A Cottage in the Hills

Old World Meets New in Charming Surrey

By Anthea Gerrie | Photography by Nick Smith

With all the rustic charm of the kind of traditional country cottage which decorates many an English chocolate box, Angela and Steve Jackson’s home on a former ancient hunting estate is much more than it seems on the surface. Behind the Tudor Revival facade lie as many surprises as you’ll find in a candy selection where soft centers sit side by side with edgier nut clusters—a contemporary interior hidden behind the old-world exterior the Jacksons loved and wanted to preserve.

This was quite a challenge, says designer Claudia Dorsch, for despite the generous living space of five bedrooms and six bathrooms, the home shared with two teenagers had some serious faults. While its magnificent surroundings offer everything a nature-lover could desire—parkland, mature trees, and deer grazing beside a lake in the distance—the cottage-style mansion was dark inside and failed to respond to the lush landscape beyond.

This Arts & Crafts house built on an ancient hunting estate retains a wealth of exterior architectural features, from leaded windows to gabled roofs. Only at the rear is the new extension visible.

Blame the handsome leaded windows, which were the bane of Claudia’s life when she took on the brief to reimagine this Arts and Crafts home for twenty-first-century living. “They don’t let in enough light,” says the German-born interior architect, who perhaps, as a non-Brit, felt emboldened to strip out period features that didn’t work—whimsical wooden beams not essential to the construction, for example—as well as interior walls and some of the diamond-paned windows to meet a call for more space and, above all, daylight for an urban family seeking a breath of fresh air in the verdant Surrey Hills south of London.

When she says the house felt “untouched by time” when she first visited, Claudia is not being complimentary. “The small windows, low ceilings, and dark materials made it feel heavy, especially on the ground floor, which was a warren of small rooms. And the interior felt disconnected from the magnificent natural surroundings it should have embraced.”

At the front, the property built a century ago still greets visitors with period detailing—old brick laid in herringbone patterns, a multi-gabled tiled roof, a fairy-tale-like curved wall, and a decent tranche of those leaded windows. But at the back, a pair of gables now frames an elegant, contemporary extension with a wide, high-ceilinged glass frontage opening to a raised dining deck. Around this new heart of the house, the first floor has been reconfigured, with old walls replaced by a new glazed interior wall to let the light in, connect all the living spaces, and offer garden views from almost every room.

Opening up the floor plan was the first order of business, joining the main house to an annex to replace a walkway that had been added at second-story level and creating additional living space beneath. At the heart of the redesigned home is that extension where all cooking, dining, and entertaining takes place. The black oak kitchen opens into a butler’s pantry within which all the messier preparation can be concealed, while the boundaries of the cooking space are delineated by a huge stainless steel island. This island is strictly business; all meals are taken at the informal dining table intended for family and visitors alike. The large modular bubble sofa units beyond are designed for gazing out over the garden; more modular seating lines the corner of a cozy, color-drenched den leading off the kitchen where up to six or more can watch television in comfort, while on the other side the kitchen sits a playroom-meets-library. The original formal sitting room marries the old with the new, with its leaded windows retained on one side and a new glass wall replacing small French doors to offer a cleaner, more expansive view of the garden and swimming pool.

A stainless steel island by Arclinea strikes a beautiful contrast in the kitchen with the bespoke black oak cabinets.

Only one room—the office at the front—retains its original rustic wood door, paying tribute to the house’s original heritage. All the others have been replaced with metal-framed glass doors that nod to the leaded Crittall windows and the metal framing of the glazed interior wall.

Curiously, it is the smallest room in the house where the inspiration for the color scheme can be viewed—the tiny curtain in a purple powder room. “We showed the clients this flower-printed linen, and they loved it, so we decided that every color in the house should reflect back to it,” says Claudia, who often presents fabric swatches to her clients as a basis for the conversations which lead to decor inspiration. “The blues and greens, pinks and oranges all link back to this fabric, even though it was too busy to use in bigger rooms.”

The staircase looks perfectly traditional but has had its own makeover: the heavy original banister has been refitted with modern metal spindles that chime with the new Crittall doors. And the under-stairs space, so often used in British homes to house vacuum cleaners or a low-ceilinged powder room, has been brilliantly converted to a wine room for short-term storage. “It’s not temperature controlled and the house has no cellar, but rapid turnover in a home where entertaining is frequent means a few cases can be unpacked and stored ready to transfer into the huge wine fridges in the kitchen,” says Claudia.

Upstairs, subtle changes have been made to a master suite the designer says was oddly configured—“the bathroom a little bit too big, the bedroom a little bit too small”—for an era where tubs in every bathroom are no longer considered de rigeur. Now they are confined to the master bathroom and a spare bathroom available to the teenagers, who each have their own shower room, and any guests who prefer a soak, although each of the two guest rooms has its own private shower.

She may have stripped out non-functional beams, but Claudia did not make war on all the pre-existing woodwork in the house. She kept built-in joinery in the girl’s bedroom which would have cost $30,000 to replace, painting it the same delicate duck-egg blue as the walls, a shade beautifully set off by orange accents in the throw, rattan lampshades, and blinds whose fabric is reprised behind a glazed insert within the closets.

Given that teenagers need well-organized, quiet space for their homework, the boy’s room is also supremely well-equipped—in this case with a Vitsoe adjustable shelving system. A new guest bedroom has been created within the space created by connecting the house and annex, beneath which sits that ultimate amenity for twenty-first-century living: a family gym. All so cleverly reconfigured by a space-management guru, it’s no wonder the Jacksons say they wouldn’t have had the modern home within an exquisite old shell they dreamed of without Claudia’s expertise.

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More of Claudia Dorsch’s work at ClaudiaInteriors.co.uk.