you feel like you’ve been given a big hug.’ alexgorebrowne.com
‘My parents divorced when I was 16, so it’s wonderful to give our children the experience of a family home’