Harriet Anstruther's West Sussex farmhouse is packed with a joyful collection of cherished pieces
It doesn’t take long to get into the deep stuff with the designer and artist Harriet Anstruther. Sitting in her late father’s armchair in the library of her West Sussex house, her glassy-eyed whippet Pearl at her feet, she darts freely from the joys of needlepoint (to which she says she is addicted) to the fundamental human striving to feel alive. ‘To me, the worst thing would be to drift through life without feeling anything,’ she observes. ‘Maybe it is a piece of music that gives you that feeling of everything rising up inside you, or the intake of breath that the right colour can give you – you want to have a reaction. It is what keeps us getting out of bed in the morning.’
We are in the sunny south west corner of her stone farmhouse, which she bought and began restoring five years ago and where intakes of breath are plentiful. Furnished with cherished inherited pieces (many from her father, who left her the contents of his dressing room in his will), it is layered with vignettes and arrangements of anything and everything that give her pleasure. ‘They are my altars. Well, not so much altars as altering moments,’ she explains, adjusting a small stone carving of a hand among a collection of shells and feathers. ‘It is never about perfection – I love messing things up and moving things around. It’s such a pleasure.’ Her photographer husband, Henry Bourne, might not agree. ‘He sees that look in my eye and he thinks, oh my god, she is going to ask me to move the furniture again,’ she says with a laugh.
Harriet had her eye on this house, a rambling hotchpotch of charming Sussex vernacular with later – and somewhat grander – Georgian additions, for some time. Only a short drive from the Tudor farmhouse in which she used to live (featured in House & Garden in October 2015), it came onto the market at a moment when she had just sold her London home and was looking for somewhere to put down more permanent roots. ‘It’s a bit more formal, with higher ceilings and bigger rooms – almost like a townhouse in the country,’ she enthuses.
The move came right at a point in her life when she was craving change. She was juggling life and design work in London, Sussex and Los Angeles – where she has no shortage of high-profile clients – and something finally had to give. The new house and its demands made her question who she was and what she wanted from life. ‘It is the age-old cliché, but I started asking myself some pretty big questions,’ she recalls.
Working closely with the architect Tom Turner, Harriet wanted to get the house to breathe again. Tenanted since the 1950s and with some pretty jarring modern additions – notably a lift shaft bricked onto the northern elevation and a pebbledash façade – the house also had a major damp problem that had been largely ignored. The exterior walls of the kitchen and garden room were all but buried into the sloping, waterlogged land, leaving the house feeling at best ‘like a hammam’ – when the heating worked. It is now excavated, repointed and protected by a network of French drains and the walls are gloriously dry. A terrace created from the bootroom leads up to the lawn with reclaimed stone steps Harriet sourced in Edinburgh.
She and Henry spent entire weekends peeling back the house’s many layers, all noise and distraction quietened. Hand-stripping the staircase, she discovered the original maker’s marks concealed under inches of paint, while, once the drawing room’s ceiling tiles were removed, the original oak beams were revealed. ‘As a designer, I have always been fascinated by humans’ interaction with an environment, its haptics, how it makes you feel,’ she explains. ‘It’s the layering of a house, the building up of a picture, the story revealing itself. It’s marvellous stuff.’
The house is now awash with colour, something that runs through Harriet’s veins. Though the walls are for the most part decorated in a calming combination of lime render and breathable paint, there are plays of colour in every room. ‘I have a physical reaction when I see a colour that speaks to me. It’s like a jolt and it can be quite overwhelming,’ she says, adding that a particular combination of yellow and green can leave her feeling physically sick. ‘But when they work, they lift the soul.’
Deep cerise – cropping up on sofa covers and cushions throughout the house – is a case in point and a nod to her father and the trousers he used to wear to dinner. Golden tones run like a thread from the drawing room ceiling panels and the metallic ground of the wallpaper in the library to the splashback that bounces light around the kitchen. ‘These are colours that fill me with joy,’ she says.
Having pored over ancient maps of the area, Harriet discovered a landscape full of bricks – the bones of a farmyard once twice the size. After they were excavated, they used them to build the walls that now buttress her garden from the winds that whistle in from the South Downs. This is the first garden that she has designed from scratch, having been obsessed with nature since childhood. It has a formal structure, marked with brick pathways delineating a series of outdoor rooms that bring both rigour and a sense of cosiness: ‘I like the feeling of enclosure and privacy in a garden.’ Borders have been crammed with a riot of pink and white roses, hollyhocks, anemones and scabious, their cheerful femininity echoing the colours that run joyfully through the rooms inside. ‘Nature has already designed everything – colour combinations, structures, silhouettes. I suppose I’m just trying to bring a bit more order to the chaos.’
Harriet is also ready for her next transformation. She has collaborations afoot with Plain English, with whom she worked on the kitchen, pantry and dressing room. She has ambitions for a new paint collection, too, and intentions to get back into textile design, and she is in the middle of rebranding her own company. As well as all this, she has been invited to enter her garden into the Sussex Heritage Trust Awards – not bad for a first attempt. ‘As a woman, a mother and an artist I’ve always been fascinated by change. Like the nymph Daphne, who transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo,’ she says. ‘Who knows? Next time you see me, I might have leaves sprouting from my hands.’
Harriet Anstruther Studio: harrietanstruther.com | Tom Turner Architects: tomturnerarchitects.com
Michael Sinclair1/8Harriet commissioned the torch light: ‘Hands are so fascinating and so much more memorable to me than a person’s face.’ Fabric repurposed from her old bedroom curtains in a colour she likens to ‘the petals of the Munstead Wood rose’ was used for the sofa. The original oak ceiling was discovered behind boards. garden Harriet introduced the different levels and reinstated the stone walls
Michael Sinclair2/8Harriet worked with Plain English to design the shelving, where her lustreware and Coronation china collections are stored. The curtain is made from a vintage toile de Jouy
Michael Sinclair3/8Hand-shaped objects from Harriet’s growing collection are arranged around a cherub lamp she found in a French market. Caroline Walker’s oil painting Transformation, 2010, is displayed on the wall behind.
Michael Sinclair4/8A vintage Pierrot costume from a flea market hangs on the back of the door leading up to the attic bathroom; the artwork behind it is by Caragh Thuring.
Michael Sinclair5/8Harriet hand-painted the muslin draped over the freestanding bath with ink: ‘Nothing remains static. Steam from the bath makes the ink run into these beautiful streaks. I like the idea of the environment changing with you.’ The table is a 1930s design by Meret Oppenheim, now available from Cassina.
Michael Sinclair6/8The French settee from Judy Greenwood is a favourite spot for Harriet’s whippet Pearl. Over the bed is a cherub pendant light her father had as a child, which she has skirted with a Chamusquina linen shade. Around the chimneypiece are Delft tiles that pick out the blue of the walls in Benjamin Moore’s ‘Hale Navy’. The photograph is Sophia, 2006, by Billy & Hells.
Michael Sinclair7/8Stone outbuildings, including this former granary, have been converted into individual studios for the designer and her photographer husband, Henry.
Michael Sinclair8/8Harriet has used jute fabric to form a roof for the pergola built on-site by Charlton Ironworks. The armchairs are from Oka.
