Honestly, the boys wanted a swimming pool! We came to look at it and it was in such a state. But I think we just thought, why not? I’ve got the design practice and we’d found this one space, with lots of rooms, that I could do what I wanted and really go to town.

The Prince of Denmark stayed here at some point and that’s where it got its name. When I started doing some research after we bought it I found out it was a finishing school for a few years, then a local architect used it as his practice. His family lived here and put the pool in. We were lucky enough when we employed an architect to get everything through planning, she had been his trainee very early in her career. She remembered what is now our bedroom was once a computer room.

There were all kinds of channels across every room for all the wiring and about 20,000 plug sockets around the house. When the architect passed his wife kept on the house and turned it into a B’n’B at some stage. She had tried to get as many rooms as you could out of it, so there was a lot that we had to put right.

I think I experimented the most on the bottom floor. We were living here during the renovation and as we went further down the house, I just became bolder. The biggest mid-century feature in the house is the spiral staircase and I had loads of fun there, adding a sweeping staircase and introducing circles and triangles.

The colour palette often starts with a piece of furniture or a piece of fabric. You can have a really strong feeling about what you want to do with the room, but in the back of your mind, you need to think about how the house is going to flow. I always have greens and blues. I knew with so many windows that it would be a good idea to use green because you’re bringing the outside in.

Inspiration for the interior design comes from anywhere. I grew up going to visit historic buildings, but I’m instinctual, if I see something, I’ll buy it and it always fits somewhere. I’ve been collecting stuff for years, so I’ve brought a lot from different houses.

Josef Frank fabric. I covered chairs that have come with me and the remnants have become downstairs blinds in the utility. The fabric is timeless; he’s both modern and traditional and I think it works everywhere.

I was really against a big TV because I didn’t want that to be the focal point of the room. So we had Memphis-inspired units built on either side and as I didn’t want symmetry, so one of the tops is circular and one is triangular. In the library, the joiner hand-cut circular and triangular shapes for the shelves. Then we needed more kitchen space and it made sense to have a structured island there, so we built it on wheels so it can be more fluid.

I was drawn to terrazzo because it has such a mid-century feel. I knew that I wanted that flooring; it sat in the garden for a year and a half because I ordered it so early on. When you walk into that room, the floor is really bold and it’s just fun. I think kitchens can be incredibly boring, so the terrazzo gave us room to be creative. One of the other ways that we managed to marry the two distinctive features of the house was using birch ply to make oversized parquet flooring.

There were three different bedrooms and a bathroom but I knew from the floor plan I could make it work and create the flow I wanted. It’s an inexpensive mid-century technique where you add little batons on the side of a cabinet and it mirrors the tiles, so that the lines draw the eye through into the bathroom. It’s a little cocoon.

When we took the bath out there was an airbrick sized hole, so we put a camera in and we saw these filthy but pretty spectacular tiles. We had to get a structural engineer just to make sure that it was safe to open up the fireplace. We are very lucky to have Douglas Watson Studio nearby. He came round and he said they’re 17th century but not necessarily all from the same place

He recreated two tiles that were broken and we replicated the original paneling for the rest of the room. It’s just a lovely focal point and it was so lucky that we found something that we didn’t know was in the house. I always say to check if something’s boarded up because sometimes there are some real gems.

It was wonderful that I had a blank canvas that I could be as creative as I wanted to, but when you take on a listed building, you have to be really aware of the legacy of the house. I wanted to be sympathetic to the changes that had been made over time and how they’d reflected how people lived. We changed the house as sympathetically as we could and we respected the history of the house, but it’s not a business now, it’s a family home. 

I have taken on a few historic buildings in my time. You have to respect the house and leave it so it’s functioning for the next family who takes it on. I think that’s part of the duty of somebody who takes on an old building.

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