HOUSE TOUR - An English Countryside Home Filled with Antiques and Timeless Charm

Hi, Homeworthy. I'm Birdie. Welcome to my home in Norfolk. I can't wait to show you around. Come on in. This summer, spend the hottest months of the year in style with Homeworthy as we visit the most extraordinary homes around the world. From the sun-soaked shores of the Hamptons to the classic beachfronts of Nantucket to the vibrant courtyards of Morocco, be sure to subscribe to Homeworthy's summer series to make every day feel like a vacation. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Hello, my name is Birdie Fortescue. I am the founder and creative director of the homeware brand Birdie Fortescue. These are our two dogs, Nancy and Bluey, who actually belongs to my step-granddaughter and their brother and sister. And welcome to our home in Norfolk. We bought the house about 20 years ago. We were living in Suffolk at the time and wanted a holiday house. It was a lot bigger than we had originally intended, but we completely fell in love with it. So we bought it and, in fact, finally moved here full-time about 15 years ago. We're close to the sea, although we're tucked inland, but close to the sea. So we wanted it to have a very sort of light, airy, beachy feel. So we filled it with a lot of painted furniture in a very relaxed way. We then came to sell our house in Suffolk and we'd furnished that in a much more traditional way. So we had a lot of this more traditional brown furniture, but it was more formal. And so we incorporated that within the painted look that we'd created. So it's got a very sort of eclectic feel about it. It's got very sort of shabby pieces, next-daughter's sort of rather more formal pieces. So it's got huge character and I think that's what sort of makes it almost. It gives it its charm. I started my interior design career in my early 20s. I began working for a company called Percy Bass in Walton Street in London. I was there for about four years, which was a sort of baptism of fire, really. And I was very fortunate to then move on to Colfax and Fowler, Sybil Colfax and John Fowler, where I was an assistant to Imogen Taylor, which was such an honour. And she herself was an assistant to John Fowler. So, you know, she has a wealth of knowledge, obviously, which she was so generous with. And I learned so much. Welcome to the living area of our open plan, our open plan room. This is the area that I love and feel most comfortable in. I always sit here in the evenings. We've based it around lovely coloured matting and then some sort of quite beachy rattan furniture. And then you've got the mix of sort of rather formal brown pieces and again, this beachy look. So all through the house, you'll see this sort of this mix of the two styles, which I think is quite fun. So the pieces that I particularly love in the room, this is a wonderful sculpture by a lady called Heather Jantz. She does a lot of full size pieces as well. Sadly, she died, I think about five years ago, but she really is very, very well known. So I was thrilled to acquire one of those. Another piece I love is this console table, which is French 1960s. And I just love the shape and form of it. I love the way that, you know, it doesn't sort of look like it can stand up, but it's just very textural. And then it's got this lovely marble top on it. So we have a lot of pillows, a lot of cushions, we call them, on the sofa. It's a very deep sofa, so it can take it. It seems like there are way too many, but if you have any less, you don't feel supported enough. And I love that sort of mix of different patterns and texture. You've got block print cushions, and then you've got an old Susani, vintage Susani. You've got some velvets, embroidered velvets. A lot of these are our collections, past and present. So they bring back happy memories. There are lots of different prints and patterns, and there's a lot going on. But as I said previously, it's the balance of colour, it's the balance of pattern. They're not fighting. None of the designs are fighting with one another. It just all seems to sort of weave into each other. These are old pieces too. This is from the house when it was more of a beach house. Lovely painted rattan, and I love the mix of the two styles. One thing I think that makes this room is these two hanging lanterns here. I bought them in France. They're absolutely enormous. They're incredibly heavy. And they're obviously modern, but we've had them painted to look old. And they're so overscale, but they really make the room and give it gravitas. And then what I love in the background is the mahogany bookcase. And then above it, there are two snakes. I inherited those from my mother who had them over a sort of rather an elaborate bed. And I couldn't think where to put them. And it seemed like a wonderful spot there. So again, you've got this rather sort of glitzy look with shabby chic, and I just like that. So this bookcase, it's French. It's sort of late 18th century, early 19th century. It's just very simple forms, very clean. We actually bought it for our previous house. And a lot of the furniture works so well in both houses. We've decorated it with old books, lovely old books, again, that we had. Lovely old books and then a wonderful dinner service, an old dinner service. This is the perfect place for them. And it just looks great. It brings light to the piece. And there's a wonderful juxtaposition to the dark and then the old books. And then we've spattered it with some lovely shelves here, which again, I found in my travels. We collect a lot of books and magazines. And my husband is a hoarder, hates throwing anything out. So the collections just grow and grow. And again, I love that look. I think it gives the room great charm and depth. When we first moved here, it was, as I said, a sort of beachy house. And we wanted to fill the walls with East Anglian art, East Anglian artists' work. And I love these pieces here by an artist called Jeremy Fraser. You've got three here. They've got great movement and beautiful colours. And they're just very pleasing. And then the piece that's above the doorway here, I bought almost at the