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Village Rectory

Classic 18C, four-over-four village rectory

Interior and garden designer Lesley Cooke took on a major challenge when she sold a quaint Victorian Cottage and her large London apartment to restore and extend a rundown but classic 18C, four-over-four village rectory close to a Norman church. London, she says never had enough bedrooms and the cottage was fun but was not planned to be anything other than a weekend bolt hole. Entertaining family and friends was the priority based around building a huge new kitchen dining/room and retaining a formal dining room with expansive pantry and storage areas between the two. It was a major job but the end result is quiet and calm, floors were salvaged, shutters repaired and reused in preference to curtains in the ground floor rooms. There is a feeling of 1920's glamour in the bathrooms while the kitchen cupboards are painted off-black with grey marble surfaces echoing the same period. Delicate specially coloured de Gournay papers have been hung in the dining room and main bedroom. The old stables have been converted into a home office and cinema, utility rooms and bedrooms above. The house is set in 5 acres where she has created a woodland garden, there are magnificent mature trees, a flourishing potager and a field for her flock of black Welsh sheep.