Interiors
Artistic Licence
There is no better air than here for work.” Is how John Maynard Keynes described the atmosphere at Tilton House in East Sussex, the country residence that he shared with his wife Lydia for many years.
Real Life Therapy
Ann Edwards opens the door of her East Grinstead late Victorian villa with something of a flourish.
Sleeping Beauty
Gabby Eagar’s house could be viewed as the stuff of dreams or nightmares, depending upon one’s enthusiasm for a ‘project’.
Restored with Love
When a grand house falls into decay, there is rarely any shortage of worthy bodies and individuals to rush to its rescue, lavishing cash and compliments and ensuring it’s saved from the bulldozers
Natural History
Claudine and Robin Cecil’s brick and timber cottage is situated on a twisting East Sussex lane. It sits almost in the centre of an unspoilt valley, surrounded by farmland and small copses of oak and beech.
The Homemade Home
Mandy and Phil Shaw have lived in their East Sussex home for 26 years and in that time, they have transformed it from a fairly anonymous late Victorian semi-detached villa into a space that is the ultimate expression of them...
Continental Chic
If Sevenoaks seems a typical English commuter town, not all its residents are quite so predictable. Candy is really Catharina, but her Dutch parents always called her Candy and it has stuck. Living in the Kent town with her Dutch...
Making History
Lullingstone Castle and its owners the Hart Dyke family have been the subject of several television documentaries and a great deal of press attention in the past decade. Tom Hart Dyke, the son and heir of the present incumbents Guy...
The Old Curiosity Shop
On a rainy winter’s day, a journey across Romney Marshes easily evokes images of Magwitch emerging from the mists to frighten poor Pip in Dickens’ Great Expectations.
A Grand Design For Living
Most people who build their own country houses take one of two approaches: either opting for high design and commissioning an architect to create a ‘statement’ house which usually means that it is contemporary in style and quite unlike those...
Let There Be Light
Having spent twenty years living in a huge, draughty and quite dark Tudor pile, Bill and Ingrid knew that their next home would be full of light, warm and cosy!
A House Reformed
Our friends thought we were mad when we moved here,” says Sally Russell as she and her husband Brad show us around their home.
A Towering Achievement
Anyone who knows Tenterden will know The Tower House. One of the Georgian lovelies that line the east end of the High Street, the building was so named because the classically fronted square doll’s house of a residence also sports...
East/West Home’s Best
When Phil Russell’s job brought him back to London after 18 years of living and working in Tokyo and Hong Kong, he had only a short time to find his family a new home in England.
Back Home
Coming back ‘home’ to the Weald has been good. It righted a lot of the wrongs,” Louise Dean tells me after just a few minutes’ acquaintance. She has a disarming, if not slightly unnerving, frankness of manner that perhaps comes...
Designed for Living
There are some period houses that seem, over the centuries, to have drawn the short straw. Time and again, caring, loving, well-meaning owners have extended and modernised, re-decorated and re-furnished with such breathtaking insensitivity that immediately one steps through the...
At Home With Style
Glamour” is not a word usually associated with the country cottage, but Andrew Fionda’s home is rather different.
Room With A View
Finding the right house has never been easy. Typically, it means kissing swampfuls of frogs before one finally compromises, moves in and, with a little or a great deal of TLC, ultimately coaxes out the promised prince.
Natural Gallery
Generally, the mention of an old mill house conjures up idyllic pastoral images of ancient millstones grinding corn trundled to the doors in brimming cartloads from surrounding golden fields – a sort of Constable-Hovis hybrid seasoned with a little Vaughan...
Grand Dutchy
Having rung the bell at Sarnia’s cottage, seemingly without result, I am beginning to wonder whether I have made a mistake about our appointment
Micro Chic, Eco Style
It’s hard to believe that Claire Potter’s grade II listed cottage in Portslade, on the outskirts of Brighton, is just a slice off the house next door “We think it must have been the kitchen,” she explains, “as there’s a...
