Wealden Times | WT188 | October 2017 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside

This page: Mr Parry’s Room is the master suite, with an original adjoining dressing room
when they walk in,” he adds, drily. “But most come
for this reason – it’s fun and very gratifying.”
Part of the experience is breakfast in the dining
room just across the hall from the drawing room,
resplendent with green and gold Watts of Westminster
wallpaper and a crystal chandelier, served in silver
chafing dishes in the English country house manner.
Magnificent period dinners served in this splendid
room are another way to experience St. Benedict,
with guests often choosing to attend in full Victorian
costume. And really, why wouldn’t you?
It’s one of these, I discover, that their friend Catherine
is preparing in the kitchen, delicious smells floating up
the stairs as she rustles up cod mornay, pork cooked in
milk in the Italian style and Sussex Pond pudding, made
with apples from the fruit pergola in the garden, inspired
by one they saw at Bateman’s (Rudyard Kipling’s former
home at Etchingham, now owned by the National Trust).
This is just the first of the grands projets Paul
and Stephen have created in the garden, enclosed
with walls newly built from old bricks, which
look as though they have always been there.
The pergola leads to an area with a large and generously
stocked pond, then on to a lawn with borders where
two beehives nestle – one of them resplendent with
St. Basil’s style onion domes. In one corner is an
octagonal summerhouse, with a working fireplace.
At the end of the garden, on one side is a run for chicken
and ducks – providing eggs for breakfasts and baking.
On the other is what is probably the most astonishing
space in the whole property: a tiny and exquisite chapel
in the Orthodox style, where mass is sometimes said.
With painted angels on a rich blue ground, a wealth
of icons, censers, reliquaries and a central Madonna
and Child, it’s so beautiful and surprising, I felt quite
overcome. It’s really not what you expect to find
where most householders put the compost heap.
It took a brisk walk back up to the house to recover
myself, via a look at their latest project: a potager they are
creating in a neighbouring garden, where they have bought
the flat on that level to be an additional holiday let.
From there it was up the stairs to see the bedroom
floors, as delightful and impressive as the rest of the
house, where they have managed to put in enough
bathrooms to satisfy the 21st century guest, without
compromising the integrity of the house at all.
Mr Parry’s Room is the master suite, with an original
adjoining dressing room, with a bathroom so cleverly spliced
out of the space, it feels as though it was always there.
Back in the bedroom, through an elegant arch, is a
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