Mould employed a woman in the village – an Oxford zoologist – to research its
story. ‘It took two years, with new discoveries each week,’ he reports. ‘The
house’s fortunes follow the history of farming. From the 1620s to the 18th
century it was owned by yeoman farmers, then tenanted to a farm across the
road. We traced its inhabitants, back to Lady Anne Cope, the widow of the
leading Puritan Sir Anthony Cope, who built it in 1628. It was thrilling.’
Having done the research, the Moulds had to take the next crucial step. ‘The
frightening thought was that we knew the history of the house, but we didn’t
know about historical building,’ Mould says. ‘We were recommended [the
building company] Symm, who work on Oxford colleges and have enormous
integrity. They held our hand. The experience was like working with an
experienced picture restorer.’
Symm’s CEO, Aidan Mortimer, is passionate about the knowledge and
craftsmanship required for historical restoration. ‘A house like this is so
special and quite different from a large classical building – its character
is more sensitive and vulnerable. It’s so easy to over-repair, using the
wrong stone or the wrong mortar.’ With Robert Frankin as architect, Symm
carefully restored the exterior stonework, replacing leaded windows,
‘rebuilding the cheeks of the dormer windows and patinating them so it
looked as if we’d done nothing. We had to remind ourselves which windows
we’d repaired.’
Inside, Elizabethan fireplaces (possibly from an older house on the site) were
restored to working order, replastered walls given ‘soft corners’, and the
house’s heating system secreted in the adjoining garage. Old timbers and
reclaimed materials were used throughout. Catherine was touched by the
message and coin left by Chipping Norton builders in the 1950s: ‘To whoever
finds this…’ This and other bits and bobs dug up in the garden – an
Elizabethan coin, a metal mug, an old tea-strainer, a lead plane, a shell
fossil, a tiny cigarette packet – are displayed in Oliver’s ‘museum’, on
a staircase window ledge close to the kitchen.
The grand Jacobean Chastleton House nearby (built 1607-12) set the template
for houses in the area, hence the central staircase tower. The staircase
twists through the house. Climb up from the living-rooms and you come to the
light-filled bedrooms on two floors, with windows to both front and back of
the house, and a bathroom tucked between them.
Catherine and Philip decorated and furnished Duck End themselves, and Philip
is proud of the fact that there isn’t a recessed light anywhere. The homely
interior is furnished with antiques, many of them sympathetic to the
17th-century building rather than of the period, and Catherine’s eclectic
collection of pottery and china scavenged from local markets and boot fairs.
Thus, carved oak dining chairs are 19th-century copies of 17th-century
originals. In the living-room there are 17th-century German or Dutch wing
chairs, large log baskets, a handsome Thomas Toft slipware dish dating to
1695, and vast cushions made of Moroccan rugs. The most prided object is a
large-scale English late-15th-century aumbry with pierced doors.
Mould is understandably enthusiastic about a late-17th-century depiction of a
portrait painter’s studio. There are also modern British pictures throughout
the house, even nudes by Duncan Grant and Stuart Pearson Wright. Riley
Antiques and Interiors was commissioned to make old-fashioned broad
floorboards, to design and carve linenfold panels for the drawing-room, and
to ‘fiddle with colours’ for the walls.
The Moulds had more freedom in the garden – there was little evidence of what
had grown there. A couple who specialise in historical gardens, Charles and
Jenny Sutton, have planted enchanting borders using flowers known in
17th-century Britain – daffodil (known as daff-a-down dillies), primrose,
viola, tulip, hardy geranium, scabious, verbena, verbascum and more – and a
separate, similarly time-constrained rose garden (with Great Maiden’s Blush,
Princess of Nassau, Roses of York and Lancaster and Rambling Rector). The
Suttons laid a stone path down to the edge of the walled garden with a
pergola over it, then a mown section of grass continues it to the stream.
Philip is a keen wildlife gardener himself and has created several ponds. But
he enjoys the more formal garden too, pithily commenting, ‘The garden put a
smile on the face of the house again.’ Which, in the nicest possible way,
takes us back to where we began.
Philip Mould Fine Paintings: 020-7499 6818; philipmould.com.
Symm: 01865-254900; symm.co.uk