Photographer’s Home and Studio
Photographer Mel Smith and his wife Lizzie have created the perfect work life balance in the idyllic Kent countryside
Ship Shape
Sophie and Jason both confess to having led nomadic lives until they met. A former divorce lawyer and ski instructor, Sophie is now a massage therapist and reflexologist, working in London, Sussex, and Kent, visiting clients in their own homes.
An Elegant Touch
Grand period buildings can not only be a joy to their owners but also, on far too many occasions, a tyranny, dictating not only physical spaces but décor and ultimately even the lifestyle of the families they should be serving...
Living The Thai Life
A quintessential 19th century English country estate majestically surveys the gently rolling scenery that surrounds it.
On Location
One might expect a house belonging to both a film and television set designer and a professional gardener to be well-presented, and Derek and Tony’s Regency town house in Hastings does not disappoint
Staycation House
Tim and Sue Ball’s house seems to hug the hill that it is not so much built upon, but into.
Contemporary Twist
Behind the red brick façade of an early 20th century building, is a contemporary piece of architecture that is home to Anna Deacon and John Taylor, artists and designers with a prolific creative output and an extensive collection of art,...
Vintage Values
Hospitable though home-owners are when the Wealden Times team visits, not many could match the welcome afforded by Flora, the wire fox terrier puppy who greets me in Stella Wilson’s garden.
A Miller’s Tale
Approached from its leafy drive, Hedera House looks like a perfect Regency villa: a confection of pale plasterwork and neo-classical mouldings
A Love of the Land
Moving out of the Georgian farmhouse that has been your family home since 1968 might seem a daunting prospect for most people, but Steven and Emily Hall saw it as just another stage in their lives together
A Rich Tapestry
Helen Grant welcomes us into her seaside home with hot coffee and irresistible, honeyed baklava.
Decorative Living
It’s odd, perhaps, but the expression ‘living over the shop’ somehow now seems to conjure 1950s images of a middle-aged, Fair Isle-sweatered tobacconist and his aproned wife settling back, Horlicks in hand, while on the black and white television Percy...
Through A Georgian Looking Glass
To step into the house we are visiting today is like time-travelling and I am fortunate to have a most amiable guide in the form of Bob, an engaging Australian who left his native land for England for good when...
Home From Home
After a lifetime of running a successful catering business, most of us would relish the thought of putting our feet up and taking it easy, which is exactly how Fanny Brogden felt after retiring from Fanny’s Kitchen in 1998.
Barn Free
Access to the barn isn’t by any means impossible but if you’re lucky enough to be invited to dinner, take the Humvee.
A Gardener’s World
Sometimes, no matter how hard you are looking, the right house for you just doesn’t seem to be available. Sophie Hall, chairman of Oak Park Landscapes, had been house-hunting for some time when a friend mentioned a converted barn that...
By George They’ve Got It!
It may not be advisable to move house with a newborn baby, but many of us do. But how many of us exchange a comfortable life in London for a run-down hotel with 24 bedrooms – and all the hard...
Art House
the enormous inglenook, like a spine, stretches through the house to the magnificent, vaulted master bedroom...
The Linen Shed B&B
The Linen Shed started out as a Great War army drill hall where, on still summer evenings, the deadly rumble of the Flanders guns across the Channel could clearly be heard...
A Pocket Full of Rye
At the summit of cobbled Mermaid Street, Rye’s most famous thoroughfare, stands Lamb House. A quintessential Georgian town house, it is quietly elegant, almost modest, but when one climbs the stone steps and prepares to knock, the enormous size of...
Portrait of a Lady
Do people find houses or do they find us? By any yardstick, the story of how artist Victoria Threlfall came about hers is fortuitous. Married and living in Brixton with four young children, the urge to give her girls the...
Calm and Collected
The first clue that I have arrived at the right house is the gleaming paint on the front door with its incredibly highly polished brass handle and spotless front step. Dee Martyn is a stylist and interiors expert, so I...
Former Editor Of Elle Magazine’s Colourful Home
Despite its quaint seaside charms, Hastings Old Town on a grey blustery day, is, well, just that, grey. But as I step over the threshold of Maggie Alderson’s handsome Georgian house, it’s rather like when Dorothy in The Wizard of...
