Medieval treasure

ABOVE The medieval hall house, with its distinctive lime-rendered facade, is set within a garden that has been re-established with newly planted orchards and herbaceous beds. RIGHT Aglow with lights and swathes of dried flowers, the sitting room is the epitome of a cosy setting for hosting Christmas. The coffee table is from Spencer Swaffer in Lewes, while the mantelpiece is filled with ceramic pieces including Staffordshire figures and mochaware.

Genevieve Harris’s passion in life is restoring and breathing new life into unloved and overlooked items, from clothes to furniture and fabrics. So, as soon as she and her husband, Guy, stumbled upon a completely dilapidated medieval house outside Rye in East Sussex, they were captivated.

“We fell for it,” says Genevieve. “It was crumbling and run down, almost a squat, but it had a lovely feel and energy, and great bones.” The Wealden hall house – a vernacular timber-framed house traditional in South East England – had been given to its previous occupants in the 1960s as a wedding present. Where they had sought to modernise it, cement and plasterboard had been laid over precious board and bead panelling and brace doors. The house had not breathed for years, with layers of incongruous modern materials masking original features.

The main house – two bedrooms upstairs and the main hall and dining room downstairs – was built in the 1440s, with a Georgian kitchen, principal bedroom and cellar added in the mid-18th century. A scullery, created at the back in the 19th century, is one of Genevieve’s favourite rooms. “It’s the tiniest room in the house but has a traditional Victorian, high-ceilinged larder where they would have hung the meat. Our predecessor kept ducks in there, and we restored the original dresser for all the jars and preserves.”

The house had a “really good, fluid layout with a lovely sized kitchen”, so there was not any need to change the flow and structure of the rooms. However, it desperately required attention and significant changes needed to be made. After 18 months collaborating with specialist planners, the building began. The couple, with their two young children – Greta, who was nine at the time, and Rex, who was four – lived in the house throughout the next three years of buildi