I LEFT LONDON BECAUSE I WANTED TO LIVE A MORE OLD-FASHIONED LIFE
‘It certainly wasn’t love at first sight,” says interior designer Mary Graham of the Yorkshire farmhouse she and her family moved into almost four years ago.
“We’d seen it from the outside numerous times and it always looked a bit grim and bleak. We first went to look around it in the winter. The house was completely empty as the previous owners had moved out, and there was quite a bit of mould on the walls. It obviously needed a lot doing to it.”
Mary and her family had been living in London, but it had always been their plan to relocate to Yorkshire, from where her husband hails, before their daughter, now eight, and their six-year-old son started school.
“We’d definitely outgrown London,” says Mary. “All the things that are great about living in a city – the theatre, the restaurants – we weren’t doing, because we were sitting at home looking after small children. So it felt like the right time.
“My husband and I both grew up in the country, and we felt this pull back to country living and the freedom it brings for the children.”
This house, “down a lane in the middle of nowhere”, fitted the brief for the simple, outdoorsy lifestyle they wanted to lead, but a nine-month renovation was required before they could move in. As the mould on the walls had indicated, there was a damp problem on both the ground and first floors, so the whole house needed to be tanked and made watertight, which involved stripping it back to the cobbles from which it was built.
They also extended on the ground floor to create a playroom, and up into the loft, where they added two bedrooms, bringing the bedroom count to six. Converting the loft has “massively increased the useability of the house”, says Mary.
“When you move out of a city you want to be able to have friends and family to stay, because otherwise it’s quite a lonely existence. It’s important to have enough bedrooms and, ideally, to be able to shut the guest rooms off when they’re not being used.”
The house was finally ready to move into on Christmas Eve 2019 – although there was still plenty of work to be done, including the kitchen, which hadn’t yet been built. “We got the builders to put the old kitchen vaguely back in, so we had the sink and a bit of work surface, and we’d got our oven in,” says Mary.
“It was fun, but it was definitely quite punchy for your first meal in your new home to be Christmas dinner in a kitchen that hadn’t been built yet.”
When it came to the decoration, Mary was keen to preserve the simplicity and traditional style of the original house. “I wanted it to be quite old-fashioned; I’m quite an old-fashioned person and I enjoy what comes with that way of life, a slow way of living,” says Mary.
“I didn’t want it to be trend-led or gimmicky; it needed to be really comfortable, and I didn’t want anything to be too precious, so people wouldn’t feel like they had to take their shoes off, or couldn’t put a glass down somewhere. I wanted it to be somewhere that everybody felt at home; that was really important.”
Mary is one half of interior design duo Salvesen Graham (salvesengraham.com), formed 10 years ago with her friend and business partner Nicole Salvesen.
The pair are known for their modern approach to traditional English decoration, which has proved particularly successful in the UK and in America.
Her starting point in many of the rooms was to choose a fabric that she loved, around which she built the rest of the scheme. Some of the fabrics are by heritage brands, such as Jean Monro, some are from Salvesen Graham’s own collection, and some are from their recent collaboration with Sanderson, for which she and Nicole have selected an edit of archive designs and created a range of trimmings.
In the kitchen, for example, Mary’s starting point was the floral fabric used for the blind – Palmyre by Le Manach. “It’s quite over-the-top for a kitchen, especially in a farmhouse, but I quite like that juxtaposition,” she says.
The fabric set the colour scheme of pale pink and green, with accents of yellow – one that is repeated, in different iterations, throughout the house – although the rest of the kitchen is comparatively simpler and unfussy in style.
“I knew the kitchen would be quite a crazy space in our house, with lots of people coming and going, so I wanted it to feel serene and pared-back,” Mary says.
She painted the cabinets and walls the same colour – Archive, a very pale pink by Farrow & Ball – so that the cupboard doors blend into the background, and Mary also custom-designed a central unit that acts as a cross between a traditional worktable and an island. “I don’t really like islands in general,” she says, “but I needed the storage, so this acts as a kind of hybrid. The space underneath it makes it look less blocky.”
Down the hall is the walk-in pantry, painted a cheerful bright yellow, which Mary intentionally placed a short walk away from the kitchen. “I like having to go and get my food from another room. I know that sounds a bit weird but I think when things are too easy you can become lazy,” she says.
“I like a level of difficulty. People often laugh at me because I like separate hot and cold taps over a sink but I don’t want everything to be perfect, it makes me feel a bit uneasy.”
For the same reason, Mary was also set on having a separate dining room, which is decorated in a palette of rich olive green and crimson. “We don’t eat in here every day, but it goes back to my love of an old-fashioned way of life,” says Mary: “I like making a thing of a birthday, or Easter, or whatever it might be, and I sort of want to be forced to make an effort and use a different room. It’s all too easy not to bother and those occasions can pass by.”
The drawing room, which features a similarly cosy palette, is the “grown-up space” where Mary and her husband can escape to read a book; while the playroom, in the new extension, is where the family tend to spend time together.
Here, the look is fresh and bright, in a palette of white and green that is a riff on New England-style coastal decorating. “I quite enjoyed decorating in a slightly different style in here,” says Mary.
“Normally, I buy classic brown furniture, Georgian and mahogany, because it’s really elegant, but also it tends to be inexpensive because it’s not particularly fashionable. Here, I used a lot more oak and pine to get that softer, paler look, which I’ve really enjoyed. It’s such a nice room to be in.”
A concealed cupboard to the right of the fireplace acts as invaluable storage into which the children’s toys can be shoved in the evening – a practical approach that is echoed around the house with plenty of built-in and free-standing storage in each room. “Because we got rid of the loft spaces, we had to be clever about storage; it’s an ongoing battle,” says Mary.
Upstairs, the main bedroom is unashamedly floral, with a favourite Jean Monro chintz used for curtains, and a Salvesen Graham floral fabric on the bed.
“It was a bit of a hard sell to my husband,” says Mary. “It’s a bit of a confection of a bedroom, but I love it; it’s so gentle and restful.”
Another concealed door leads into a dressing room and bathroom; while on the floor above, one of the bedrooms is decorated head to toe in florals and checks, including the ceiling. “My decorator did ask whether I was sure I wanted to wallpaper the ceiling,” says Mary.
“Often loft conversions feel new and featureless and I really wanted the rooms here to feel like the attic bedrooms you might get in a country house where it feels really old-fashioned.
“That’s quite hard to create in a brand new plasterboard room, so I think the wallpaper played a massive part in giving it the feeling that it’s been there forever. The knackered old chest of drawers helps too.”
After almost four years in the house, the family are fully settled into their home and lifestyle, with time off at weekends spent pottering in the garden, rowing on the lake and marshmallow-toasting.
“We can do things here that we couldn’t do in London,” says Mary. “It’s always been less about the house and more about the way of life, and I’ve tried to decorate the house in a way that goes hand in hand with that style of living.”
Would you prefer life in the country to living in London? Join the conversation in the comments
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