Tour a Cozy and Quintessentially British Home in Somerset
Often a move from city to country is motivated by the desire for a larger house, so the irony of swapping an elegant, generous four-story town house in London for a Georgian apartment in the Somerset wilds wasn’t lost on partners in life and work, Chris Graves and Jolene Ellis, cofounders of interior design firm Clarence & Graves.
“We were meant to be spending a couple of years in [America] with the kids, but then COVID hit,” Graves recalls. The woman they’d rented their house to (in anticipation of their move) fell so in love with it that she offered to buy it lock, stock, and barrel (fully furnished), freeing the couple up to look further afield when their move Stateside was put on hold.
Somerset had long been a “place of respite and a retreat” for the couple since they first met 15 years ago, Graves says, so they started to look at everything from farmhouses to detached piles in the area until, one day, Graves pulled out a “wild card,” so to speak. “It was this apartment, set on this incredible estate just outside the increasingly sought-after hip town of Bruton.”
The couple were immediately drawn to its promise of lateral living, ideal for family life with their children Huxley, 13, and Audrey, 11, and a whippet named Clarence. “I’ve always coveted the European idea of the elevated piano nobile (first floor),” Graves explains. Add to this the allure of a swimming pool and tennis court, surrounded by 25 verdant acres complete with gardeners on hand—“so we don’t even have to get our hands dirty”—and they were sold. Throw in an unexpected third apartment—another owner on the property decided to sell, serendipitously—and the duplex apartment suddenly boasted nearly 4,500 square feet. “It was like a fairy tale,” Ellis says.
They lived in the house for four months before doing anything. “It was a real privilege to spend time in the house, even if it was a little like being in Julia Donaldson’s [children’s] book, A Squash and a Squeeze,” he laughs. “We lived in one room—the kitchen had a sofa and bed—but because it was all boarded up, we had to go around into an extra corridor to use an outside loo.” It gave them, however, a “forensic” insight into exactly where the light fell and how the house intrinsically felt.
First steps included “getting the layout and flow right,” Graves says—highlighting their ambition to create a sweeping view from the mudroom and the kitchen right through two drawing rooms to the dining room—as well as “reinstating its former Georgian grandeur.” False ceilings housing spotlights and dividing stud walls were removed, the original floorboards in the drawing rooms were restored, and reclaimed Georgian boards were laid in the kitchen, while era-appropriate moldings and new full-height doors, fitted by a local carpenter, were returned.
For the color palette, Graves and Ellis drew on their love of storytelling. “We come to interior design from a slightly different angle in how we see things—we love anything with a story, and creating the feeling of other worlds within every space,” Graves says. As serial house flippers, it seemed a natural progression to design houses for others. “We’ve been doing up houses and selling them, each one always a little different, for over a decade,” Ellis says. They bring a sense of curation and playfulness to all their projects, from a historic house on Hampstead Heath and a retreat in Upstate New York. “One client said they like our pep and wit,” Ellis laughs. “There’s just the right amount of attitude in what we do while still really protecting a property’s authenticity,” Graves adds.
So here, the couple riffed on “hazy, muted yet rich” shades of golden ochre, pistachio green, and clay pink, Ellis says. All hues that “you immediately want to sink into,” she adds. There is also whimsy in their play on bold candy stripes in the kitchen, checkerboard tiles lining the media room hearth, and Cole & Son’s orange blossom wallpaper used like a mural along one wall of the primary bathroom.
The boldly black-lined bank of 12 windows, stretching the length of the south-facing apartment, perfectly contrasts with the ever changing shades of bucolic nature unfolding unencumbered across the seasons outside. “We call it the Somerset Serengeti,” Graves says. “We have cows or bulls running across from one side to the other, and there are always lambs breaking through roses,” Ellis adds.
The result is nothing short of “magical,” the couple enthuse. Though the conviviality of the kitchen, with its warming Aga, is the “classic heartbeat of the house,” Graves says, it is the way the house is “bathed in light all day long,” says Ellis, that makes it so inviting, whether for quietly reading the paper in one of the soothingly battered, cocooning drawing room armchairs or enjoying long, languid lunches in the dining room, accompanied by a roaring fire in the raised fireplace.
Unsurprisingly, family and friends visit often. “They always say how restorative it is to stay here,” Ellis says. “There are as many [spots] for people to go off and be by themselves as there are spaces to come together.” There isn’t a bad perch to sit either, Graves asserts. “There are plenty of different places to go for a change of scenery—we’re never bored.”
