Inside a tiny rented cottage in the Cotswolds cleverly brought to life by its creative tenant

It could not have come at a better time. In the middle of lockdown, Joshua was panicking slightly. His first interiors project – revamping the residence of the provost of The Queen’s College, University of Oxford – had gone brilliantly. ‘I’d thought, naively, that I was onto a winner career-wise,’ he admits. Then the pandemic hit and, without an established reputation, he found that the work dried up. While making as many paintings to sell as he could in his spare time – he paints in a variety of styles and has a preference for oils on canvas and board – he returned to his old job working as an artistic assistant to the watercolourist and designer Matthew Rice, who lives in Ham Court (featured in House & Garden last year). Joshua’s chance encounter with Emma Burns proved to be fortuitous.

Still lifes by Pat Albeck (top) and Juliet Duckworth hang above an old bobbin chair from Ham Court that needed a new home.

Dean Hearne

At the time, he was living in an unremarkable rental in Bampton. The village is still home, though now he is Matthew’s tenant, contentedly ensconced in a Victorian cottage at the end of his drive. When Matthew suggested he rent the house, he had never been inside it. ‘There were sitting tenants when he bought Ham Court, so he just left them to it,’ explains Joshua. Consequently, he had no sense of what lay within. ‘It was pretty grim,’ he says, laughing. ‘All buckling lino and laminate.’ The sitting room had an Artex ceiling and, like the kitchen, ice-blue walls, the memory of which makes him shiver. Totting up how much a revamp would cost, Joshua negotiated a rent holiday with Matthew and ‘blitzed it in a fortnight’.

That he can achieve such lived-in richness in two weeks is down to his clarity of vision. ‘It’s similar to when I’m painting – it takes me a long time to properly arrive at the canvas, but once I’m there, I’m off,’ he says. Many of the skills of an artist are those of a good decorator, too, including an aptitude for composition, colour and proportion. Happily for Joshua, each practice informs the other: ‘I was lying in bed the other day, looking at a painting on the opposite wall and wondering where I'd got the idea for a cream-and-green background. I got up, drew the curtains – a 1970s Claremont stripe – and thought, “Duh! I've been staring at these for months.”’

Joshua has given old furniture and lighting a new lease of life by painting the table and adding a rug from Oxford market in the kitchen dining area. Angel candlesticks from Svenskt Tenn, Staffordshire flatback horses, willow pattern plates and a still life by Joshua enhance the eclectic feel.

Dean Hearne

In his art and in his interiors, Joshua’s aim is ‘to create an atmosphere’. The one he has conjured here is that of a deeply comfortable country house, with a layered lavishness that belies the cottage's size (three up, two down) and the amount spent on it. His budget was lean, which added to the fun. ‘Limitation forces you to be creative, to think rather than just to shop,’ he explains. The allocation of funds – where to splash out, where to skimp – thus becomes a satisfying puzzle. Good picture frames, Joshua believes, are worth the splurge, as are curtains (he made his own, putting a degree in fashion to excellent use). One of his key extravagances was the steel chimneypiece from English Fireplaces in the sitting room, lent grandeur by a frame of spongeware tiles. He and Matthew created these together and had them made in the Stoke-on-Trent factory of Emma Bridgewater, the company founded by Matthew’s ex-wife for which he still produces designs.

Perhaps the best example of his spend-or-save mentality is in the bijou spare room. Here, a divan has been transformed with hangings in Le Manach’s ‘Balmoral’, lined with diaphanous white fabric. But while the scarlet print ‘was a bit of a treat’, he did not need much of it. And the voiles cost £20 for a pair from Ikea: ‘One of the greatest lessons Emma Burns has taught me is to avoid the weird snobbery around expense that can exist in the interiors world. Things can be cheap and also amazing.’

A ‘Viscontea’ pendant light by Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni for Flos and a large painting by Joshua bring the kitchen to life.

Dean Hearne

As well as a nose for a bargain, Joshua has had that good fortune of his to fall back on. Serendipity shows its face in every room here. The bathroom’s pleasingly solid fixtures, for instance, came from Matthew, who happened to have them loitering in a barn. The large print of a luminous portrait of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, which keeps watch over the pantry, came from a skip; as did the corbel on the spare room’s wall. But perhaps his greatest find is the blue Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler ‘Lancaster’ wing armchair by the sitting room fireplace, which he bought at a Mallams auction for a song: ‘It was down as a “modern construction armchair”. I spotted those telephone-shaped arms and my heart stopped.’ When Emma came round for a drink, she said that, without doubt, it had once belonged to legendary decorator Roger Banks-Pye, who was known for covering the chairs in denim. ‘And the most extraordinary thing,’ Joshua adds, ‘is that the week before, she’d given me the three silhouettes that now hang above the chimneypiece – one of which is of Roger.’

Acknowledging his luck, Joshua is modest when it comes to his part in it all. But what he has created at the cottage is testament to his work ethic and his talents, as too is the fact that The Queen’s College has invited him back to redo its Senior Common Room. He also has a house project in Oxford on the horizon and, when he is not thinking about decoration schemes, he is painting, often late into the night, finishing work to send to his gallery, Fosse. Fortune favours the brave, certainly, but being busy and brilliant surely helps.

Joshua Hale: joshuahale.co.uk