In our new blog series, Lord Montagu takes you on a tour of one of his favourite Palace House room transformations . . . which a star of stage and screen has stayed in!
The gardens of Palace House were an obvious choice for me to include on the list of themes I gave to Southampton Solent University students who took on the design challenge. My father’s old kitchen was the room which seemed to adapt to this most readily, perhaps because the two arched recesses brought to mind a pair of portals into a fantasy garden.
I encouraged the students to spend time in the garden, studying the plants and wildlife. Student Bethan Humphries tells me that her living room was subsequently covered in huge sheets of paper, while she painted the components which came together to form a digitally printed mural for the room.
Working with fellow students Rosie Rowe and Amy Shepherd, she illustrated all the components which go to make up the surface design: birds, bees, flowers and trees. The most striking features are the rose trees which adorn the arched recesses on each side of the bed.
Once applied to the walls, I took pleasure in hanging many of our 18th century ornithological paintings in the room, which seem to work well with the mural.
The AGA, on which so many good meals were cooked through the decades, has made way for the king-size bed. It has been in the house for generations but now has a rather more exciting headboard, the outline of which links to the arches which flank it. The bed takes up a lot of space so I was glad to be able to incorporate the hanging cupboard in the old dumbwaiter, behind a concealed door.
Another major change was removing the old stainless steel sink from the window recess. Our very able carpenters restored the woodwork by carefully joining old to new, re-establishing the window seat which would have been there originally.
BBC South presenter Sam Fraser was one of the first guests to use the room. From the bed, I hope she looked up to see how the sky, populated by many birds, continues from the walls to the ceiling where a faux opening to an imaginary sky frames a stylised golden sun shining from its centre. Just the thing for a star of stage and screen!
See why this is one of the rooms I am most proud of on my video tour here: https://youtu.be/QmiM9arZfFE
COMING NEXT: The Flower Press bathroom – keep an eye on our social platforms for next week’s Part Three.