When Jerry Butler – or ‘Jerry the Bed’ as he is fondly known – met his yet-to-be-wife Meryl, they raced to the cinema to watch The Knack… and How to Get It. The 1965 film, whose protagonist is a wrought-iron bed, sparked a lifelong partnership between the pair – and an enduring relationship with that same item of furniture.
I first met Jerry and Meryl when I arrived in Tangier nine years ago, many moons after they’d moved to Morocco permanently from North Wales in 1989. For years beforehand, they’d been buying, fixing up and trading in four-poster beds found across the North African country.
‘The four-posters here were exceptional due to the need for mosquito nets,’ says Jerry. ‘The move just made sense.’ They landed on a hill in Mediouna, where Jerry still lives today (Meryl died in 2024). At the time, it was fairly cut-off with no running water or electricity, let alone sealed roads: ‘The nearby city of Tangier was practically a day trip away,’ he adds, recalling its many ‘houses made from local sandstone’. Today, the journey takes about 25 minutes by car on a very good road.
Mediouna still holds much of its original charm; on arrival at Jerry’s home, I pass some Berber women hovering over a fire, and the smell of bread baking fills the air. ‘Bang on the big blue door when you arrive,’ my host had instructed. ‘One of the kids will come and open it for you.’ Sure enough, a welcoming committee of children swing open the door before screaming their way back to a swimming pool built by Jerry. (‘Pool’ is generous – it’s more of a large pond.) As dusk falls, they leave with their mothers, the bread makers. A welcome silence falls, save for the vocalisations of Bonzo, Jerry’s rescue dog, who joins in with the call to prayer as it sounds from the mosque down the road.
Jerry and Meryl have long been well known in and around Tangier. The former’s beds can be found in many houses here, particularly those owned by members of the design and expat community; you’d be hard-pressed to find a publication about the city that doesn’t feature one of Jerry’s gems. While his son, Tony, has now assumed the mantle, running the business (called Seventh Heaven) from North Wales, Jerry is still very much involved in a stock-sourcing capacity here.
Jerry and his beloved Meryl lived a full and happy life together – and their house is the most resonant representation of it, filled with treasures sourced both from England and North Wales and locally in Tangier’s flea markets and souks. ‘I’m no designer,’ he tells me, ‘and the house lacks “couscous”, so to speak. It’s not so much a Moroccan showpiece as a collection of all the things we love.’
Their home was originally a small sandstone square, effectively one room. The garden contains a motley mix of plants, mostly rescued by Jerry from the roadside. The couple extended the house’s small span, and decorated using bamboo and wood, painting primary colours on the window frames and doors. Inside, the bookshelves are stuffed with ‘too many of the darn things’, according to Jerry.
The place has no shortage of bedrooms – three, in fact – and the beds within them are, obviously, pretty fabulous. The entrance to Jerry and Meryl’s room is painted in the loveliest soft turquoise, with gold eight-point wooden stars moulded on to the door. The bed, with its ‘rather good original floral ironwork from Tetouan’, is adorned with what might be a bedspread from the Iraqi capital (‘Not sure if it was actually made in Baghdad…’). Above the bed is a painting by local artist Yousef Tamli.
The kitchen is painted in that shade of cobalt so characteristic of northern Morocco, often referred to as Matisse blue. Jerry pops the kettle on, and I admire shelves neatly adorned with English pottery. An unpainted wooden stool and a red broom sit beneath a blue Crittall window frame. Above the sink – a porcelain number found at the local flea market and mounted on concrete legs – a frame by the same manufacturing company is painted mustard yellow, a similar tone to the bristles in the broom. ‘That view makes for pretty beautiful washing-up,’ Jerry says with a smile.
Through the kitchen window, the sun is beginning to sink behind the garden wall and into the North African Atlantic. We move on to a garden terrace outside the living room. Looking back inside, I spy a folly for pigeons, built by my host in the style of the neighbouring Cap Spartel lighthouse. A tattered leather chair is overturned when I ask about its provenance. ‘It’s a fully adjustable invalid chair made and signed in 1835 by a Robert Dawes for a Welsh lord who likely suffered from gout,’ Jerry explains. ‘Bought it for about 2,000 quid.’
He reminisces about Meryl’s love of people and animals. Almost on cue, the cats arrive at our feet. ‘Hello Bubbles and Squeaky, or are you Sneaky…?’ Jerry trails off. ‘Meryl named them, they were so fond of her.’ As I leave, he walks me to the gate past his trusty ‘van’ – an ancient Land Rover Defender, which doubles as an unofficial community bus. A pile of abandoned bed knobs ‘grows’ under a tree. I almost expect that red broom from the kitchen to whizz past my head.
‘Do you think you’ll ever leave?’ I ask, as another neighbour drops by with bread. ‘Never,’ comes Jerry’s response. ‘Too hard to ever leave this.’ On my way home, I visit the whitewashed English Church of Tangier, where Jerry was churchwarden for many years and where Meryl now lies in the cemetery. On arrival, I find the church hen and her newborn chicks bedding down for the night atop her grave. Something tells me she and Jerry the Bed would both approve.
Seventh Heaven. Visit seventh-heaven.co.uk
Learn more about Jerry Butler and Meryl here
A version of this article appears in the October 2026 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers. Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, and be the first to receive exclusive stories like this one, direct to your inbox
