See Inside the Hidden Garden House at Bradley Gardens
More than 10 years since they took on the challenge of restoring and revamping Bradley Gardens, Mark Robinson and Darren Crichton-Jones of Bridgewater Interiors have now completed the renovation and restoration of Garden House
Even those in the know about Bradley Gardens might not know what’s hidden beyond the garden walls though: the Garden House was part of the package when Mark and Darren purchased Bradley Gardens, but it’s taken until now for them to complete the work on it.
The house has stood by Bradley Gardens since the gardens were built in the 1700s, but it has had a difficult history. Mark says that they knew very little about the house when they took it on, and were confused by its apparent lack of original features. ‘I couldn’t understand how this beautiful little house wasn’t just full of character, but it wasn’t, there was nothing in it,’ he says. Instead of narrow sash windows, the house had big square ones, and there were no fireplaces, features, or original doors. It later transpired that the house had been gutted by fire in the ‘60s or ‘70s, and subsequent renovations had resulted in the characterless finish Mark describes.
You might think that as the plan was to restore the house to its former glory, planning permission would be fairly simple. Not so, however. ‘We spent four years in planning to get what we wanted,’ says Mark. Bradley Gardens itself was their initial priority, but the battle with the planners slowed things down further. One major hold up was the ‘70s-style flat-roofed extension at the back of the house. ‘The planners wanted us to put something similar back on,’ says Mark, who spent years arguing that this traditional Northumbrian house should have a traditional catslide roof on the back instead. ‘The planners didn’t really get their heads round it, but we managed to get it eventually!’ Planning was also needed to resize the windows back to how they would have been, and the house’s original chimney pots were copied for the new extension.
Work, when it began, was extensive: ‘we took the staircase out, we literally took the roof off the house and we took every floor out of the house, and basically started again,’ Mark says. This enabled them to put the house back to how they felt it should have looked in the first place, with traditional features such as coving and fireplaces. It was undoubtedly a huge project, but Mark was determined not to go over the top. ‘Everyone was saying to us, “oh are you not just going to put a huge big living room/dining area in?”, “are you not going to put a big kitchen in here?”, and I was like, no because the house just wouldn’t be in proportion.’
Through his work with Bridgewater Interiors, Mark has learned not to try and make everything too big. ‘The amount of houses I go into and they’ve put an extension on, and you walk into this vast void of a kitchen or a living room. When you stand in the footprint of a house you instantly think “I need something bigger” and of course bigger means more price per square metre. People start the build and realise the money is just going on these structural bits of the house, whereas if they just slimmed it down a bit, they would have got all the beautiful things in the house instead of having to put a cheap kitchen in or cheaper bathrooms or flooring.’
Mark was determined that Garden House would have a traditional layout, with a living room and a dining room. ‘My vision was that you would stand at one point in the hallway and you would see three fires going at the same time – one in the hall, one in the living room and one in the dining room,’ he explains.
When it came to the interiors, Mark started with colour choices. ‘My background was at Farrow & Ball for many years designing colour with them, so I started with the colour and the lighting and the flooring, and I basically built up from that. People normally decorate a room and go onto another one with another look, and then they’ll do another room with another look, but what I’ve always tried to do is start with the hallway because the hall, stairs and landing has got to be the main spine of the house, and every room has to come off that hallway.’
‘It all ties in, it doesn’t feel as though it’s jolting from
room to room as you walk through the house’
Mark chose the same ceiling colour for all the rooms (Snow by Neptune), and altered the woodwork colour for each floor. ‘The ceiling will always tie the house together,’ he explains. ’It all ties in, it doesn’t feel as though it’s jolting from room to room as you walk through the house.
‘I used the same Lapicida stone floor throughout the downstairs, dining room and hallways, and then I changed it to herringbone to give it more character in the kitchen and boot room area. I used Crucial Trading Seagrass in the living room and a Seagrass rug on the actual stone floors.’ Once he had this base, Mark was able to start to add colour into each room – again, making sure it all flowed together. In the living room, Linen Pink by William Yeoward ties into the Lewis & Wood wallpaper in the dining room, which is powder blue with hints of pink. ‘The two rooms look into each other through French doors on both sides, and they don’t jolt each other because it flows from side to side.’ Farrow & Ball’s School House White flows from the hallway into the kitchen. ‘I used a very simple palette of probably about eight colours in the whole house, and then four wallpapers, that was my base.’
