An artist's RESIDENCE

Filled with colour and surrounded by natural beauty, artist Nellie Shepherd's Peak District home is a pastoral masterpiece

- KAREN DARLOW

KITCHEN

Nellie designed the large pendant light, then had it made by a local blacksmith using rusted steel. Similar Eaton grey extendable dining table, £439.99, and Wessex bench, from £209.99, both Chiltern Oak Furniture

Location was everything when Nellie Shepherd started house-hunting. Her ideal property would not only be home to herself, her husband Andy and their beloved pets, but also Nellie’s art school, Bullclough Art School.

After a seven-year search, she found the perfect place—a 17th-century farmhouse of rose-pink sandstone with limestone mullioned windows. With a barn and several acres of farmland, there was room for the art school — and the vistas of the Peak District National Park are eminently paintable. ‘The house was well priced. We got a lot of home for our money, and I found myself drawn to it. It was magical,’ says Nellie.