A Regency house in the Yorkshire Dales with a sophisticated balance of modernity and patina
I am not sure that I have ever stepped foot inside a house that is as much the result of a considered and crafted vision as the home that the interior designer Jonathan Reed has created for himself and his artist husband, Graeme Black, in the Yorkshire Dales. The hand of a craftsperson is felt everywhere, the rooms almost visibly reverberating with the energy of the makers and of the stories surrounding each piece of furniture, object or artwork. A very sophisticated balance of modernity and patina ensures that the interiors feel right for the rural setting and Regency architecture, while also unexpected.
Functionality is as important as aesthetics for Jonathan and no detail escapes his exacting eye. A candelabra hangs from a clever adjustable hanging mechanism in the conservatory, and every blind has a bespoke cast-bronze pull and cleat. As Jonathan puts it, ‘Others whittle a spoon, I whittle a house.’
The couple had been renting a property on the Yorkshire Moors – Jonathan grew up locally – when he spotted this farmhouse on the internet. Surrounded by a bleak farmyard, it had plaster falling off the walls, damp was seeping in everywhere and floor joists that had been gnawed by rats were dangerously near to collapse. ‘For us, it was an unshackling from everything that was familiar and comfortable,’ admits Jonathan. During the works, he made the decision to step away from his design practice, Studio Reed, to work in a more personal way for clients. Graeme, who had left a successful career in fashion, was setting out as a painter.
It is difficult to imagine all of this now, with the house standing proudly on the hillside, surrounded by well-managed meadow, miles of restored stone walls, an immaculate garden dramatically set into the rock face, vegetables growing in raised beds and beautifully restored outbuildings (one of which is Graeme’s studio).
An 1820s advertisement from The Times bears an image of the house with the words ‘newly built mansion house fit for gentry folk’. Jonathan has surmised from this and other evidence that Wood End was a property development and that the listed mural in the entrance hall – depicting said gentlefolk walking at Fountains Abbey – was part of the sales pitch.
The Grade II-listed house required careful stripping back to bare stone, but most of the softwood original mouldings were still there – albeit needing attention. The Yorkstone flags in many of the ground-floor rooms were mapped, lifted and relaid over underfloor heating. Where there were small gaps, Jonathan commissioned a mosaicist to do a kintsugi-like patching-in.
To give the couple larger, lighter spaces for everyday living, they had wings added on each side of the house. One is now a laundry and back kitchen with mustard tiles (from Froyle) and a chequerboard floor, inspired by 17th-century interiors found in Amsterdam. The other, which they call ‘the west wing’, is a living space, with a screen of sash windows wrapping round two sides; on the third side, there is a covered outdoor kitchen and sitting area looking down the valley.
Now, most guests enter via that west wing. The ingredients here set the tone for the rooms that follow. ‘It is as much about the compositions I’m creating as it is about the process of gathering things and, in a way, that feels personal,’ says Jonathan of his approach. Scagliola blocks, used as a coffee table, take their shape from the boulders on the hillside, their surface mimicking the colours of the lichen. Chairs by Edwin Lutyens, once owned by the furniture designer and businessman Ambrose Heal, mix with triangular stools by Charlotte Perriand. On top of a cabinet by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, made for the Glasgow School of Art, are pieces from Jonathan’s collection of studio pottery. Behind them is one of Graeme’s recent works – a view looking up through the trees to the sky – and a votive stone given to them by the dry-stone waller.
In response to their new life in Wensleydale, Graeme has made trees the focus of his work, exploring their sculptural forms, textures and chameleonic colouring. For his latest project, he has collaborated with Stephens Tapestry Studio in South Africa. One work commands attention on the main staircase when I visit, others are hanging in the art gallery, Thorns, which they have created from a derelict barn in the valley below. The synergy between Graeme’s work and that of David Nash, an artist whose work Jonathan has collected for years, is immediately obvious. Both artists are observers, reading the tree and what they see with little reinvention, allowing their subject to do the speaking.
Studio pottery is everywhere, particularly pieces by Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew. Jonathan seeks out examples that potters have chosen to keep, finding that ‘often in the earlier pieces, you see a purer expression of the artist’s intent’. He is also drawn to Leach’s later creations, made after he had met his wife, fellow potter Janet: ‘When I buy, I’m always bearing in mind the shifts where the magic was happening.’
