Name: Inside An 18th-Century Grand English Manor House | Design Notes
Uploaded: 2026-01-23T08:04:06.000Z
Duration: 11 min 22 s
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Adverbs of degree

We have been together in business for a very long time, and

part of our interest was doing up old houses that were unloved and restoring them.

We lived on the piano nobile of a palace in Venice, which was great fun, but

We bought Woolston about six and a half years ago.

We bought it from the Walpole family, who had owned it for 300 years.

When we arrived, the house hadn't been lived in, so it had been shuttered up for nearly 30 years.

And it was absolutely thrilling to open all the shutters, let the light in and reorganize the furniture.

The house had had a fire here in the 50s, and

it had all been decorated off the after the fire, and it was left in those 50s colors.

It was a very dreary interior, full of potential, but hideous.

And one day I saw Keith where there was this sort of Barclays blue carpet all the way down the main staircase.

I saw him tossing the carpet down in through the well onto the ground below.

And, you know, suddenly you could sort of feel that Palladianism.

I like to sit here in the afternoons because it's very enjoyable being here.

We have this beautiful sofa which we bought from the Walpoles, which is one of the most comfortable sofas we've ever sat in.

Well, when we arrived, the walls were covered with a green hessian that had been up for years.

And I took it the whole lot down and was amazed to see the paneling behind it.

And of course, while the paneling was never meant to seen, that was in the 18th century.

And we've decided to leave it as it is rather than recovering it.

And it's got all the imperfections of pinholes where the previous tapestries were hung.

While this is a Palladian house, we've brought some things, our Tudor house, and

there's the John the Baptist, a carving, and there's a Madonna and child.

So this is the saloon, which is the largest room in the house and actually the grandest.

And this is where we have all our best parties.

The room has actually decorated with these enormous Brussels tapestries, which are 18th century.

The carpet in here was given to Princess Mary by a maharaja.

And of course, all the state rooms have these incredible fireplaces which were carved by Richard Fisher of York.

And even if we're having a dinner party, we'll have champagne in here because it has a fantastic view overlooking the lake over there.

These portraits of the Walpoles were all over the house and we decided eventually to buy them but on the condition that we'll have them if they can be put into one room.

We've hung them according to how attractive they are.

So the better looking Walpoles are at the second level and the least attractive are on the lower level like Harry Potter's Headmaster study.

We've got all these portraits together in the same room and we feel they'll talk at night when the lights are out.

Managed to find this extraordinarily beautiful glazed wool fabric which came from Strawberry Hill.

This enormous portrait of the whole family.

Horatio, Mary Magdalene, Lombard and his eight children were all was painted in the early 18th century and it's rather curious because they all look about the same age.

This house was inspired by Andrea Palladio, the 16th century architect who worked in Venice.

What he did to revive the idea of using classical buildings like temples and public buildings they'd used in ancient Rome as for domestic use.

So these aristocrats suddenly had these incredibly grand buildings with columns and pilasters.

You couldn't have a single door, you had to have a pair of doors.

And there is a particular thing which see which is the Palladian window and it allows this enormous amount of light to come into this room because it fills the entire west wall.

The walls in here we decided to cover in this beautiful gold fabric, Renaissance fabric which comes from Watts which completely.

And we found these amazing day beds which are by James Wyatt and they came from Powelton Castle and covered them in another Watts fabric which is called Bellini.

This wonderful bas relief of our lady holding the child.

We had the panel behind painted in porphyry which is of course the most important imperial marble from ancient Rome.

I always think it's really funny to have a state bedroom when your friends come and stay.

This room was covered in vinyl wallpaper and we've replaced it by a design by Bodley which Watts produced which is hand printed linen because we wanted a nice background for these Antwerp 17th century tapestries.

Here the bed itself uses the fabric that was actually used for the state bed and was hanging in panels in what is now the portrait room.

And we found this amazing corona which was in pieces from a local antique shop.

And we had it regilded and put together again of dome and Keith managed to find the crest of the wall pole.

So we put that little shield on it did actually present quite a big challenge to make a room this size into a bathroom.

You know, it's not conventional, is it, to have a bath of this size, but

we had to have a really big bath in here.

What we managed to do was to get some alabaster panels which are used at the end of the bath.

We managed to buy six of them and then we cast another 10 in plaster, painted those to look like the alabaster and I think slightly fools your eye.

And we got these extraordinary Victorian taps which we then nickel plated.

And we had to have a double ended bath because it's got to be very romantic.

So you can look out the window at the review or look into your lover's eyes.

We, we wanted a contrast so we kept the main piano noble, which are the.

These eight state rooms in kind of quite traditional style.

But then on the ground floor we've introduced more modern furniture.

This is quite a nice mid century modern sort of bedroom.

It has a, an homage to David Collins, the famous restaurant designer.

This is his carpet and this is one of his chairs.

And this is a chair, one of my favorite designs ever by Peter Cherner, an American designer.

And actually the kitchen is a design we did for Smallbone about 10 years ago, which we actually got from our old house because it was freestanding and that's much more contemporary.

That actually won kitchen of the year award with historic houses two years ago.

You know, we don't actually ever have a kitchen table in our kitchen because we would never actually move away from it.

But we do actually have chairs in front of the fire and every part of the kitchen has its own function.

So there are two islands here, one which has six burner hob and the other has a teppanyaki and a grill.

And then of course you've got a sink which has got its plate rack above and then you have various workstations around.

That's the whole fridge and freezer and wine cooler.

Unusually for a country house, we don't have an aga.

One of the principles that we really feel strongly about in kitchens is that you shouldn't hide away beautiful things like copper pans and saucepans, frying pans and glasses, plates, all these things are lovely.

And even fruit, eggs, you know, things that you use every day should be on show because they're part of the environment of a kitchen.

In the main room on the ground floor, which is our everyday living room.

And we've got seating areas here for the fire.

And this was the Walpole's library, which we bought from them.

The Watts wallpaper is a sort of big baroque wallpaper and it's sort of dark brown and printed in gold and gives the impression of being like embossed leather, which we thought went very well with the books and the library shelving and the ceiling was nicotine brown because Lady Walpole and Lord Walpole used to sit here all day smoking.

I always ask people in the library here, which do they think is our favourite shelves?

And I say, well, the first one is this shelf because it has all the apellitifs in.

And this is our second favorite because it has all the digestives.

Well, we're still on the ground floor and this, we refer to this as the picture room.

My collection of paintings started with a Duncan Grant and a Vanessa Bell when we lived in a house in Fitzroy Square that had actually been the Omega Workshops, which was started by Roger Fry, and

And I've got all sorts here, very works of art by celebrated painters and junk shop finds.