The world is a big place, and it’s chock-full of incredibly well-designed and decorated homes. While we’ll admit that we haven’t seen them all, we have seen a lot of them and can confidently share that plenty reside in the English countryside. Each residence, whether it’s perched on a hill or tucked within a quiet corner of a local village, says something unique about the history of the property and all of the lucky residents to have called it home. Why, though, is everyone so enamored with these specific types of homes? We have a few ideas.
Ahead, we show you around some of the most popular (and dare we say, beloved) family homes across the English countryside. They’re all different, but they do share one common element that makes them feel quintessential to the area: They’re all well-lived in and loved. There’s nothing particularly precious about any of them, but they’re all somehow undeniably elegant in their design. So, let’s find out what makes these nine properties so special.
Content Creator Jess Daines‘ charming space in Norfolk may look like it’s been standing for a couple of centuries, but it’s actually on the newer side. Having been built in the early aughts, Daines gets to enjoy the best of old and new. “We loved the fact that the property itself had an old feel, but actually it was built only 20 or so years ago,” she says. “So it means that we’ve got like the old house charm, but without all of the problems that come with an old house.”
As for her favorite space in the home? That’s easy: the kitchen. “We have seen some changes in here, starting with the wonderful kitchen island that we have. It’s just so cozy.” Cozy, indeed, and also quite risky, as she painted it a rather eye-catching red that contrasts with the quiet tones of the space. “And so I also love the fact that we decided”I love that we decided to go with the color contrast as well. All of the cabinetry in here is neutral, so I really wanted to make this a real big focal point,” she adds. “Red has just had a resurgence and I just love it so much. I never thought I would be a red kind of person, but you’ll see that there’s lots of different red pops throughout the house.”
Louise Jones‘ namesake interior design firm may be based in London, but she is firmly rooted on the Kent-Surry border, about 25 miles outside the city. Her country cottage is like nothing you’d find in London, and that’s precisely why she chose this particular 500-year-old property, which influenced her decoration within its walls. “Because of the age of this property, I decided to use antique furniture, textiles, and materials such as tiles and metalwork, and let the historic character of the home guide my process,” she explains.
As is the case with plenty of old homes in the English countryside, the kitchen is perhaps the best place to hang out. And this one is particularly interesting because it boasted quite a few unearthed gems, such as the original brick floor. “This room was originally the dining room that had a cream-colored wall-to-wall carpet,” Jones says. When they turned it into the kitchen, they ripped the carpeting out and discovered the beautiful brick floor beneath it. “We’ve got three dogs and we’ve got horses. And in the winter, it’s a nightmare because there’s mud everywhere. So fortunately, when we discovered the original brick floors, that made it easier to clean.”
She also decided to embrace the traditional beauty of an old farmhouse type kitchen with a heat storage range and plenty of worn wood. The sink unit, for example, is actually an antique dresser that the designer converted by adding a marble top and a basin. She even cleverly turned the entire right side into a dishwasher.
Though interior designer Sue Jones had only lived in the barn for 17 years, the structure had been standing among these Cotswolds hills for far longer. “It is an old barn, and it’s reached through a colonnade, which is mostly made up of Roman pillars. We’re very proud of them,” she says. “[The home] has this rather enchanting feel to it as you walk towards it.” It’s features the classic shape of a Cotswold barn, but she and her husband performed quite the renovation on the main level. “It would have been used for keeping cattle, sheep, and horses, but we decided that we wanted to live in the whole space and not divide the room up,” she says. The solution to the wide open space was to create three vignettes.
“I decided to divide the room into three sections. If I didn’t,” Jones starts, “it would be impossible to have a sort of conversation piece in this room.” So the left-hand side is the dining room, and beyond that, there are two sitting areas. The central area, pictured, is around an ottoman, which Jones notes, “is huge, but still bowing under the weight of tons and tons of books.”
