A potter’s deeply personal Somerset cottage reflects his love of craft and collected things

Come 2023 and firmly bedded into Somerset life, George was ready to find a place of his own. The market was dead, but then he came across this mid-nineteenth century cottage in a village not far from Taunton. Built from Quantocks sandstone and in ‘desperate need of someone to do lots to it,it's the sort of house that a child might draw. Its central door is flanked by evenly spaced windows on both floors, sandwiched by chimney pots at either end. ‘It was the biggest house I looked at and the only one I saw that was detached,’ says George, explaining that it had originally been part of a terrace until the adjoining houses were demolished in the 1960s. The layout was ‘all over the place’, with lots of doors and two staircases, owing to the fact that it started life in 1842 as two workers' cottages, with a central communal corridor. But George could see the opportunity; the garden had amazing views and although the interiors were a 1980s time warp, the house felt ‘reassuringly solid.’ He forged ahead.

He likens his first few months there to camping. ‘I was quite delusional about what I needed to do,’ he explains. A hunt for a builder proved long-winded, but turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it gave George time to interrogate what needed doing. At the same time, he was poring over magazines for inspiration: ‘the more I read, the more expensive my taste got and the higher my expectations,’ he adds, with a laugh. ‘I didn’t want shortcuts; I realised it was the quality of materials that would give me pleasure,’ he explains, pointing out the elm floorboards that surround the fireplace, which were a considerable expense but bring him delight everyday.

The garden was a huge part of the house’s attraction to George, with views over the surrounding Somerset countryside. The pergola, festooned with white wisteria, was there already.

Christopher Horwood

Eventually, he found a local builder, Dave Mantle, who began work at the Somerset cottage in July 2024. Single glazed rotten windows were replaced with Accoya-framed double glazing, while the galley kitchen and existing dining room were opened up to create one lovely large kitchen/dining space, now fitted with a DeVol kitchen – bought for 25% off the usual price because he opted for unpainted and finished it himself – that looks out onto the garden. He created a clever little cloakroom in the centre of the house, dissecting what had been the communal corridor and adding a cleverly positioned window to provide a sightline from front to back. ‘I was project managing the whole thing, while attempting to work, live here and not go bankrupt,’ he admits, with a laugh. Making sense of the upstairs layout was key. The second back staircase, which popped out upstairs in what would become George’s bedroom, was removed and a ‘waste of space landing, shower and loo’ and an existing bedroom were reconfigured to create a generous main bedroom and ensuite. A fourth bedroom – now needed as a walk-through to get to George’s bedroom due to the removal of the back staircase – was turned into a charming lobby-cum-dressing room and is now enveloped by 36 Bourne Street’s ‘Cypress Paper’.

In the main bedroom, George upholstered a headboard in Volga Linen’s ‘Horizontal Stripe’. Lights from Las Sola frame the bed, while the bedspread is made from GP & H Baker’s ‘Paisley’, which George sourced from eBay. The jute rug is from Dunelm.

Christopher Horwood

Just like with his pots, the colours and patterns in the house are rich, earthy and decorative. ‘The joy of interiors is that I was actually able to get the colours to stay how they’re meant to be,’ says George, joking about the unpredictability of the firing process. Blue – a colour George admits to having a ‘near clinical obsession’ with – weaves throughout, finding form in tiles, handpainted by George, behind the cooker and in a striped seat cushion he had made for a seat by the back door in the kitchen. But the only room actually painted blue – Farrow & Ball’s ‘Oval Room Blue’ – is a guest bedroom, thanks to Paddy O’ Donnell, Farrow & Ball’s brand ambassador, who marshalled George’s obsession and helped him establish a palette for the house. The sitting room is painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Dibber’, creating a rich cocooning feel, while the kitchen is light and airy in ‘Slipper Satin’. Reclaimed terracotta floor tiles, sourced from France, ground it and stop it feeling too “done” by giving the sense that they might have always been there. George went to great lengths throughout to ensure additions felt authentic, even ‘embodying a woodworm’ by creating his own tool to rough up the new floorboards required upstairs.

George created a cabin-style bed, framing it with curtains made from Jane Churchill’s ‘Indus Stripe’ by curtain-maker Emma Brimble. Woodwork is painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Joa’s White’ while the walls are in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Pigeon’.

Christopher Horwood

Building work took six months, followed by a further few months of refining. The furnishings have been a slow burn, coming together piece by piece over the past couple of years. He arrived with a few pieces, including a rather amazing satin wood linen chest that belonged to his grandfather and was hoisted into his dressing room through the gap created when the secondary staircase was removed. ‘It’s not going anywhere now,’ he says. Soon he found himself trawling auction sites, scoring a sofa on eBay for a couple of hundreds of pounds. Some purchases proved more troublesome than others, including the striped Howard-style armchair, also in the sitting room, which he bought from an auction at Crewkerne, only to discover that it needed a full overhaul. ‘I spent the best part of £800 making it good again,’ he admits. At the upholsterers he happened to bump into curtainmaker Emma Brimble, who proved his ‘gateway into a whole other universe’ – fabrics. ‘She got me into all the brands I shouldn’t know about,’ explains George, who savvily bought most fabric from eBay as remnants for a fraction of their retail price, including the Rose Uniacke off-white linen, which became his bathroom blind. For curtains, where he needed to be economical with the fabric, he opted for inexpensive plains from Merchant & Mills, which cost as little as £19 a metre. The third guest room has been his most recent project, where he created a cabin-style curtained bed, framed in Jane Churchill’s ‘Indus Stripe’. Dotted throughout are his own ceramics and pots by the likes of Doug Fitch, Richard Batterham and Nic Collins; another thread throughout are pieces by Bristol-based artist Tom Morris, whose naive paintings of galloping horses, flower and pots, line the walls.

‘I’m happy with a life that’s quite simple,’ says George. ‘The fact I can sustain myself by making pots and living in a nice place is enough for me,’ he adds. He makes his pots in a rented studio nearby, where looks out onto the rather charming ‘pottery garden’ that he planted up. ‘My environment is really important to me,’ he explains. ‘I need that to be able to make stuff,’ he adds. ‘My surroundings feed me.’

georgebronwin.com

The cottage from The Holiday – everything you need to know

7 Photos

By Virginia Clark

View Gallery