WE are fortunate to live in a golden age of British architecture, interior design, gardening and restoration. Much of this is thanks to a greater depth and breadth of expertise than ever before, which springs from the growing number of ever-more knowledgeable and inventive practitioners offering exciting opportunities to build new houses or bring old properties to life. Increasingly, these projects involve seamlessly blending old and new, creating buildings that combine styles that are not only sympathetic to their setting, but which also meet the growing demands of modern life and of sustainability. It’s a process that is reinventing the way we live, as well as engaging a vast range of ever-evolving skills, from design and craftsmanship to the creation of thermal efficiency in period buildings. COUNTRY LIFE is delighted to present its own selection of practitioners with a demonstrable track record of excellence, as well as the fresh additions bringing new ideas to the fore.
New entries to the Top 100
Berdoulat
Named after the childhood home in southwest France of founder Patrick Williams, who earned his pocket money—and understanding of traditional buildings—by applying lime render to his parents’ 18th-century farmhouse, this company embodies Mr Williams’s passion for restoration and sensitivity to fine craftsmanship.
These qualities are something Mr Williams shares with his wife, Neri, with whom he runs the studio and the couple’s inspiring furniture shop in Bath. Many of the wares are the result of collaborations with local artisans, creating individual pieces with distinctive charm. Specialising in period buildings and restorations, in both residential and commercial sectors, the studio, founded in 2009, has a reputation for its responsiveness to each property’s history, evident in its projects, which currently include a canal house in Amsterdam, dating back to 1616.
Mr Williams’s maxim is ‘the building is the client and should dictate what is done to it’. Shunning today’s throwaway culture, the interiors have a time-honoured and gracious appeal, celebrating the old, yet sympathetically introducing the comfort of the new. www.berdoulat.co.uk
HÁM Interiors
A true family business, this interior-design and build practice was founded in 2011 by husband-and-wife team Nick and Pamela Cox, their son, Tom, and daughter, Kate. They offer a range of complementary skills; Nick has extensive experience in upholstery, flooring and commercial projects, Pamela in antiques and interior design, Tom has an eye for construction, architecture and colour and Kate a curiosity for new designers and fresh brands. The team head a studio, named after the Old English word for homestead, which undertakes all aspects of design, such as new-build construction, consulting on exterior and interior architecture, spatial planning, landscaping, joinery and interior decoration. They can deliver a full turnkey solution or help with simpler room refreshes.
The practice has a reputation for distinctive interiors with a relaxed feel, combining the elegant and eccentric with an imaginative use of colour and antiques, and is equally at home blending tradition and modernity in a new-build country house as it is in converting a former net loft in Cornwall into a quirky two-bedroom home. In 2020, it launched homeware store Studio HÁM, an interiors emporium-cum-design studio in the Hambleden valley, Oxfordshire. Expect a mix of antique and custom-made furniture, as well as decorative pieces, art and homeware. 01491 579371; www.haminteriors.com
Isabella Worsley
Turning her expert eye from townhouses in Chelsea to hotel rooms and treehouses at Wildhive Callow Hall in the Peak District, Isabella Worsley takes them all in her stride. After a degree in architectural history at the University of Edinburgh, she cut her design teeth at Guy Goodfellow, then began working closely with Firmdale Hotels creative director Kit Kemp on award-winning interiors in London and New York. The experience, she says, has given her the courage and confidence to create distinctively original spaces that celebrate joyous colour and pattern.
The niece of COUNTRY LIFE’s late Architectural Editor Giles Worsley, she set up her own studio in 2018, focusing on residential and boutique-hotel projects. Interiors have a classic sensibility, attuned to English country-house style, combined with a contemporary edge of character and charm. Current projects include the conversion of a longhouse in the Brecon Beacons, the restoration of a traditional farmhouse on the Côte d’Azur, a beach house in Wittering, West Sussex, and a Georgian home in Buckinghamshire.
020–8075 5232; www.isabellaworsley.com
Olivia Outred
There are only a handful of interior designers expert at classic English decorating with a contemporary edge and Olivia Outred is fast earning her rightful place among them. Known for injecting colour, art and the unexpected into traditional interiors, her work is imaginative, fresh and far from stuffy. After graduating with a degree in interior and spatial design from Chelsea College of Arts, Ms Outred joined Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, where she worked as assistant to Philip Hooper. Going on to run the interior-design arm of the widely admired Lulu Lytle’s Soane Britain, she set up her own east London-based practice in 2014.
Strong on creating comfortable and inviting homes in London and, increasingly, in the country, Ms Outred has a versatile approach evident in her recent projects. They include a villa in Primrose Hill, a Georgian townhouse in Mayfair, a farmhouse in the Cotswolds and