One area Mark was determined to make his own was the kitchen, which is of course from Neptune, and which has what look like original beams and tongue and groove on the ceiling. ‘I was desperate for a proper pantry, so we did a little boot room with a pantry and then I did my kitchen, so my pantry is really like my second kitchen.’
One of Mark’s favourite spaces in the finished house is the dining room. ‘It has the most lovely feel to it,’ he says. ‘People now have gone away from dining rooms, so they’ll put a massive extension on and put a table in it and a kitchen in it, but actually a dining room space is such a nice, indulgent space if you can have it.’ The wallpaper is another plus. ‘Wallpaper is now coming back into fashion but people are a bit tentative with it – but I’ve always loved it,’ Mark continues. One issue was that a window in the dining room had to be blocked up when the new kitchen was built on the other side of it. Never one to miss an opportunity, Mark turned the former window into a butler’s pantry which houses a bar. ‘I feel you should always have a drinks area somewhere throughout the house, for when you greet people when they’re coming to visit.’
Upstairs, a reconfigured layout allowed for a bedroom, ensuite and dressing room to sit at the front of the house. ‘With the bedroom I wanted to be a bit selfish, so it’s more like a suite that sits on the front.’ The bathroom cabinetry in the ensuite is all Neptune, and the wallpaper is a handwoven hessian in a subtle aqua blue. ‘Everyone comes in and touches the walls because it’s just like woven bamboo or hessian. It looks stunning in the bathroom with the Neptune marble floors.’
At the back of the first floor there’s a guest bedroom and ensuite, and a unique feature of the house is its upstairs laundry room, which Mark says was inspired by his time spent in America. ‘That’s what the Americans all do, everyone has a laundry upstairs,’ he says, ‘which makes sense because why put all your laundry on your kitchen floor and bring it all downstairs, then take it back upstairs?’ This was a space saver downstairs too, as all the mechanics of the house (from the boiler to the hub for the electrics) went into the laundry room too. ‘It’s been a great success,’ says Mark.
The top floor, which contains guest bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms, is a real departure from the look of the rest of the house. ‘I wanted to do the top floor a bit more modern,’ Mark says. ‘I didn’t want skirting boards on the top floor because originally it wouldn’t have had skirting boards in a top floor attic bedroom, so we clapper-boarded the gable walls, and I just made it a bit more natural and a bit more modern.’ The striking wallpaper is one of William Yeoward’s earliest designs. ‘I’ve met William Yeoward quite a few times, and I’ve always loved that design.’ In another nod to convenience, there’s a TV room and another bar on this floor, along with sinks and fridges so you don’t have to go down two floors to the kitchen.
Mark’s advice for anyone taking on a large project such as this is to enlist the help of experts as early in the process as possible. ‘You’ve got to get someone involved with you. Americans do it all the time – in the UK and in the North East I don’t think we do it enough. I think people just think they can do it themselves.’ Often contracted through Bridgewater just to do a kitchen, Mark will end up getting involved with the interiors for the whole project. ‘Most kitchen companies, in fact all of them, will just fit the kitchen. But [at Bridgewater] we’ll also get involved with designing it, the colour, fabrics – we can do anything across the spectrum.’
At Garden House, Mark had three plans: one was a general layout, one was the layout for furniture, and one was for electrics and lighting. ‘[Once work started] we didn’t have to change anything internally or externally to the building, because we had gone over the plans so many times,’ he says. The final choices Mark had to make were the fabrics. ‘You can always find fabric [for a room], but some people start with fabric, and they’ll go “oh I got this fabric” or “oh I got this sofa” and you think, okay, you’re planning your whole house around this sofa.’
Outside, a planting scheme of white and green creates a calm approach to the house, contrasting with the plethora of colours in Bradley Gardens itself. ‘I didn’t want it to detract from the gate at the bottom of the garden, where when you open that garden gate you walk into colour.’ As for the future of Garden House, having restored it to its former glory, Mark is determined that the house belongs with Bradley Gardens. ‘It’ll be forever ours as long as we’ve got Bradley. It’s part of the heritage of Bradley so it’s always going to be linked to Bradley.’
