Surrey Homes | SH66 | April 2020 | Gardens supplement

Left: The stairs were covered in thick black paint and were
stripped back. A loo had been located where there is now a
window halfway up the stairs Bottom left & right: The shelving
in Jane’s workroom-cum-dressing room came from an old
haberdasher’s in Birchington. “He was closing down, so I put
a note through the door saying, ‘If you’re going to get rid of
the shelving, please can I buy it?’ It houses all my junk really;
hairdryers, bits and bobs,” says Jane
is also a fantastic house at Christmas, they add, with
all six bedrooms easily accommodating family…
Filling the downstairs of the house would take some
doing and, in recent years, the couple have even hosted
one or two am-dram productions. “The stilettos killed the
parquet,” laughs Jane. The mere fact that they allowed a
drama group to perform in their house says a lot about
the couple’s relaxed, welcoming attitude and despite the
beauty of the place, there’s no sense of preciousness.
Visitors arrive through a light-filled lobby at the rear of
the house. This leads into a small, bright lounge (the ‘sunny
room’) or through the kitchen, into a vast dining/living
room. At the other end is the snug, downstairs washroom
and sauna. “We spend most of our time in the little snug at
the back of the house,” says Jane. “We like the ‘sunny room’
in the mornings, maybe for a coffee, but when you want to
chill out at the end of the day, it’s the smallest, darkest room
that we head to. I think that’s what we do as humans.”
The sunny room, home to a selection of contemporary,
graphic prints – including Rob’s favourite, by Eduardo
Paolozzi – is the most modern room in the house. A
lime green modernist chair and footstool share the
room with a circular glass coffee table, minimalist
chairs and simple oak shelves. “This is the newest part
of the building, in the sense that it’s Victorian,” says
Rob. The interior décor, however, is anything but.
“We decorated the room around the Paolozzi print,”
says Rob. “It was an accidental find. We were window
shopping on a Sunday in Covent Garden and it was in
a furniture shop. We didn’t like any of the furniture, but
we loved that print. I said to Jane, looking through
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