Built into the wall of one of the airy bathrooms at Ashton, an Edwardian country house in Somerset, is a set of spacious mahogany drawers. The house is filled with useful original features like this: generous baths with sturdy taps, large built-in basins in bedrooms, and a huge loft room where the current owners’ five children keep a train set. Amanda Campbell, who has lived there for more than 30 years with her husband, says she was seduced by the house’s generous proportions and light-filled rooms. “There is nothing poky about it,” she says.
Britain is in the throes of nostalgia for Howards End-style houses such as Ashton and the interior decor of the early 20th century. The era’s art nouveau-style stained glass and muted-tone, geometric tiles are trending on social media, while online searches for its bathrooms and gardens have increased by as much as 100 per cent in the past 12 months. Edwardian country houses, with their beaky gables, square bays and timber detailing “used to sell for up to 10 per cent less than Victorian homes”, says Robin Chatwin, head of Savills’ south-west London residential sales, “but now there’s no difference — many buyers prefer an Edwardian house.”
Edwardianism speaks to the past and the future, which is why it resonates today, says interior designer and architect Ben Pentreath, who has recently moved to a house with Edwardian interiors on Rousay in the Orkney Islands. “There’s a sense of modernity to good Edwardian design,” he says. “Light-filled spaces, layouts that flow from one room to the next, [rooms] infused with poetry . . . themes that would inspire modernism just a few years later.”
It also offers a sense of optimism and hope, he continues. After the sombre final decades of Queen Victoria’s reign, the accession of King Edward VII and his socialite wife Queen Alexandra brought light and colour to British fashion and interiors — as can be seen in the exhibition The Edwardians: Age of Elegance, at Buckingham Palace (until November). A painting by Danish artist Laurits Regner Tuxen, for example, shows ladies at a Buckingham Palace garden party dressed in pastel shades, a palette mirrored in the hand-painted floral occasional chairs and Danish ceramics on display. “There can be a real prettiness to Edwardian decor — the paint colours, the tiles, the fabrics,” agrees interior designer Kate Guinness, who has recently refurbished an Edwardian house in south-east London.
The era’s handcrafted furniture was often influenced by the medieval style favoured by Arts and Crafts designers such as William Morris. “It has a sense of peaceful comfort,” Pentreath adds. “The Edwardians had wonderful budgets — fuelled by the late-stage empire and British manufacturing prowess — which means that the quality of the work and materials shines through.”
Houses of the time — Edwardian architectural style extends from 1901 into the early 1920s even though Edward VII died in 1910 — reflect this comfortable aesthetic. With fewer staff than the Victorians, the Edwardians were forward-thinking designers, prioritising kitchens, bathrooms and family living space. The main rooms are most often designed for both formal dinners and children racing around after school. “There’s a wonderful confidence to the houses — they’re solid, adaptable and never overly fussy,” says Oliver Custance Baker, of estate agents Strutt & Parker’s country house department. The Edwardians were also garden-mad, she adds, designing houses with front and back gardens and living spaces that flow outdoors to structured planting and herbaceous borders.
“Lutyens is the most famous of the great Edwardian architects, but he was but one of a huge generation of talents — Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott, Guy Dawber, Ernest Gimson, [C.F.A] Voysey,” Pentreath continues. “They drew deeply from the well of tradition without ever being dull.”
At Ashton, built in 1914 for a colonel returning from India, Campbell has created a garden inspired by the horticulturalist and garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, with a pool and tennis court. Like most Edwardian houses, it isn’t listed, so she was able to open up rooms even further for modern lateral living, creating a vast kitchen with areas for sitting, dining and watching television, all with doors on to the garden.
Her one regret is that she never went “full William Morris” with the interior; this will be for the next owner, as Campbell and her husband are looking to downsize. Pentreath, however, likes to juxtapose Edwardianism with other period styles. “It combines beautifully with mid-century furniture, abstract art and sculpture in a way that would feel a little jarring or over-obvious in a Georgian interior,” he says.
Pentreath feels lucky to have Edwardian fireplaces with William De Morgan tiles at his new home. In many houses, Edwardian fixtures — such as original parquet flooring — have been ripped out. It’s now being reinstalled, says interior designer Max Buston, who suggests using narrower planks for a historic feel.
Guinness avoids the heavier pieces of furniture — the elaborate mahogany sideboards with heavy scrolling and inlaid swags, for example — but she loves bobbin chairs and the striped and floral furnishings (Pentreath suggests a trip to antique dealer Puritan Values in London to find great pieces). She recommends giving chairs “a new lease of life with a new fabric” and points to striped fabrics by Hamilton Weston or Ian Mankin — as well as Adam Bray’s brown paper stripe wallpapers. Buston favours the striped fabric and papers of Pierre Frey and Anna French, and pastel paint shades such as Lucca blue by Edward Bulmer.
For floral wallpaper and fabrics, both Morris & Co and Sanderson are obvious choices, both being founded at the time; according to Claire Vallis, design director of the Sanderson Design Group, patterns from the early 1900s such as Lerena, a quintessential Edwardian pattern by Voysey, and Rose and Peony, are top sellers.
Even without the croquet parties and cream teas of the “long Edwardian afternoon”, it’s an aesthetic filled with languor and joy, says Campbell.
On the market
Ashton, Somerset, £2.95mn An eight-bedroom house built in 1914 in 8.79-acre grounds on the edge of the village of Chaffcombe, with a swimming pool and tennis court; through Strutt & Parker.
Whitney Court, Herefordshire, £3mn A 10-bedroom house above the village of Whitney-on-Wye, surrounded by 22 acres of gardens and parkland; through Savills.
House, Putney, London, £3.5mn-£3.85mn A detached house built for Charles Rolls, co-founder of Rolls-Royce, in 1909, with six bedrooms and a landscaped garden; through Wilfords.
Middleton Park, Oxfordshire, £18mn A 27-bedroom Lutyens masterpiece, converted into 16 apartments, with formal gardens and a cricket pitch, swimming pool and tennis court; through Savills.
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