Surrey Homes | SH101 | June 2023 | Education Supplement inside

This page: Cherry opted for a Limehouse kitchen by Neptune, which fits snugly into the inglenook in the kitchen
In fact there are so many codicils
and tangled rights of way, that the
Land Registry use these two houses
as part of their conveyance training.
It all got incredibly complicated,
“So, in the end we decided that it
would be wise to buy next door too,”
Cherry explains. “Although the day we
completed I found out I was expecting.
Not an ideal house for a baby,” she
adds. “And then recently we acquired
the strip of garden directly outside our
house – this is our next little project.
The hard landscaping has already been
done and we hope to plant it up very
shortly so that our guests will have
use of a very private, hidden away
courtyard.” They have been using both
houses for holidays for many years,
“and having two separate dwellings
actually became very useful as the
children became teenagers, but as they
have got older and stopped wanting
bucket and spade holidays, we decided
to rent them out as holiday lets.”
Cherry’s sister Heather, together
with her colleagues at Evernden
Interiors, have been responsible for
most of the ground floor make-overs,
while Heather and Cherry have
updated the rooms upstairs together.
Faced with a listed building that dates
back to medieval days, it is tempting to
stick with a traditional look and style,
preserving the old and keeping as much
historical character as possible. While
Cherry was keen to respect the charm
and quirks of the original features, she
also wanted to create a comfortable
and contemporary feel. Together they
made some bold interior decisions.
“Bronwyn from Evernden wanted
Cherry to have a more contemporary
kitchen,” says Heather. “I would
definitely have gone for something
much more country cottage,” Cherry
adds, as we look around the sleek new
Limehouse kitchen from Neptune. “The
guests are always pleasantly surprised,
too – it has worked really well.” The
streamlined, neutral toned kitchen has
the effect of making the room seem
bigger and complements – rather than
fights against – the age of the house.
The kitchen leads out to the staircase
and then down to a large, Fired Earth
tiled bathroom and wet room. “The
bathroom was installed by a previous
owner and had a door within it that led
straight to the outside – we blocked that
up. It’s an odd shape, but it was never
meant to be a bathroom – there were no
inside bathrooms back in the day.”
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