Our favourite farmhouses from the archive
House & Garden's archives are full of beautiful farmhouses, many of which date back centuries and have been sensitively restored by their new owners. With all the charms and quirks of a country cottage, they tend to sprawl over larger areas and have often been extended during the course of their histories. In their most recent incarnations, some have been filled with colour and pattern, while others have been endowed with graceful, pared-back schemes. Whether you have your own farmhouse to decorate or just want to dream, we've gathered together our favourites from the archive.
Mark Fox1/14This is the house I have wanted since I was 16 years old,” says Tim Whittaker of his home in the Cumbrian village of Newbiggin. “It was built in 1695 by my seventh great-grandfather, it stayed in my family until the mid-19th century, and I first saw it in 1976.” It is hard to resist such a long history, the kind of profound connection to a place and a building that few families can claim in the 21st century.
The house was built in the local red sandstone. The style is known as a longhouse, a purpose-built structure intended to house animals and a granary at the northern end and human inhabitants at the southern end.
2/14Tim's approach to the interiors is the approach of a conservationist, embracing the house’s age, its history, and the romance of the family connection. Fortunately, despite various alterations in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, much of its original beauty survives. The focal point of the kitchen is an early nineteenth-century cooking fireplace with a panelled overmantel.
Harry Crowder3/14The Slad Valley is one of England's iconic rural landscapes, a gently rolling slice of countryside immortalised by Laurie Lee's nostalgic memoir of his upbringing, Cider with Rosie. A 17th-century stone farmhouse perfectly situated in this valley, with expansive views of the green fields that stretch in every direction, must be an almost universally appealing prospect, and so it proved when interior designer Lucy Cunningham and her client found this house.
Harry Crowder4/14The house is remarkable for its judicious blend of tradition and modernity. There is nothing stuffy about the decoration, which is pared back in all the right places. Unlike many an English country house, the interiors are not overstuffed, but filled with just enough furniture, pattern and colour to lend warmth.
Chris Horwood5/14Textile dealer Francesca Gentilli's 18th-century farmhouse is situated in a bucolic part of Hertfordshire, with farm buildings on one side, and an expanse of garden and fields on all the others. “We’re pretty conveniently placed, as it’s only 20 minutes to London on the train,” she explains, “but you only have to drive for ten minutes from the station and you’re in the middle of nowhere."
Chris Horwood6/14“It did just come together naturally,” Francesca says of the finished interior. “It’s a collection of bits I really like and thankfully it all goes together. I wanted old world, I didn’t want many new things,” she continues. Lucky then, that Francesca has a sharp eye for antique finds and all the most covetable pieces–or really everything in the house–have been found on eBay, Vinterior, at Kempton, Ardingley or the like.
Dean Hearne7/14“I have dreamed of this house for years,” says Tom Cox of his remote farmhouse in Devon, which lies at the end of a farm track in a peaceful valley where the river rushes past and the hills rise up on each side. “I'm surrounded by nature, which I love, and I've filled the house with things I love, so it's a brilliant double whammy.”
Dean Hearne8/14“I gravitated towards this kind of building from the start when I was looking down here,” he explains. He does concede that it was difficult to get the arrangement of furniture right. “It is a listed building, so you're completely snookered with the space, you can't open anything up. Every entrance to this building is absolutely tiny, so just getting furniture through the doors was a nightmare.”
Alex James9/14‘My partner David and I had been looking for somewhere to buy for over a year and I dismissed this at a glance,’ says interior designer Louise Jones. ‘But then the price dropped. We drove to see it and before we even arrived at the door, I decided we should buy it. I loved the setting – it’s down a long track, surrounded by fields and woods, but it takes only half an hour to get to London from the nearest station.'
Alexander James10/14In the dining room, Louise pulled up the carpet to reveal an old brick floor and turned this large space, with its walk-in fireplace, into a capacious, comfortable and decidedly unfitted kitchen. This simple swap restored the historic heart of the house instantly.
Mark Anthony Fox11/14Having lived in this Gloucestershire farmhouse for several years two decades ago, gallerist Thomas Dane found himself drawn back to it in 2015. ‘How many houses do you see with grass going right up to the front door?’ he asks. ‘You just walk out into the fields. It’s like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel.’
Mark Anthony Fox12/14Decoratively, the house is simple and relaxed. ‘It would feel wrong to over-egg it on the inside, considering its relatively humble exterior,’ says Thomas, who called on Gloucestershire-based interior decorator and antique dealer Caroline Marcq to help with textiles, furniture and lighting. ‘Working with local people and businesses has been such an enjoyable part of living here,’ he adds.
Simon Brown13/14When you stand in the beautiful garden of Tom and Victoria Gray’s weekend retreat, a long, low Cotswold-stone farmhouse with a wide outlook across the sloping fields to the Painswick Valley – only a stone’s throw from where Laurie Lee grew up – it is as if time has stood still. ‘We see almost no one,’ Victoria confirms. ‘There are no other houses in sight. The farmer passes by occasionally, but that is all.’
Simon Brown14/14Victoria is also one half of interior design studio Olivine Design, which she co-founded with Taline Findlater back in 2012, having spent three years as a senior designer at Nina Campbell. Throughout the house, there are well-placed touches of decorative pattern. ‘It’s 10 years since I did up our house in London; in the intervening years, I’d built up quite a checklist of favourite textiles,’ says Victoria.
