Cultural exchange

As at the beginning of many a great romance, a coup de foudrestruck Amanda Clark on her first encounter with Seend Manor in Wiltshire. “Sometimes you fall in love with a place when you walk in,” she says. “It feels welcoming, as though it has been waiting for you.”

Amanda and her husband Stephen, an investment banker, had been looking for an English country base in the area, which they knew well, as Stephen had gone to boarding school nearby. It had to be Georgian, as they love that period’s sense of scale and light-filled rooms. This would provide a happy contrast to their modern apartment in Hong Kong, where they are based for much of the year and where Amanda set up a successful design studio and multi-line furnishings showroom, Altfield. Their businesses take them back and forth, so they felt it was time to put down roots here and have somewhere they could spend extended lengths of time.

The couple had looked at several properties but none had quite hit the mark until they came across the former hunting lodge, built in 1767 from Bath stone. No matter that it was somewhat “tired” and would need taking back to the bones both structurally and decoratively: it had high ceilings with fine plasterwork and tall, south-facing windows, through which the light streamed. “I walked around and, before we had left, I had bought it in my mind,” says Amanda. Luckily Stephen was in accord, and the house became theirs in 1998.

That Seend was originally built for entertainment, rather than as a home, suited the couple well as there are three grand reception rooms and only six bedrooms: three large ones on the first floor, their dressing rooms now turned into bathrooms, the rest in the former servants’ quarters on the second – plenty for most hosts these days, the Clarks included. Adjacent to the house is a large and rather beautiful classical stable yard, where Amanda’s brother, William Lack, and his family now live. William owns and runs Altfield London in the Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour. “He is my baby brother, so in many ways, his children are like grandchildren to us; it is a family compound,” says Amanda. “