A country house built up over the centuries and sensitively restored by Edward Bulmer

Seen from afar, perched on a ridge between wooded valleys, this house might be taken to be of one period. In fact, it is the ingenious accumulation of a seventeenth-century core with gabled elevations and soaring chimney stacks to create a plausible Jacobean manor house. The original and later work was done by the family that is still in occupation of the house, and our work on the redecoration followed a generational handover.

Step inside the house, and the span of the centuries is obvious but far from clumsy. The Edwardian interiors blend seamlessly with the old, once an overlay of furniture and pictures blurs the edges. Fabrics were chosen for their historic resonance but also because they felt right for the character of a house in an inspiring natural setting. Much of the building was left unchanged but what was remodelled was done with as little fanfare as possible. The new work does not replicate the seventeenth century but is respectful of it—the elevations adopt broadly the same brickwork
and fenestration. But flat roofs are given modern circular lanterns, and an addition to the neighbouring ancillary buildings provides a bio-mass boiler and plant room underneath a new home office.

The owners were posted to the Far East with their family for a while and the pieces they brought back with them, from daybeds to lacquer bowls, have happily integrated with the indigenous contents and are all now making room for new bedfellows as modern pieces are acquired. As
so often happens in English country houses, a harmonious combination of many periods and styles is achieved, primarily because it has happened over time and great care has been taken in the choice of objects and furnishings, so that all is of commensurate quality.