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Drum and Monkey

This elegant but comfortable family house was once the Drum and Monkey coaching inn.

Erica Austin found this ancient, converted Gloucestershire pub 20 years ago as a newly-wed and immediately fell in love with the Cotswold stone and the way its long, low, south-west facing structure gave the impression that the house was ‘opening its arms up to the sun’. It became a home for her husband, her two sons, dogs and a parrot. Erica stuck to a warm palette, wanting her house to ‘vibrate with warmth and light’ wand decorating walls with paintings by her mother, artist Diana Bourdon-Smith. Four years ago, Erica commissioned set designer and architect, Roger Hall, to create a new limestone terrace and rill at the front of the house with a series of dining areas created by hedges and pleached trees. Today it’s hard to believe this elegant but comfortable family house was once the Drum and Monkey coaching inn and toll house at the intersection of six ancient roads.