1/12A mid-19th-century mahogany sofa—sourced by Ralfes Yard and upholstered in Lee Jofa Entoto stripe in Juniper/Leaf from Kravet by Hana & George—dressed with a Cheetah silk cushion by Emma J. Shipley teams with antique French armchairs and a vintage cocktail cabinet, to the right, and a mid-19th century burr walnut pedestal desk, sourced by Ralfes Yard, complemented with a 19th-century French Louis Philippe Toleware lamp (with a pink shade found in a house clearance sale) to the right. On the floor, handwoven jute rugs are by Birdie Fortescue. Looking through to the dining room, the pale walls are painted with Dead Salmon by Farrow & Ball. The raised fire, purposely designed with no surround and set on an elevated piece of stone for simplicity’s sake, was inspired by the open fires found in rustic Italian kitchens.
2/12The kitchen (including taps and pendant lights over the sink) was designed by Clarence & Graves in collaboration with DeVOL. The backsplash is lined with Spalding striped wallpaper by Ralph Lauren, over which the couple have hung a series of 18th-century royal portraits. The early-20th-century folding chestnut coaching campaign table was made by renowned cabinetry makers Thornton Herne. “There’s something a little provocative about the stripes,” Graves says of the Ralph Lauren wallpaper. “It has successfully set the tone for the kitchen, which we designed to feel like one whole dresser. Putting the wallpaper in there has softened it.”
3/12In the kitchen, walls have been painted in Muga and bespoke doors painted in Caddie, both by Paint & Paper Library. Either side of the deep green Aga (which came with the apartment) are wall sconces to hold candles, a necessity for illumination in the countryside if the power goes down. Above is a small white rabbit artwork by Rory Dobner that has been hung from a brass rail. The old tiles around the Aga were from a one-off batch reclaimed from a Spanish farmhouse outside Seville.
4/12Black-framed windows provide a contrast to the bucolic views of the surrounding Somerset countryside.
5/12In the first drawing room, leading from the kitchen, an old painted Hungarian desk, teamed with an antique oak dining chair, provides a bird’s eye view of the verdant valleys unfolding outside the full-length window. The walls are lined with wallpaper by House of Hackney. 1930s checkerboard tiles, sourced from a hacienda in Seville, line the floor.
6/12In the generously proportioned drawing room, the walls painted in Blue Gray by Farrow & Ball provide perfect foil for the decorative fireplace that came with the apartment. The antique green armchairs were found in a French market. In the foreground, the couple have teamed an eccentric mélange of antique finds, including a 19th-century Howard & Sons ebonized faux bamboo side table and 20th-century bamboo chairs with ebonized lacquer seats, sourced by Ralfes’ Yard. Above the fire hangs an antique French oil-on-canvas painting by an unknown artist.
7/12While the drawing rooms have been designed to be technology-free, the media room is where the family escapes at the weekend for movie nights. The fireplace surround was crafted by a local stonemason to the couple’s design, and the early 1900s reclaimed checkerboard tiles with a flamed finish lining the hearth feel as if they have always been there. The walls are painted in Green Smoke by Farrow & Ball. Looking through to the hallway, the walls have been painted in Dead Salmon by Farrow & Ball. Above the Victorian fortune teller’s table with bobbin legs, sourced by Wilson Stephen & Jones Gallery, hangs The Lovers, an artwork by Henrietta Dubrey.
8/12In the primary bedroom, a headboard has been fashioned from Victorian bamboo-framed panels of exotic birds. To the right, a George III chest-of-drawers is adorned with a 1920s brass library floor lamp and a hand-painted ceramic caddy by British artist Claudia Rankin, featuring a leopard and bower bird, bought from Wilson Stephens & Jones Gallery. The bedspread was repurposed from French manor house curtains.
9/12There is a monastic mood to the bathroom fireplace, left unadorned by a surround. Above hangs a painted plate bought from a local artist in San Sebastián. The 19th-century French faux-bamboo cheval mirror was an antique market find.
10/12The couple have used Cole & Son’s orange blossom wallpaper like a mural, teamed with early 1900s reclaimed checkerboard tiles sourced from a manor house in Seville. The re-enamelled antique French bathtub found in Bordeaux has been teamed with nickel taps by Aston Matthews. The framed oil-on-canvas painting, artist unknown, was found at a market in Provence. Citrus trees add to the sunshine effect of the wallpaper.
11/12Colorful paint and wallpaper choices are the star focus of this area of the home.
12/12The 1742 manor house has a colorful provenance, with gardens designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1901. (Part of the building was also redesigned by Lutyens at a later date.) Notably, local suffragettes are said to have burned some of the house down, rumored to be part of a national protest against private collections of nude female paintings.
