Wealden Times | WT206 | April 2019 | Garden supplement inside

Top & above left: A fully panelled staircase leads to a half landing, where a stained glass panel sits in a window. Clare was told that it was
originally medieval and the architects had incorporated it into the 1930s scheme Above right: As you come upstairs Clare has used a wallpaper
by local designer Lindsay Alker, called Battle Great Wood. A further upstairs guest room is decorated in a wallpaper from Cole & Son.
It is Clare’s unique eye, both as an Art Director and as an
interior designer which one can only applaud. Where many
people couldn’t see how to make the house work for a large
extended family, Clare, literally, thought outside the box.
She looked at the house from the outside in, rather than
getting too tied in to what layout was already there. “We
brought the entire ground level up in order to connect the
living areas to the kitchen. The whole place needed opening
up and we needed to fix the flow. It works now for parties
and for family life, everyone can come and go without falling
over each other.” The spectacular conservatory is one of the
many stand out areas of the house. Dominated by the large
dining table (which one can tell has seen many a good dinner
party!) there are pots of plants and objets dotted all over. A
passion flower vine feeds through one of the windows. “It’s
quite spectacular in the summer, when the vine is in flower,”
says Clare, who has loved gardening since she was a child.
“I am a bit of a collector,” says Clare. “I get quite a few
things from my film and TV jobs and also from boot fairs.
It’s not about being the most expensive, it’s about being the
most interesting. I find amazing things around Hastings in
the shops in George Street and the High Street. McCully
and Crane in Rye is another favourite. I like weird things
that most people overlook, like taxidermy – I think it’s
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