It’s only Arts ’n’ Crafts but I like it!
He rubbed shoulders with rock’s biggest names – but famous snapper had another unlikely passion
IN THE 1970s and 1980s he was one of the most successful photographers of pop acts in the country. Brian Cooke took iconic pictures of Debbie Harry, Elton John, Roxy Music and Spandau Ballet – along with many more – and also formed a company that came up with the Virgin logo and did design work for Sex Pistols releases.
He was even the official photographer for the Levi’s 501 ‘launderette’ commercial, in which model Nick Kamen stripped down to his boxer shorts while Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through The Grapevine played in the background.
But it is not just in his day job that photographer Brian has an eye for striking visuals. One look at his home – the beautiful Arts and Crafts property Bishopsbarns in York – will tell you that. But he had to wait a quarter of a century to live there.
Brian and his wife Marylin used to see Bishopsbarns every day from their house the across the road and vowed that one day they would own it.
‘We looked out on Bishopsbarns from our house every day and my wife fell in love with it even before she ever set foot inside,’ Brian says. ‘We knew it was the sort of house that would only come on the market when the owner passed on, so we knew we would have to wait… and in the end it took nearly 25 years! But it’s a very special house and was worth waiting for.’
The house has an illustrious past, having been built in 1906 by noted architect Walter Brierley, known as the ‘Yorkshire Lutyens’ and a proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement. He built it for himself, and engaged the services of famed gar- den designer Gertrude Jekyll – herself an associate of Edwin Lutyens – to create the grounds of what is considered to be one of York’s most distinguished properties.
Brian, who is originally from Scarborough and got his break in pop photography when Yorkshire singer Robert Palmer introduced him to Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, bought the house with Marylin six years ago. But now the Grade II listed building is back on the market, with an asking price of £2.4million, and being sold by Blenkin and Co.
So why are the Cookes giving up their dream home?
‘I suppose we’ve “done” this house,’ says Brian. ‘We’ve achieved what we set out to do. Our children have grown up and moved on and it’s time for us to look at doing something new.’
The house is built over three floors, with five bedrooms on the first floor and a further two on the top. The gardens have been restored to Jekyll’s original design, and are built around a tennis lawn and a bowling green. A cobbled forecourt made of pebbles from the beach at Flamborough on the North Yorkshire coast greets visitors to the stunning brick property. ‘It’s a fantastic house,’ says Brian. ‘It’s located in a very quiet cul-de-sac quite close to York Racecourse. We’re only about a mile from the centre of York but it has a very rural feel to it.’
Perhaps Brian’s favourite room is the morning room, which opens out on to the gardens. ‘It’s especially fabulous in summer, with the orchard and lawns, and the vegetable area,’ he says. The gardens were a project for Brian and Marylin: when they moved in, the space was largely empty, so they set about replanting and restoring the grounds to Jekyll’s design.
Because of its listed status there’s little that can be done to the property, though the Cookes have managed to knock through the kitchen to the dining room. ‘With a listed building you do feel as though the planners want you to live in a museum when you want to live in the 21st Century,’ Brian says.
THEIR other sympathetic improvements include installing a modern kitchen and bathrooms – there are three on the first floor and one on the second. Brian has also brought the 21st Century to Brierley’s Edwardian vision by installing hard-wired internet streaming throughout the house and pressurised hot water and heating systems.
That said, Bishopsbarns is packed with original features. ‘We’ve still got the sluice that was used for emptying pans, though the kitchen has everything a modern person needs now,’ Brian says.
Other features include elaborate plasterwork by George Bankart, a specialist in ornamental plaster from the Arts and Crafts movement, fire surrounds of Hopton Wood stone, and oak woodblock flooring.
Brierley built the house to create the feel and look of a country house, but in town. It gets a mention in the 1922 book Small Country Houses Of Today, published by Country Life, which said of it: ‘The arrangement of the house is a compendium of domestic comfort.’
‘It’s a grown-up house,’ says Brian. ‘It’s more than 100 years old but it’s now got everything that a modern house needs. Anyone interested in the Arts and Crafts movement at all would love it. We’ve cherished this house over the past six years, and we’re hoping that someone will buy it who will carry that on.’