Wealden Times | WT179 | January 2017 | Health & Beauty supplement inside

Above: In the dining room the upholstered chairs which surround an antique refectory
table are each covered in an entirely different African fabric
reflect the natural light which floods in through the huge
end windows as well as the French doors, which Ally’s
husband put in as a 40th birthday present: “He said he
wanted to give me something I couldn’t lose,” she jokes.
Along an impressive, timbered hallway, dotted with
family photographs and mementoes, we come to the ‘snug’
– perhaps the second most popular room, as far as the
Wylie family is concerned: “It used to be freezing in here,
as it’s got two outside walls,” says Ally. “So we battened out
the room, added insulation, then lined it with scaffolding
boards.” The scaffold boards give the room a cosy chaletfeel,
and it’s a feature that is repeated in other spaces. Bright
pictures, of African scenes, cover the walls, and colourful
cushions top a huge green sofa. Another theme is revealed...
In the mid-1980s, Ally went travelling in Africa, and was
intending to stay for a year. In fact, she stayed for 13 years,
during which time she spent a couple of years at college,
studying interior design and architectural draughting. She now
runs The Rainbird interior design consultancy, a company that
offers others a taste of Ally’s African-lodge-meets-ski-chaletmeets-cosy-farmhouse
style. It’s hard to sum up but it works.
Next to the snug, divided merely by vertical beams, is
a classic farmhouse living room, with several armchairs
and a couple of decent sofas. As we sit down for a cuppa,
and to talk about the house, Titus the Jack Russell terrier
tries a couple of the chairs for size, before settling on a
cream chair with appropriate dog-printed cushion. An
inglenook fireplace is home to a Vermont-style woodburner
with two large log baskets on either side – as
well as a felt-work elephant tucked into a nook.
Every sideboard features family photos and trophies – this
is obviously a very active household, as Ally confirms:
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