There is little more evocative or mythologised than the English country house. In film and literature – Waugh and Wodehouse, Henry James and Kazuo Ishiguro – we come across the old tropes and fantasies in which it serves as a potent symbol of tradition, wealth , romance. But what about the real deal, those long-loved family homes that exist quietly here and now, where generations are raised, gardens tended, friends welcomed, where the local community is paramount?
West Barsham Hall, where interior designer Flora Soames grew up, is exactly that. Home to her parents, Susanna and Jeremy Soames, the hall is embedded in a landscape that informs all aspects of Flora’s life and work. Barsham, as the family calls it, was built by her great-grandparents in the 1900s. It is a handsome, unflashy north Norfolk home, described by Susanna as ‘a plain, Edwardian house that has never pretended to be anything else’.
It’s certainly unpretentious, peopled always by babies, dogs and teens, as well as perused by grown-ups, and permanently playing host to multitudes of friends. But Barsham is dense with layer upon layer of beauty. Portraits, prints, photos, china, chintz... the glamour of a deep pelmet, a 19th-century gilded mirror, a Colefax headboard, the witney blankets in the tack room. This has all been slowly accrued over four generations of the same family – a family with a legendary sense of style and appreciation for good taste, but within which hospitality and cultivating a feeling of ease are the most important things. There is a manifest lack of posture or pomposity; instead, an atmosphere of peace, permanence and warmth prevails. It’s a character that finds expression in Flora’s fabrics and wallpapers. A quintessentially English charm and a quiet gravity make her patterns and weaves – from exuberant dahlia designs to elegant pared-back stripes – feel perpetual, as though they were always there as part of things, slotting seamlessly into a bigger whole.
Let’s return to 1900, and to Archie and Kathleen Keith. Enterprising landowners and farmers from Aberdeenshire, they were drawn to this patch of north Norfolk by its agricultural promise; it offered a temperate climate and some of the best arable land in Britain – ideal for growing barley, oats and wheat. In 1903 they purchased the acreage, setting out to create a working farm and a family home that would be good-looking and capacious – sensible rather than autocratic or pastiche. Building began soon after, but came to a halt in the lead-up to World War I. The place lay neglected – a single floor covered with tarpaulins – and work only resumed when peace was restored.
In 1955, the house was passed to Archie and Kathleen’s son David and his wife, Caroline, a society beauty and an avid collector. Caroline – or Dama, as she is known by Flora – was most passionate about swathes of matching colour and generous assortments of china. Led by instinct as opposed to formal training, she adored car boot sales and had an unerring eye for the decorative, coupled with a strict regard for comfort. Flora recalls how the curtains, tiebacks and books that lined the shelves would have all been the same hue: Dama’s bedroom was famously ‘an explosion of powder blue, from the bed covers to the dressing table to her bed jacket’. And she is still much in evidence in the junk-shop treasures that commingle with heirlooms in hall, kitchen, bedrooms.
Susanna Soames has known no other home. She was brought up in a decorous Edwardian fashion, with Barsham the centre of her universe – a universe that comprised the village, dogs and ponies, trips to Frinton beach each summer. In fact, horses are a keynote in this story – from the riding ones ubiquitous here, immortalised in ink and oils and possessed of names like Paleface, Delavera and Mr Shanks, to the working heroes. Susanna still remembers her early childhood, when she would rise at dawn and watch from her window as the Suffolk punches shepherded cows to the dairy.
In turn, she and Jeremy took on Barsham while their three children were still young. As Winston Churchill’s grandson, Jeremy is himself tied to British social and political history. He spent much of his childhood at Chartwell, the statesman’s home in Kent, and brought with him the habit of conversation, conviviality and a profound respect for his exceptional heritage. This legacy is celebrated with a light touch: an oil painting of Churchill in the cloakroom, a photo in the drawing room, a cut-out on a mantelpiece. Like Susanna, Jeremy has a strong sense of responsibilities that accompany his family history and home. And at Barsham, the Soameses’ involvement in local life can be seen most vividly in the garden (open to the public every summer), the daily business of running the farm, the brewery and preservation of the church.
Walking from room to room, stopping to admire a cascading plumbago, a gilded oak-leaf mirror, the chicest Robert Kime-clad boot room, you stumble on beauty everywhere. And yet, brilliantly, this feels almost incidental, as though a casual by-product of the couple’s warmth and Susanna’s impeccable eye. Rather than imposing a scheme, she has coolly steered the rooms into their current incarnation; more recently, Flora has been working alongside her mother, deftly weaving in her own designs. For example, her childhood bedroom now gloriously pairs her ‘Enid’s Ramble’ wallpaper and ‘Enid’s Garland’ curtains with old pleated Colefax lampshades, a piece of 19th-century English lace and a stool newly upholstered in Kime’s ‘Tashkent’ linen.
But it’s the central hall that remains the vibrant heart of Barsham. Exuberant pelargoniums, an enormous plaster horse’s head rescued by Susanna from an Arezzo antique shop, infinite books and albums, gilded Italian sconces sourced by Flora. The place throngs with the children of all three siblings. Both Flora and her sister were married here, one in winter and the other in summer. And here we have the essence of the place; the informality, the lack of ego, a deep warmth that underpins the elegance. This is a home that carries with it a wealth of stories and personalities; histories Churchillian and Keith are braided into the rooms. Quite simply: the house is family, and family is the house. To borrow from Henry James, the perfect English country house feels ‘entirely well-appointed, well-administered and well-filled’. Barsham is just so: a compendious illustration of lives well-lived and people well-loved.
‘The One Day Box: A Life-changing Love of Home’, by Flora Soames, is published by Rizzoli
A version of this article appears in the October 2023 issue of The World of Interiors. Learn about our subscription offers. Sign up for our weekly newsletter, and be the first to receive interiors stories like this one, direct to your inbox
