Natural finishes, a pretty palette and lots of quirky vintage finds all bring a cosy characterful feel to a rural Nor folk bolthole
EXTERIOR
Zara Dawson outside her traditional brick and flint cottage. New windows in sage green were part of the renovation and tie in perfectly with the facade of the house
KITCHEN SHELVES
Open shelving – made from repurposed scaffold boards and decorative vintage cast-iron brackets – displays a mix of new and vintage finds. Oiled scaffold boards, TC Industrial Vintage at Etsy. Porcelain and ceramic jars, Sunbury Antiques Market. Chopping boards, H&M Home and Homesense
HOME PROFILE
WHO LIVES HERE Zara Dawson, her husband Lex James and their children, Jax and Riley THE PROPERTY A three-bedroom curved corner, Victorian red-brickand-flint railway worker’s cottage in the village of Docking, Norfolk
This page The bespoke Shaker-style painted MDF units and scaffold-board open shelving emphasise the country cottage feel. Zara’s dad converted some old potato chitting trays into drawers. Units in Green 02, Lick. Copper handles, Ebay. Chitting trays, Rustic Warehouse Norfolk. Opposite, top left An old American mailbox makes an unusual side table
LIVING ROOM
This picture and below The curved wall of the house is a feature of this room. Sofa, sofa.com. Copper churn, reclamation find. Vintage theatre seats, Ardingly Antiques and Collectors Fair
Despite having been one of the first Norfolk villages served by a railway line, Docking has been without a passenger service since the devastating North Sea flood of 1953. Now, the only evidence of it that remains is a row of modest cottages built to house workers who constructed the original line, and it was one of these that Zara Dawson spotted on a visit to see her parents who live nearby. ‘We were looking around the whole of North Norfolk for a bolthole where we could escape from London and spend more time with my parents,’ Zara explains. ‘The property’s flint walls and unusually shaped rooms really sold it to us. We didn’t even view any others.’
Zara grew up in Norfolk but left to attend drama school in London, where she met her husband Lex James. Today, the couple run a property company that finds homes for actors to live in while on location shooting films. ‘My day job is spent inside some really beautiful houses,’ she says, ‘so this all feeds into my passion for homes and love of interiors.’
It was partly the fact that Zara’s father and brother run a nearby renovation business, Dawson Building Contractors, that persuaded Zara and Lex to choose this cottage, and throughout the four-month renovation there was plenty of help on hand. The work entailed stripping the cottage back to its stone shell