Furniture designed by Jonathan sits alongside collected pieces throughout the house. Much of the metalwork – tables, benches, a television stand – is by James Morris of Yorkshire-based Sculptsteel. Jonathan grew up with Mouseman furniture and now collaborates with Ian Thompson Cartwright, the founder’s great-grandson, to create contemporary oak pieces that make the most of Mouseman’s sculptor-like way of working, each bearing the signature carved mouse. The textile artist Catarina Riccabona has taken inspiration from the Dales landscape’s colours and shape for the curtains, weaving fabric by the length for the first time.
From the west wing, you step up into the kitchen, one of the two rooms that flank the central staircase hall. Designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the wall cabinet came from a butler’s pantry in a house near Glasgow. The tiles round the sink were commissioned from the Leach Pottery, inspired by some original tile panels by Leach that Jonathan had. Even the tea
towels are bespoke, made by weaver Alison Morton.
It’s a house of two halves. At the back, in the older part, is the former servants’ quarters. Jonathan has created a ‘pub’ in the former kitchen, including a bar with a bronze support that he sculpted. There’s an old lambing chair by the fire and a curved table by Mouseman (within which is the only moving mouse in existence) that was commissioned to fit with a handsome settle.
Reaching the top of the stairs, you look straight out to the view through a hall-cum-library space, where you can while away an hour or two reading, or sit at the desk on what was once Hans Wegner’s own chair. Off this hall, each of the three bedrooms has a different mood set by the shade of limewash used on the walls – either from Francesca’s Paints or Bauwerk Colour. The main bedroom is a trove of pieces by favourite artists and collaborators – from the botanical drawings by Jane Hyslop who was at university with Graeme, to the rug by Christabel Balfour, which reflects the patterns created by the stone walls and barns across the valley.
It is their bathroom that exemplifies Jonathan’s design mastery – in particular, the basin unit, which he describes as ‘a mash-up of an Edwardian gentleman’s washstand and a campaign chest’. The plumbing is concealed in a single leg and it is the work of at least five different craftspeople with its pyrolave top, electrified mirrors on easels and cabinetry wrapped in linen.
With the stove lit on a stormy night, there can be no more atmospheric place to bathe. From here, it is just a few steps down the servants’ stairs to the ‘pub’ below. My guess is that it can feel pretty bleak in the Dales in winter, but once inside this enchanting house, you are immersed in a magically comfortable world. And, come summer, the house opens outwards to its extraordinary setting – even that carefully imagined and trained by the eye of this unstoppable designer.
Jonathan Reed: jonathanreed.design | Graeme Black: graemeblack.com | Thorns Gallery: thorns.gallery
Michael Sinclair1/11The Yorkshire flagstones were carefully lifted and relaid with underfloor heating beneath.
Michael Sinclair2/11Adam Ross lights hang over a 19th-century table from Miles Griffiths in the back kitchen. The linen cupboards came from Wentworth Woodhouse; the clothes rack, found in the old kitchen, was scrubbed with wire wool to remove decades of grease.
Michael Sinclair3/11Above the chimneypiece in the sitting room is a mirror with hand-blown tinted glass from Dominic Schuster. On one side is a slipware map of the estate made of earthenware panels commissioned from ceramicists Clive and Dylan Bowen, and on the other is an artwork by David Nash. A wool curtain woven by Catarina Riccabona hangs at the window beside Rudolf Steiner’s 1930s oak anthroposophical headmaster’s desk and chair.
Michael Sinclair4/11
Michael Sinclair5/11An ink drawing by Graeme hangs above the bed, which was designed by Jonathan and made of oak-bark-tanned leather from J&FJ Baker. Above the radiator is a panel of 1930s tiles by Bernard Leach, and the rug is by Christabel Balfour.
Michael Sinclair6/11The bath stands between ‘cabins’ containing the loo and shower; the painting is by Deborah Tarr.
Michael Sinclair7/11In the old servants’ kitchen is a Mouseman table made by Robert Thompson’s Craftsmen. The stone fire surround, carved with Jonathan and Graeme’s initials, pays homage to the Dales tradition of adding a lintel above the front door when a house passed to new owners.
Michael Sinclair8/11The hall table is made up of a sculptural base made by Simon Gaiger with a top in adzed oak by Mouseman. On it stands a monumental ‘tree of life’ vase made in 1957 by Bernard Leach and with it a bowl by his then wife Janet Leach. In the background is a listed fresco of Regency period visitors to Fountains Abbey.
Michael Sinclair9/11A spare bedroom.
Michael Sinclair10/11
Michael Sinclair11/11The painting in the sitting area is by Graeme.
