Cornish heirloom

The kitchen table and chairs were handmade for Alice’s parents in the Nineties and sit below a Pooky Aphrodite pendant in rattan. The bespoke kitchen was crafted by Guild Anderson with concrete work surfaces by Fluid Stone Studio and handles by Buster & Punch.

There is something uniquely special about a house that has remained in the same family for decades. This is certainly the case with the Cornish home of Alice Gates – one half of the wallpaper and fabric studio Barneby Gates – which was bought by her grandparents in the early 1930s and remains firmly at the heart of family life nearly a hundred years on. With each new generation, has come another layer of history, traditions and memories made, richly steeping the house with special character.

Looking for a quieter life, Alice’s grandparents purchased the house – Marratons – for just £1,000. According to the deeds of the sale, along with the house, the price included a drinks trolley and some garden tools which the family still own. It is located in the village of Morwenstow, found in the northernmost part of Cornwall near the Devon border, which remains as tranquil and beautiful a place as it was all those years ago.

Alice’s mother and her mother’s two brothers were raised in the house, and subsequently, when Alice was a child, she spent every school holiday there. In the early 1980s, when her grandparents died, Alice’s mother took ownership, and when she then sadly died three years ago, Alice herself took over the house and continues to retreat there at every opportunity from her term-time home in Wiltshire, close to where the Barneby Gates studio is. She and her husband, Harry, a barrister, love visiting Cornwall with their three children, Cecily, 15, Walter, 13 and Nell, 11, as well as, of course, the family’s pair of working cocker spaniels, Roxy and Marvin.

The house is what Alice would describe as a traditional Cornish Victorian house, complete with white-painted exterior walls and bright blue window frames. The west side of the building originally started life as a small farmhouse built in the 18th century, with later additions made at the beginning of the 19th century, when the rest of the house was built.

Sitting within a five-acre plot, Marratons is accessed down a long drive through mature woodland, giving it a very private feel despite its close pr