Surrey Homes | SH74 | March 2021 | Interiors supplement inside

“Only the beds and sofas are new in the
whole house. All the other furniture is
sustainable finds from antique fairs,”
says interior designer, Francesca Rowan Plowden
after my quick tour, for a really chilled, brain rebooting
stay, I think for me the Cottage might have the edge.
From the outside – especially when you have just quit
the Georgian end of Kingshill Farmhouse – it doesn’t look
like much (although to be fair, it will be greatly enhanced
by Georgina’s lovely plantings of fig, bay and rosemary).
Possibly because it arrived at the site on the back of a lorry.
“My parents bought it as a farm worker’s dwelling in the
1990s,” she explains. “It’s a wood-framed Scandinavian house,
delivered as a flatpack on a lorry.” The style of the building was
chosen for its eco credentials – it’s sustainably built and has
minimal heat loss due to special insulation and triple glazing.
But while that might sound like an IKEA version of a
dwelling, once inside – even beyond the striking Tardis
effect – it is something a lot more sophisticated than that.
The first thing that struck me was the dark grey
painted wood floors in the hall, switching to pale
grey on the stairs with a navy blue ‘runner’ painted
up the centre – one of those very simple, but clever
ideas that tells you a proper designer is involved.
Continuing past the stairs and round the corner,
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