Surrey Homes | SH64 | February 2020 | Interiors supplement inside

There are three almost
monastically, beautifully
calm bedrooms all with
prospects over the view
This page: The three downstairs bedrooms all make the most
of the wonderful rural vistas. There’s no shortage of carefully
considered accessible storage throughout
to 30 minutes every day, swimming 40 to 60 lengths.
“We originally wanted a pool with a view, but
to get that we would have had to move the whole
house site and as it’s primarily an exercise pool,
we decided a subterranean setting was OK.”
And so did the advertising agency which recently shot a
commercial there, one of 20 campaigns shot at the house, via
location agencies. But from his own experience in the industry,
Steve puts his foot down at full-scale film shoots. “You’d
have 50 plus people in the house… I know what it’s like.”
Heading back up to ground level I notice the lovely polished
effect on the concrete floors and ask how they achieved it.
“They were ‘power floated’,” says Steve, which is a process
with a hand-operated machine to produce a smooth, dense
and level surface, “and then they become shiny with wear.”
In a pleasing contrast, the poured concrete walls are
more rugged looking, setting off artworks, such as the
eye-catching print in the hallway – ‘Inferno’ by Tobias
Till, a brilliantly detailed Sodom and Gomorrah vision
of London. Keen art collectors, they found this one
at the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy.
“We go round exhibitions separately,” says Bronwen,
“because we like to look at things differently. When we meet up
we both have something we want to show the other one – and
it was this print, we’d both known the other would love it.”
Proceeding towards the bedrooms, we pass something
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