By Francesca Peacock
Could your home double as a film set at short notice? For most of us, the idea conjures a sense of dread — the clutter, the chaos, the lighting. But for the owners of Clayhill, a Grade II-listed 17th-century house in Hawkhurst, Kent, it’s all part of the routine.
The four-bedroom house and three-acre garden — currently on the market for £1.495mm — has a playfulness that appeals to photographers and directors with its mix of old and new. The house has been used in shoots for John Lewis, Neptune, Graham and Green, and Le Creuset.
When Helen Bratby, an art director, and her husband bought the property 20 years ago, they undertook a full renovation. The 17th-century core had been altered by later Georgian additions, but the couple stripped the interior back to its bones — uncovering makeshift insulation that included eight layers of wallpaper and scraps of old clothing stuffed into wall cavities. With interiors fashioned by Bratby and a rear oak-framed extension that doubled the footprint, the couple’s house became a marriage of the old and the new, seamlessly blended with a designer’s eye.
This extension is where the majority of the location work takes place. It has large steel Fabco doors leading out to the garden, high ceilings and a poured concrete floor. Some design teams make use of existing features and then “just place their cushions or fabric within the house interiors”, says Bratby.
Some take a more theatrical approach, stripping everything out and starting from scratch. They redecorate amid the chaos, conjuring striking new scenes. “You go in there”, Bratby says, “and there’s a beautiful bedroom . . . 10 minutes ago, there was a gym. It’s smoke and mirrors.”
The house has seen winter snow scenes in the height of summer, unruly children and well-known chefs filming television shows. One of the house’s real-life inhabitants often makes a cameo, with the family dog featuring in “about 50 per cent of the shoots”.
But the set-up of the house allows the owners to escape the mess — they have their two offices on the ground floor of the older core of the house.
Upstairs, the house is more of a cottage with “higgledy-piggledy” corridors, but the bedrooms are still large with high ceilings. Bratby’s interior design brings a curated vintage character to the first floor spaces, blending high-end pieces with antiques and second-hand finds.
But it is in the kitchen and living room extension where most of family life takes place. It is the warmest part of the house — it’s insulated and double glazed, with a wood-burning stove in the sitting area — and the rugged floor means there are “dogs, children, everyone in their wellies”. It’s “very liveable, knock-proof and cosy”, says Bratby. The doors open out to three acres of lawns, fields, woodland and partially walled gardens.
The couple are moving on to their next project — a self-build on a nearby plot of land where Bratby will turn her design skills to a completely blank canvas. “It’s very exciting”, she says, “but also slightly scary”, starting from nothing but empty space.
Photography: Savills
Read the full article here