Wealden Times | WT171 | May 2016 | Restoration & New Build supplement inside

Above, left and right: Victoria and David’s daughter’s room is furnished with a carved Laura Ashley bed, dressing table and an antique armoire, and
accessorised with Cath Kidston rosebud bedlinen, a Kate Forman floral print fabric for the blinds and vintage painted tables and chairs
painted in Little Greene’s French Grey is comprised of
three rooms that feel wonderfully luxurious. The trio
begins with a generously proportioned dressing room that
features a wall of bespoke wardrobes with mirrored and
lattice-work doors beautifully crafted by Robert’s team.
Shagreen boxes from OKA stand on an elegant, marbletopped
dressing table and there is a dainty, antique cane
bergère chair upholstered in a fine grey satin velvet.
“It’s a simple trick really, but adding a marble top
to a piece of furniture immediately places it in a more
luxurious bracket,” says Victoria. In the bedroom
itself, she has also used this device to great effect
by placing more marble slabs on top of the bedside
tables and chest of drawers. At the far end of the
room, a classic white marble mantel hosts Victoria’s
collection of glass and silver perfume bottles.
On the bed, a sumptuously padded grey velvet
headboard tops the mountain of pure white bedlinen and
the air is scented with lemongrass to remind the couple
of happy holidays spent on islands in the Indian Ocean.
Another opening leads into the bathroom, where a
volcanic limestone double-ended bath is large enough
to accommodate Victoria and both children for relaxing
chats that can be gently illuminated by a floor mounted
light, the beams of which are filtered through the leaves
of the faux orchids that sprout from the stone urn
in the corner of the room. The walk-in shower with
its enormous rose drencher is lined with more white
marble and twin Lefroy Brooks La Chapelle washbasins
sit beneath mirror cabinets cleverly recessed into the
wall, so that there is plenty of hidden storage.
Neatly folded towels are kept in an elegant, glass-
The children’s bedrooms are remarkably tidy, but like all the rooms in the
house, have been designed to function well, so even the young inhabitants
have little excuse not to keep things in an orderly fashion
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