‘We had no intention of moving again, but I found myself ringing the agent anyway,’ recalls Lydia, whose work ranges from domestic scenes to landscapes. She booked a viewing, but her husband – baffled by the idea of upping sticks when they’d just about created their dream set-up in their existing house – initially refused to embark on this particular new flight of fancy. He relented, though, and they visited on a wintry day in 2021. ‘I reasoned that if it snowed while we were there, it was meant to be,’ Lydia jokes. Snow it did – and five years later, the couple, their three children and four dogs are happily ensconced, with the interior doubling as both a subject and a canvas for Lydia.
Lydia already knew of the house, having visited its seven-acre garden when it was open to the public. Reached via a winding road, it is achingly romantic, surrounded by hills populated by grazing sheep and, bar the occasional bleat, total silence. The garden – all Arts and Crafts topiary, yew hedges and follies – had become a horticultural wonder thanks to its previous owners, the duo behind the cult quarterly gardening journal Hortus. (Aware of the garden’s devoted following, it was they who had shared the house’s particulars via Instagram when they decided they wanted to move on.) The closest Lydia had ever got to seeing the interiors, however, was the inside of the garden’s tea shed.
Christopher Horwood
