Innehållsförteckning för English Cottage 2017 från Victoria

Renovating an older house offers the opportunity to preserve a charming exterior while customizing the interior to fit your family’s needs and preferences. I recently completed such a project, and found so much satisfaction in seeing the spaces I had visualized shaped into reality. Most of the inspiration for this adventure (and it truly was an adventure!) came from an assortment of books and magazines devoted to interior design and architecture. I have been a collector of these resources for years, without any hint of a renovation in my future. My husband and I had long admired a 1970s dwelling with an amazing mountain view, so when it was placed on the market, we felt it was time to utilize all those stores of favorite styles. Many of those pages…

If one listed the ingredients necessary to create the ideal English country residence, the recipe might include such enviable items as main rooms with views across fields to distant hills, a mature terraced garden, and graceful interiors demonstrating the perfect blend of professional advice and personal style. For Annabel and Anthony Harcourt, those desirable elements and more came together in the circa-1840 brick dwelling they brought back to life with the help of interior designer and close friend, Jo Thorpe. “Jo and I have shared the experience of several past labors of love,” explains Annabel. “Our friendship has been tested, honed, and solidified over many years.” When the opportunity to purchase the dilapidated manor in Wiltshire arose, it seemed only natural that the Harcourts turned to their friend for help…

It takes a woman of vision to buy a neglected circa-1760 Queen Anne London town house and, within a year, transform it into an elegant family home. That its graceful architectural features were intact and its room proportions generous naturally helped, and finding South African interior decorator Grant White to assist her was kismet. “When I walked into this magnificent period property,” says owner Georgie Penn, “I knew I need never move again.” Today, sitting back on the plump Bennisonupholstered sofa in the south-facing drawing room, Georgie remembers only too well the task that faced her. Converted into three flats in the sixties, the house had been untouched for forty years. Handmade partitions erupted everywhere, plasterwork crumbled, floorboards rotted, and a new roof was required. Work progressed with the help…

Once won from a reckless neighbor in a thirteenth- century bet, Capheaton Hall has transformed over the centuries from castle to Jacobite mansion to estate of Georgian grandeur. When wartime requisitions with Canadian tanks left the handsome hall half-wrecked, the house was reduced to a postwar munitions repository and was saved from demolition only at the eleventh hour. “My father-in-law was given war reparations,” says Eliza Browne-Swinburne , “ and spent forty years turning the place into what we inherited: the estate, the garden, and the house, all in good order. When he first moved back here in 1966, there were piles of silver in rubble in the middle of the house, and the huge library collection and furniture under blankets. He restored everything, found everything, and made sure everything…

Magical is the word most entered in the guestbook at a historic chapel tucked into the woodland property of Lucinda and Robin Parish. With its walls of corrugated tin, gabled roof crowned with miniature onion domes, and oversized arched doors, the unusual little structure is a hidden gem set in the arboretum of Walcot Hall in Shropshire, a county in the West Midlands of England. Now a cottage getaway, the church was built near the town of Telford in the mid-Victorian era for a group of Wesleyan Methodists. “The congregation had moved on, and it was full of cobwebs,” Lucinda recalls, “but the building was intact, with its bell tower, pews, and cross.” The Parishes—Lucinda, an interior designer, and Robin, an avid collector of antiques and reclamation salvage—were the perfect…

Below is a listing of companies and locations featured in this issue. Items not listed are privately owned and are not for sale. Pages 9–94: Special thanks to Narratives Agency, +44 020 3137 3739, features@narratives.co.uk, narratives.co.uk. Pages 9–20: Grant White Design, +44 020 7736 5858, grantwhitedesign.com. Pages 21–30: Watson & Watson, +44 01335 347 781, watsonandwatson.co.uk. Zoffany, +44 0844 543 6400, zoffany.com. Marston and Langinger, +44 01243 214550, marstonandlanginger.com. Titley and Marr, +44 02392 599585, titleyandmarr.co.uk. Colefax and Fowler, +44 020 7244 7427, colefax.com. David Seyfried, Ltd., +44 020 7823 3848, davidseyfried.com. Vaughan Designs, +44 020 7349 4600, vaughandesigns.com. Bella Figura, +44 01394 337 512, bella-figura.com. Paint & Paper Library, +44 0161 23 00 882, paintlibrary.co.uk. Manuel Canovas, +44 020 7318 6000, manuelcanovas.com. Lelievre, +44 020 7352 4798, lelievre.eu. Turnell…

So lush are the surroundings at the estate where Lucie-Clare Watson resides that the loveliness of the outdoors seems to have grown beyond its borders, spilling into the eighteenth-century abode at the heart of the property. Creeping vines add storybook allure to its weathered stone exterior, and tangles of peonies, foxgloves, and other cottage blooms lend a bounty of inspiration to the tasteful décor found inside. “I wanted a better quality of life,” explains Lucie-Clare. An antiques dealer and interior designer, she had established a firm in London but ultimately returned to her roots in England’s Peak District, a vast area known for its rolling landscapes with wild moors, ancestral villages, and Elizabethan manors. Nestled among towering trees and a shimmering duck pond, a three-story charmer in the town of…