Given the opportunity to reincorporate a collection of former workmen’s cottages back into the historic estate in the Surrey Hills, we were brought in to create the feel of a traditional English village. The ten cottages needed to be brought back to life and reconnected with their Victorian beginnings as we artfully doubled the Beaverbrook’s capacity.
We designed the 21-bedroom village to offer a different experience to the grand, unapologetically swanky main house hotel. More modest in scale, the village meets different needs.
Guests are offered the choice of balconies, terraces and private gardens, along with vaulted ceilings, four-poster beds and interconnectable rooms. Six of the cottages include cute, curtained bunk beds that feel like railway carriages in a children’s storybook.
Each luxe, spacious suite is decorated in its own playful riff on the Victorian cottage vernacular. We designed an original collection of organic cotton and linen fabrics in joyfully coloured ginghams and stripes, which we had woven in two historic Lancashire mills. We collaborated with a local artist to create a series of wallpapers, which we then printed at one of the oldest wallpaper workshops in the UK.
Cottages are named after and inspired by an illustrious Victorian or Edwardian, from Walter Scott to the Bronte sisters. A large, framed map of Middle Earth hangs on the wall of the JRR Tolkien cottage, and bookshelves are lined with The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit, alongside anthologies of Victorian poetry and collectable issues of Country Life.
We created Mrs Beeton’s, a brightly coloured, playful take on a tiled Victorian café, and a flexible event space flooded with natural light called The Writer’s Block that works just as well for reunions and celebrations as it does for workshops.
Nestled in its secluded woodland setting, the village gathers around a charming courtyard with plentiful outdoor seating set among decorative planters, bicycles, boot scrapers and a boules court. A joyous, light-hearted affair.
