A Home with a History: it’s a family affair at this ravishing house in Rye

Francesca Rowan-Plowden has made a strange discovery of late. The actor turned interior designer is showing us round a house in Rye she’s recently completed as she explains what’s happened. The project was itself unusual – the clients were her parents, Jacquetta and Patrick Rogers – but that’s not the story she’s just begun to tell. “We’ve just learned,” she says, wide-eyed, “that my great-grandmother might have lived in this very building. Completely coincidentally!” Francesca picks up a small photograph that looks, without question, as though it was taken from what’s now the upstairs drawing room of this winsome cottage on Watchbell Street.

Jacquetta owned the picture for a long time before she realised the connection. In fact, it was only when she and Patrick bought the house in 2022 that she learned her grandmother, who spent much of her life working as a doctor in Uganda, had lived in Rye for a stint. “It must have been taken from here,” says Francesca. “The angle, the height – it’s exact.” It’s wonderfully spooky, we suggest. Has it changed the way they feel about the house? “Oh yes,” Jacquetta agrees. “It feels like destiny in a way. It’s not exactly a historic family seat, but it does make it feel like an ancestral home, in a way.”

It’s a sense only underscored by the fact that, in Francesca’s work here, the mark of the next generation has been made. The project was a collaborative effort: Jacquetta, an artist and former silk importer and textile designer, brought her aesthetic know-how and knack for colour and pattern; Patrick, an engineer, his practicality; and Francesca her skill for bestowing a sense of unintimidating lavishness on every scheme she touches.

What was it like, we ask Francesca, working for your parents? “There were a few stroppy-teenager moments, times when I would say things like: ‘I cannot believe you want to keep that hideous cushion!’” she replies, tipping all three into laughter. “But truthfully? It was wonderful.” Looking around – at the comfort and joy here, at the love that has gone into it all – you can tell. It’s no surprise really; after all, keeping it in the family seems to work well for this lot.

Jacquetta: “When we bought the house, everything inside was all terribly 1980s. There was brown or green carpet everywhere, lots of fitted furniture – and the bathroom was very odd indeed, with an absolutely tiny tub and a separate loo. Sorting that out – and putting in a new kitchen – were the only structural things we had to do. Patrick was very handy in that department. The rest was all surface, really – though there was a bit of ripping out to be done!

“We were drawn to it because, despite being cottagey in scale, it does feel quite grand. It has a lovely curved staircase unlike many I’ve seen, and an upstairs drawing room with a fireplace and window seats.”

Patrick: “It’s quite an unusual house, in many ways. I think the one next door was probably built first, but they’re both medieval in origin. This one has been added to over the years, though, in both the Georgian and Victorian eras. It’s been made taller and had windows put in. It’s even got ‘new’ Georgian alcoves beside of the drawing-room fireplace, that sort of tuck behind the chimneybreast. People think the Georgians were all about rigour and clean lines, but there was a lot of higgledy-piggledy bodging going on too.”

Jacquetta: “We moved here from a flat in London to be nearer Francesca, who now lives in Battle but used to be the custodian of the National Trust’s Lamb House. Amazingly, don’t think we’ve bought anything new for this place. A lot of the textiles are old too – most of the curtains we’ve had for more than 40 years, either in use or in storage. They might be from the 1980s themselves, but they were the good 1980s!

“Back then, I invested in Bennison and Colefax & Fowler fabrics. It was worth it; they have aged very elegantly and still look beautiful today. Francesca’s been brilliant in helping us reuse things. We had all this stuff that had been part of our lives for so long and she’s worked out how to reframe it all. There really wasn’t any point in throwing all those decent bits away.

Francesca: “It’s been such fun pulling out all these old things from my childhood and trying to make them work today. In the top bedroom, for instance, we put up a pair of fantastic old Colefax curtains, which were very pretty but a bit… How shall I say it? Barbara Cartland…! I realised if we dropped the pelmet a bit and got rid of some of the flounciness, they’d work much better. It’s funny – I think people see old glazed chintzes and things like that and feel a bit flummoxed by them. Because they’re not so common anymore, I think people are afraid to use them. You just have to be a bit brave.

“A lot of the work here was about bringing it up to date. There were basins in the bedrooms – very practical, but a bit grannyish – lots of coloured sanitaryware in the bathrooms. It didn’t work for a house in today’s world.”

Jacquetta: “It was quite a considered process really. I suppose that’s what happens when you work with a professional. When it came to coming up with a plan for each room, we were methodical: we’d think of a mood and we’d choose an object as out starting point – whether it was those curtains or, in the case of the drawing room, a pair of Italian toleware sconces that I bought from Francesca.

Francesca: “I’d originally got them for a project – they were the prettiest I’d ever come across – but they never got used.

“My work is very textile-driven. That’s definitely inspired by my mum. I remember being surrounded by rolls of silks and printed fabrics as a child – all the things she imported from around the world. It’s definitely informed the way I do rooms. I’m not exactly a minimalist…

“I like to mix things together that don’t normally go. The art of clashing is fun to explore. But I do have to tell clients to trust the process – even my parents! It can be daunting when they see a bolt of fabric with a bold print arrive. You just know they’re thinking: ‘What! How!’ But it does come together in the end. Good interiors are all about balance, so you need the full picture before you know if something works.

“Even I have to trust the process sometimes! I’ll always remember: I was working at Battel Hall on the Leeds Castle estate, redoing the library. We painted everything a really rich red and I suddenly thought: ‘Oh no! It’s like a womb! We’re going to have to start again.’ But then we put the curtains up – gorgeous cream ones, with a suzani-like pattern on them – and it all fell into place. That’s literally how schemes come together: they’re greater than the sum of their parts.

“I felt confident with the paints here, because I’ve used most of them before. But with residential projects, you do have to be careful, especially if your clients are living in the house before it’s finished. They might balk at the brightness of a yellow or the boldness of a pattern; the trick is winning their trust, so they’re willing to take the leap of faith.”

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