When Lady Cara Willoughby moved into her husband’s family’s Grade II*-listed house in 2017, more than 70 years had passed since the last time the keys had been handed over to a new custodian – a period that has seen vast changes in the way that country houses are lived in and managed.
With three children and without an army of domestic help, there was plenty of work to do to reorganise the house to make it suitable for the young family. ‘My grandparents-in-law had lived here with plenty of staff, but that wasn’t what we were going to do,’ explains Lady Cara.
As with many unrestored historic houses, the layout offered up no obvious live-in kitchen/breakfast room. ‘We looked at every configuration, but nothing really worked without altering the existing footprint of the house.’ Instead, the couple approached planners with the idea of knocking the six small rooms that made up the kitchen and domestic offices into one room, with the benefit of a west-facing aspect over the garden.
'Items such as the Lacanche range were sourced secondhand and the whole scheme came in under budget'
The result is a vast space measuring more than 1,000 square feet – ‘It has more metalwork than the Forth Road Bridge,’ quips Lady Cara. Armed with an art degree and a sound knowledge of design and proportion, she set to work on a design using cardboard cutouts to lay out the cabinetry, which would have period details appropriate to the Georgian origins of the house.
‘The challenge was that quotes for a bespoke build came in too high and standard units wouldn’t work.’ By chance, a tenant on the farm was a talented joiner, whom she commissioned to make the cupboards from tulip wood, to Lady Cara’s designs. They are painted in Farrow & Ball Green Blue and Pigeon. Items such as the Lacanche range were sourced secondhand and the whole scheme came in under budget – of which Lady Cara is understandably very proud.
-
'That’s the real recipe for creating emotion': Birley Bakery's Vincent Zanardi's consuming passionsVincent Zanardi reveals the present from his grandfather that he'd never sell and his most memorable meal.
-
The Business Class product that spawned a generation of knock-offs: What it’s like to fly in Qatar Airways’ Qsuite cabinQatar Airways’ Qsuite cabin has been setting the standard for Business Class travel since it was introduced in 2017.
-
How to create a serene, yet hard-working kitchenPlain English worked with antique dealer Robert Young to make this traditional kitchen with an effortlessly relaxing colour scheme that marries perfectly with the views over beautiful gardens.
-
Why kitchens are going green — literallyGreen is the perfect colour for a kitchen, says Amelia Thorpe.
-
A modern kitchen perfectly framed by the exquisite ancient beamsArtichoke designed a discreet and timeless kitchen to complement a converted granary. Amelia Thorpe takes a look.
-
Yes, you can put a new kitchen in a Grade I-listed house — and this beautiful example shows howTraditional cabinetry was a key ingredient in the sympathetic restoration of a Grade I-listed Tudor house in Shropshire.
-
A London townhouse kitchen transformed to be sociable, practical and charmingThe new owners of this London townhouse have reconfigured it to create a sociable space for cooking and entertaining.
-
A beautiful new kitchen sympathetically created for a 16th century manor houseLimewash walls, a large island and plenty of open shelving combine to create a kitchen that’s sympathetic to this 16th-century manor house in Somerset.
-
10 things I wish I'd known about doing up old houses before I started, by Country Life's interiors guru Giles KimeCountry Life’s executive editor and resident interiors expert Giles Kime shares the lessons he’s learnt from the experience of dragging a succession of houses into the 21st-century.
-
Seven beautiful new looks in kitchens, from classic cabinetry to 80s revivalThe latest looks in the kitchen, selected by Amelia Thorpe.
