Wealden Times | WT165 | November 2015 | Gift supplement inside

Above: Lloyd Loom chairs from Francine’s Suffolk home are a comfortable and informal addition to the refectory table, while the 17th-century Flemish
wardrobe acts as a perch for a wire sculpture of one of Francine’s Buff Orpington hens, by the Norfolk sculptor Jenny Goater
home’s London stock bricks – and the hens – around the
house and garden. She has also repeated the dark blueygrey
of the slate roof on woodwork and window frames.
Indoors, the palette is limited and considered
too: Francine’s office-cum-living room is painted
with Dulux’s Steel Symphony, a strong bluey-grey,
which sets off her collection of family paintings to
perfection, as well as matching the huge wooden
shelving unit she brought with her from Suffolk.
Her office doubles-up as a shop on the occasions when
she open her home to the public, at Christmas time
and each year as part of the National Gardens Scheme
in June. This open-plan space, with enormous Arts
and Crafts-style windows, was formerly a downstairs
bedroom and living room looking out on to Joy Lane.
“If you work from home, you don’t want to be stuck
upstairs, you want to be where the action is,” she says.
“The front windows are original, so we built new
windows in the house to match,” says Francine. Her
son Jacques has built a window seat in the living room,
creating the perfect spot from which to enjoy the morning
sunshine and paintings by Francine’s late husband Jean-
Francois Raymond, and her father-in-law Maurice.
Jacques’ masterpiece, if there is one, has to be the
striking unfitted kitchen to the rear of the house, facing
the garden. “I really didn’t want a fitted kitchen, and
his design reflects this,” she says. As well as a large
reclaimed sink, which doubles-up as a chopping board, the
kitchen has open shelves displaying pretty but functional
ceramics and a stripped farmhouse-style table.
65 www.wealdentimes.co.uk