If the name Kate Elwell sounds familiar, you are probably familiar with the her and her father’s work: Master the Art. The father-daughter duo has made it their professional (and perhaps life) mission to keep the old artisanal arts alive by teaching the techniques to younger generations. She and her family purchased this charming brick building in Shropshire just at the start of the pandemic, and, luckily, her father lives a mere 10 minutes away. The home, as it turned out, was more of a renovation than a move-right-in opportunity, but that was Elwell’s ideal situation. “There was a lot of work that needed doing, and we wanted a house that was a project,” she admits. “This really became a family house and family affair.” Built in 1778, the classic Georgian structure became hers.
Though she took on much of the design herself, her interior designer friend Charlotte Stewart certainly helped, or, in Elwell’s words, “held my hand—especially in the cloak room.” “So this is now our cloakroom. So I very much needed my hand held on this by my lovely interior designer friend Charlotte Stewart, and “She helped me have the guts to paint all the paintwork red.” The umbrella stand, hand-painted by Elwell’s father, was his gift last Christmas.
A house in the country often has one element that a house in the city does not: a sprawling garden, and that is precisely what drew artist and photographer Ali Allen to this historic Edwardian in the Cotswolds. “I have a love affair with this house that started back in 2021 when I found this village,” she notes. “I was walking down the lane that runs at the bottom of my garden, and I looked over the gate and saw the house and thought I fell in love and thought, ‘That’s the sort of house that never comes up for sale.'” Luckily for her, it did, and she snapped it right up.
She made quite a few changes to the interiors—most notable in the ktichen, where she decided to opt for simplicity. “I wanted to pare it back and add in some natural wooden textures,” she explains. “I saw the big sink all the way from the other side of the country, in East Anglia, in Norfolk, from a reclamation yard, because it was the perfect creamy tone.”
Generally speaking, beach houses aren’t generally clad in red brick, but designer and owner of her eponymous home brand Birdie Fortescue‘s house is no ordinary beach house. “We’re close to the sea, although we’re tucked tucked inland but close to the sea. So we wanted it to have a very sort of light, airy, beachy feel,” she says. She and her family purchased the house nearly 20 years ago, originally as a holiday house, but it’s become in the two decades since. “It was a lot bigger than we had originally intended, but we completely fell in love with it. So we bought it and in fact finally moved here full time about 15 years ago,” she adds.
One of her favorite spaces also happens to be the one that gets the least amount of sunlight: the sitting room, which she says is a very, very cozy room. “It’s fairly dark, but I’ve painted the walls in a very rich, striking green, which I think brings the room to life.” What’s more, it’s much more traditional in style than she intended, but the pieces that contribute to its traditionalism are what she loves most about the room. The Howard sofa, for instance, and the matching chair opposite it, are both so comfortable and elegant. “I bought this sofa in my Colfax & Fowler days for the first flat I owned, and it’s so unbelievably comfortable. And then you’ve got a matching armchair with it, so it’s very traditional and of a previous period, but it’s just it’s it’s so pretty and I love it.”
Interior designer Anna Hewitson‘s stone house in West Sussex was her ideal place to retreat after so many years living in London. Aside from the beautiful building itself, Hewitson was initially drawn to the property. “It’s on top of a hill, which has beautiful views of the South Downs, so it’s a really, really lovely spot,” she says. As for the house, she adds, “It was in need of a bit of attention, it was a bit neglected, I would say, and every room needed some work.”
Once the renovation had been completed, she moved in and made it her full-time home, embracing the age and beauty that came with it. “This is a room we use all the time. Every evening, we’re in here with the kids and the dogs and everyone,” she says. “It’s a really cozy space with very low ceilings, as you can tell,” Hewitson says.
Designer Camilla Hampton‘s house in Wiltshire may look and feel like a classic Georgian, but it’s actually brand-new. “We found this house after a really long, exhaustive search, and I think what appealed to us most about it is because it is actually, in fact, a new build,” she admits. “It’s Georgian in its style, but it’s a faux Georgian house.” It features all the aesthetics that, as an interior designer, she values in a property and in the architecture, but with the added bonus that actually it’s built in the orchard of the manor house that is on the neighboring land.
The charming living space is where she spends most of her time because it is so inviting and warm. “We’re really fortunate that this house has lovely fireside seating. We have a gas fire and this room is really, for me, full of the more sentimental, precious things.” she adds.
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