Surrey Homes | SH20 | June 2016 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside
The lifestyle magazine for Surrey - Inspiring Interiors, Fabulous Fashion, Delicious Dishes
The lifestyle magazine for Surrey - Inspiring Interiors, Fabulous Fashion, Delicious Dishes
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Above: The drawing room contains matching French Deco wall and ceiling lights from WBR Interiors, a favourite shop on Wandsworth Bridge Road.<br />
Underneath is a coffee table constructed from a sheet of glass atop four Kartell Stone stools<br />
However, what it didn’t know was that, on one<br />
summer’s day in 2004, Anthony and Simon would come<br />
down to Hawkhurst to stay with friends Siobhan and<br />
Charles Mavor. Indeed, why should it care? It should<br />
have cared because Anthony and Simon were owners<br />
of one of London’s best-known restaurants, Nikita’s in<br />
Chelsea. And they were looking for something new.<br />
“We decided that, for us, Nikita’s had run its<br />
course – we had run it for five years – and we were<br />
thinking of something in the country,” says Simon.<br />
“We wanted to be within an hour of London and<br />
when we came down to see Siobhan and Charles<br />
we saw how beautiful it was around here.”<br />
The couple’s problem in finding the right property<br />
stemmed from the fact that so many period pubs<br />
in the Weald are beamed with low ceiling and<br />
they wanted something with high ceiling and as<br />
much light as possible. “To start with, everything<br />
we saw was just too pokey,” says Anthony.<br />
And then they saw the White Horse, its lovely<br />
Georgian proportions and spectacular view and that was<br />
it. They bought the property and spent four months<br />
completely renovating it. The property must have<br />
wondered what had hit it. In a few short months it went<br />
from a traditional British pub to stylish restaurant run<br />
by two of London’s top restaurateurs. They opened in<br />
The drawing room, with its French windows to the lovely garden<br />
and killer view across as far at Brightling, is a joy<br />
<br />
47 www.wealdentimes.co.uk