Inside Melissa Hemsley's Victorian townhouse, where joy and comfort combine

‘I was desperate to live in the countryside but Henry convinced me to look at this house which, coincidentally, was opposite one I’d lived in for years in my twenties,’ says Melissa. When the couple visited in 2023, the kitchen was almost completely devoid of books, except for one: The Art of Eating Well was perched on the kitchen counter. ‘It was a sign!’ delights Melissa. This, combined with it being Patrick’s Day, gave Melissa the sense that the stars were aligning. She was quick to write to the owner, explaining this, and within a few months the couple were moving in.

The walls in the snug are painted in an uplifting pink. Opposite, a 17th-century tapestry hangs on the wall. The ottoman is from Lorfords and is covered in a Robert Kime stripe. The sofa and armchair are also from Lorfords.

Christopher Horwood

Instead of fighting with the house's listed status, Henry and Melissa happily embraced the constraints that came with it. ‘I thought it would be really interesting to be led by how the house has been lived in for the last two hundred years. Living by the rules of the house, we couldn’t knock down walls or make any major changes to the layout,’ explains Henry, whose only real change was to turn the ground floor bedroom back into a sitting room, and to reinstate the room’s fireplace that had been covered with wardrobes by the previous owners. The kitchen-cum-dining room occupies the lower-ground of the house, with three bedrooms spread across two floors upstairs. ‘The kitchen in my last house was huge and full of light, and it was tempting to move this kitchen upstairs, but there is something about having a cosy kitchen which feels really right for this house,’ says Melissa.

Being an art consultant, Henry has an innate understanding of scale, colour and composition, and thus took charge of the decoration. ‘In my work I see a lot of white walls and blank spaces, which I love, but for the house I really wanted to make it a bit more cosy, and have more pattern and colour,’ says Henry, who deployed a kaleidoscope of Little Greene paints to satisfy this brief. In the kitchen, bright yellow cabinets ‘bring a bit of sunshine into the darkest part of the house,’ he says, while the dining space next door has been entirely covered in Common Room's ‘Lucky Leaf Clover’ wallpaper: ‘it felt like the right place to have something really bold,’ explains Melissa, adding that she ‘love[s] having foliage wallpaper everywhere: it is really important in the winter to have that connection with nature’.

The sunny hallway is painted in Little Greene's ‘Madeline’. Hung on the walls are artworks by Thiago Hattnher and Fumi Imamura.

Christopher Horwood

A view from the snug through to the sitting room.

Christopher Horwood

The upstairs sitting room has received a similar treatment, with walls in William Morris’ ‘Willow Boughs’ wallpaper. Above it, the main bedroom plays host to blush-coloured walls and a bed swathed in a pretty pink Liberty print floral fabric from Coco and Wolf. ‘I never thought I’d be the guy with the pink flowery bedroom but I love it up here,’ says Henry. So charmed were the two by the pattern that they had a matching headboard made to complete the look.

In keeping with the sense of history offered by the house’s architecture, the pair have cultivated an impressive collection of antique (or antique-inspired) furniture and lighting. No doubt Henry’s well-trained eye and savvy instincts were essential for keeping costs down: the wall lights in the dining area and the hallways, for example, were fished out of a barrel at a Howe sample sale some years ago. ‘I didn’t need them at the time but they were such a good deal I knew I’d be able to use them eventually,’ he says. Brass accents including light switches from Forbes & Lomax contribute to the aged feel of the spaces. Other favourite pieces include a set of 17th-century Dutch delft tiles that the pair found at auction and which now make up the splash back in the kitchen, and Melissa's late father’s display cabinet which lives in in the couple's bathroom. ‘He used to store vintage toys in it. It’s survived a hell of a lot of moves and has only got better with age’, says Melissa.

The kitchen cabinets are painted in ‘Giallo’ by Little Greene. Here, an antique painted dresser and antique delft tiles add layers of patina.

Christopher Horwood

‘You know when you are walking past a house on a dark evening and you can see that inside the lights are on and there are people having a good time?’ says Melissa. ‘That’s the kind of atmosphere I wanted to create here. I just want people to feel comfortable and at home.’ When I leave a few hours later, full-bellied, yet feeling the lightness that comes from a day of happy chatter, I think about the people who would have peeked in as they walked past. I am sure they would agree that Melissa and Henry have thoroughly pulled it off.

@melissa.hemsley | @henryrelph