Grand Illusion

Behind this gorgeous Gothic façade, there’s a traditional Cotswold cottage filled with bold colour and pattern

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There’s a fairy-tale, gingerbread house feel to Jane and Richard Stark’s beautiful Cotswold home – it’s the frosted white façade and the green paintwork, liked piped icing, around the Gothic windows. Yet once over the farmhouse’s doorstep, just like magic, the interior looks like a typical English country cottage, with low ceilings, beams and an Aga.

The Strawberry Hill Gothic exterior was a major attraction when the couple first came to view the property. They were living in a cottage nearby, but decided to move when their son Oliver came along. The property had begun life as a cottage and was extended over some 100 years until in the 1800s the Strawberry Hill Gothic frontage was added. ‘This house was much bigger than we had intended,’ says Jane. ‘We viewed it and thought it had character and was slightly quirky. It didn’t look English; more middle European. But we fell in love with it. It had a warm, cosy, lived-in family feel, especially the kitchen-diner with its Aga at the heart of the house.’

The property was in good condition, so didn’t require much modernisation – a few of the windows needed repairing, plus missing roof tiles had to be replaced, walls repointed and the exterior repainted. ‘Because the house is Grade II listed, work had to be done using traditional methods and materials,’ says Richard. An instant transformation occurred when they changed the colour around the windows from a yellowy-orange shade into a fresh green that complements the cream walls.