Surrey Homes | SH65 | March 2020 | Good Living supplement inside

Sally found her cottage –
her next challenge was to
find furniture to scale with
it. “All my furniture was
really big, I thought ‘what
have I done? I’ve bought
a little mouse house…’”
Thinking big, as she
does with such aplomb,
makes a space feel bigger
This page: There are pillars on either side of the kitchen entrance – where Sally plans to add a theatrical curtain,
currently drawn on the wall with pencil – and three working cuckoo clocks
of the fireplace – one of two glass-doored IKEA Billys,
which she had painted dark blue – contains part of
her book collection and another she inherited.
It also displays a collection of china parrots that
belonged to her mother. The symmetrical cupboard
in the other recess contains a collection of Pollocks
toy theatres and a chess set of Chinese figures.
Sitting on top of the bear table next to me, in his
own little chair, is a wooden figure of a naked man,
with articulated arms and legs, like one of those artist’s
manikins, except this one has a very characterful face,
with hair and a beard (and shoes). “He is Joseph from
a church display in Italy. I bought it in an antique shop
there and brought it home. I have to save these things.”
In a similar spirit there is a Dutch figure of
the Madonna that Sally came across in France.
“I brought her home on the plane.”
From closer to home, the gilded mirror over the fireplace
with ferns, candles in place, came from Norman Road
in St Leonards, around the corner from the cottage Sally
rented when she first moved down from London. “It was
broken when I found it and I had it restored by people
in St Leonards who do restoration for the V&A.”
As for what prompted Sally to rent that first cottage
– similar in feel, if slightly later in period, than the
one she now lives in – I can claim a small part in it.
43 surrey-homes.co.uk