Wealden Times | WT258 | November 2023 | Christmas Gift Supplement inside

This page: The dining room is painted in Little Greene Aquamarine.
The ten-seater dining table from The Packhouse inspired the rest of
the room and Anthropologie candlesticks offer pops of subtle colour
are able to find and accommodate these amazing pieces of scale
with some fantastic provenance from houses all over the UK.
We found an 18ft glass chandelier from Authentic Reclamation
in East Sussex which was reputedly from the London home of
one of the UK’s most famous composers. We knew it would
look amazing in one of our oasts, once we added in the skylight,
but it weighed over half a tonne. It was also missing quite a few
glass drops, which we got remade in acrylic in Guildford and
as serendipity would have it, one of the UK’s best chandelier
renovators lives really near us, so he rewired it. These are not
easy things to just throw up, they needed precision handling by
the contractors and it was an almost once-in-a-lifetime chance
within the refurbishment process to install it. We were very
lucky that we have a builder that we trust. We have worked
with Russell Hyde of Russell Hyde Construction across all our
homes and I don’t think we could have done it without him.”
At the heart of the house is the amazing drawing room.
For many non-professionals, a room of this size would
be intimidating. For Alec and Heidy it was a wonderful
opportunity to let their imaginations run riot. “We decided
to zone the room so we hung two chairs from ManoMano off
one of the beams to create a reading area with a library. We
added a velvet chaise and sofa from Loaf to offer a soft space
for seating and socialising as well as a brown leather love seat,
which gave a different colour and texture. At the end of the
room we hung a piece called ‘Aqua’ – one of a series of abstract
artworks we have acquired by Robin Mullin inspired by images
of the Hubble telescope. Hanging overhead is a huge gold
pendant light, also from Authentic Reclamation, that we had
to completely respray and re-paint to get it up to scratch. It was
sold as medieval in style but I’m not sure there is much about
it that was very medieval,” laughs Alec. “It was so big, like the
crystal chandelier that we also bought from them, that it could
only be fitted during the build when we had the correct access
available. Again, it was all about scale for us and finding fittings
that would work with the space. For the floor in this room we
were lucky the wood was still here, so we just stripped it back
to the original but to a more matt finish.” Two sets of triple
height soaring arched windows pour light into the room and are
mirrored in the geometric brick work of the new chimney
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