A HUMBLE OVERHAUL IN HAMPSHIRE

Interior designer Christian Bense reimagines three rambling cottages into a timeless family home

- text NATALIE FRASER photographs ALEXANDER JAMES

Ahumble overhaul’ is how South African designer Christian Bense describes his approach to his latest project, Park House. He was given three small cottages on the Broadlands Estate in Hampshire to work with. Once a single dwelling, the cottages had been carved out, altered and extended in a higgledy-piggledy layout before being rented out for several years. Now, the goal was to combine them into one functional home for a young family who were returning to the country from London.

Despite doing most of his work in the big city, Christian found the move to country houses a surprisingly easy fit. Having grown up on a farm in KwaZulu-Natal, returning to a large family home unlocked memories of his family’s own stone cottage and the various country homes he grew up visiting. 'It was like riding a bike,' he says. 'You can come into a house like this and go, I know exactly how to design it. It was all an easy click.'

With two staircases, multiple front doors, various split levels of ceiling and a number of questionable modernisations to reckon with, Christian and his team faced a considerable task. ‘We always begin by establishing what is right for the house and what layout is going to give the best final product,’ he says. In this case, rationalising the layout was by no means straightforward.