Katharine Pooley designs and furnishes homes all over the world but her coastal cottage is a personal favourite, and is where she likes to spend Christmas with her family
Nestled in the lee of the village church, and with views out onto the winter-grey Atlantic, Katharine Pooley’s cottage is a special place to spend Christmas. This particular stretch of the North Devon coastline is full of beautiful contrasts; rolling green hills soften the rugged cliffs and frothy surf crashes the golden sands. It is no wonder that Katharine was prepared to wait two years for a house here.
‘I viewed this cottage with my sister and my PA. We all loved it, but when I showed my husband, he was horrified,’ says Katharine. ‘Admittedly, it needed a lot of work to make it right for us, but as a designer, you have the ability to see past all that.’
The house had been divided by a property developer, resulting in a disjointed space and an annexe that was too small to be of use. There were three bedrooms and two bathrooms, not enough to accommodate the family of four and their extended family who join them for holidays.
Katharine realised that she could make space for two more bathrooms and an extra bedroom by adding a third floor. Once they had secured planning permission, local builders set about knocking down the wall in the main room to open up the space and raising the height of the roof to make room for a fourth bedroom and en suite.
‘It was important to me to make this a sympathetic renovation. We used local stones and materials for the walls and roof,’ says Katharine. ‘But I’m also conscious that this is a second home for my family, and I tried to be sympathetic to the people who live and work here full time. I used local trades-and craftspeople wherever possible.’
Before the building work had begun, Katharine was formulating ideas for the int
