Thirteen rooms, seven kinds
The house was built to store cloth, not to sleep guests, so no two floors agree. We have stopped trying to make the rooms match, and started describing them honestly instead.
Small on purpose. For one, or two who like each other.
A walnut bed built into the alcove, a reading lamp on an arm, and nothing you would need to move out of the way.
Walnut bed built wall to wall
Panelled walls, tall curtains, the good kind of quiet.
The panelling is original and slightly out of true. A soft headboard, heavy curtains and a lamp that flatters everybody.
Restored 18th-century panelling
Doors that open onto your own piece of the roofline.
Walnut behind the bed, tall glazed doors in front of it, and a small tiled terrace above the stepped gables.
Private terrace over the rooftops
Ground floor, its own door, and the fig tree for company.
Woven headboard, a black freestanding bath and a door straight onto the old cobbled court. Entirely step-free.
Private door to the courtyard
Two walls of windows and a record you did not expect to like.
There is one of these. Tall windows on two sides, a deep armchair in the turn of the wall, a turntable and thirty records.
Record player and a house crate
For long mornings and late evenings.
A low bed against tobacco leather, walls the colour of strong coffee, a fire, and a bath in a room of bronzed stone.
Bath in a room of bronzed stone
The whole attic, and the beams that hold the house up.
The full attic: oak trusses from 1740, a fire that really burns, a copper-tapped bath and a roof terrace behind the gable.
Working fireplace under the oak