Surrey Homes | SH37 | November 2017 | Gift supplement inside

This page: Although not trained in design, Ben’s creative flair must have something to do with the fact his great uncle was Thomas Cooper
Gotch, an English Pre-Raphaelite painter and book illustrator. Elsie and her older brother Sebastian are also good at art.“I’ve definitely
inherited the ‘quirky junk shop finds’ side of things from my mother. I love going round junk yards, looking on Ebay, finding things,” he says
at me and wanting normal rooms, but when the film
crews came in, they loved it, so no one complains about
my stuff anymore, it’s all come good.” He laughs.
There’s an old French chateau shutter on the living room
wall, displayed like a piece of art and hanging above an
illuminated coiffeur unit from a French hairdresser’s, picked
up in Lille at the Braderie France, a massive flea market.
“It’s great. They hold it each year and it takes up the whole
of the town. They close all the roads. It’s a big thing.”
There are more vintage finds in the kitchen. An enormous
chandelier twinkles above the dining table, which has been
cleverly made from scaffolding poles and boards. “The light
was Sammy’s idea. I wanted three pendant lights, but she put
her foot down.” The green industrial looking cupboard is
from Hastings, it came from a factory and smelled horribly
of oil for a while. Ingeniously, Ben has used reclaimed
floorboards on the wall: “It was almost like putting a decking
frame against the wall, into which I cut shelves and alcoves,
hiding speakers and an industrial lamp in the wall,” he says,
adding, “I love quirky bits and bobs; I go for colours, I
63 surrey-homes.co.uk