beginning of my antique days. I bought it from the back of a lorry at 7am at an antique fair, I remember, in Dijon. And it just immediately spoke to me. It's French. It's a French scene, a French landscape. You've got a lovely river running through and it's just very peaceful. And always get compliments of it. I love the mix of different objects. So you've got two wonderful bronze sculptures here that my husband found, birds, I love them. And then here you've got a sea horse that my daughter made when she was, I think, about seven at school, which to me is just wonderful. And I love how you can mix that with quite valuable pieces. And it doesn't matter whether something's made by a child or an artist. So the house is late Georgian. There are two dairies which are attached to the east side. And the area between these two dairies has been covered. Very wonderful open plan area has been created. And it really makes the house it's so light. And we spend our whole time here. And I find it very, very difficult to move into a dark house. Now I'm so used to this wonderful light. And it's an amazing room because you've got double doors then leading into a drawing room and then another sitting room. And so it is the heart of the house everywhere sort of leads off it. So now we're in the dining area of this lovely open plan space. So as I mentioned, the sitting room and the kitchen were dairies. And this was an open plan. This was just an outside area. And the architect we bought this house from had covered the space in. And so you've got this wonderful brick and flint, which is typical to Norfolk, brick and flint work running all the way around. And then that's the brick, the red brick of the house. So it's a wonderful contrast to the painted rooms, really. And it just gives wonderful interest and fantastic light. Above the console table here, this Italian console table is a wonderful piece of modern art, in fact, by my daughter, painted by my daughter, Lydia Chapman. She's a portrait painter, really. She was trained in the traditional techniques in Florence. And she's sort of creating now modern abstract landscapes. And so this is one of her first pieces. So I just love it. It's got such movement and beautiful colours. And so we were thrilled to hang it unframed in the house. I bought this dining table, this farmhouse table, again, in France. It's wonderful. It's one piece of wood, which is so great. And it's very much a refectory table. It's very narrow. So you can have wonderful conversations. And it creates a wonderfully sort of relaxed atmosphere. The chairs I love. These, I bought five, I think, again, old ones. They were Swedish, sort of 1960s. And I had them copied in the UK. And I just love the juxtaposition, again, of the painted and the wood. This table is brilliant because you can entertain in a very scruffy, relaxed way, or you can dress the table up. This table linen is very much a favourite. This is our bell table, table napkin, our bell design, which is incredibly popular. And it comes in three colourways, blue, green and red. These are lovely dinner plates, actually, by a company called Volga. These are really fun candlesticks, which we've just recently designed in collaboration with Butter Wakefield for our big collaboration that we did with her. So they're really fun. And then we have lovely jute usable placemats, which come in various colours. And they're just a firm staple and very easy to use. I love this piece of furniture particularly. It's a walnut commode, two-draw commode. It's one of the first pieces I bought as an antique dealer. It's from Eastern France. And it's the transition period between Louis XV and Louis XVI. It's sort of straightening out of the line. So it's got this wonderful sort of gentle curve, but it's very restrained. And then the lovely inlay on the drawers. And it's just so pleasing. And it just sits very well. Here we are in the sitting room, which is a very, very cosy room. It's fairly dark. And so I've painted the walls in a very, very rich, striking green, which I think brings the room to life. So this room is more traditional than other rooms in the house. For instance, this sofa, this is a wonderful Colfax and Fowler print on linen. And this is a Howard sofa. So I bought this in my Colfax and Fowler days for the first flat I owned. And it's so unbelievably comfortable. And then you've got a matching armchair with this. So it's very traditional and, you know, very much of a previous period. But it's just, it's so pretty. I love it. These two mirrors are very, very special and special to me too. They were in our dining room when I was growing up. And I inherited them from my father. They're Italian 18th century giltwood. And they are, you know, they're very decorative, but again, lovely and restrained. I'm just so fond of them. This wonderful painting is attributed to Honda Kuta. I inherited it from my mother and stepfather. It very much sets the scene of the room. But again, I love the juxtaposition of these rather sort of crazy wall sconces, which I bought in France and they're wheat sheaf. And, you know, they don't necessarily link with the painting, but they give both, I think both set each other off very well. This is a lovely card table. It's mahogany, Regency, and just the form is wonderful. Again, an inherited piece, and it just sits very, very nicely in front of the window. This is a lovely plaster greyhound that would have been used as a mould for a bronze, again, found on my travels. And I love these. These are silhouettes of, these are my stepdaughters. That's my stepdaughter there. And these two are my children. And then these are my stepdaughters here. And they, I think they are, they're just so lovely. And they sit very, very well. I love the cleanness of the perspex around. I love collecting lamps of different styles and different forms. So these lamps here, they're polychrome continental vases that I converted to lamps. They've got a lovely gilt base that I had made, and they just bring a lot of character, colour, and they just work so well as a lamp. This is an old floor standard lamp, which is brass. And that works very, very well. This is an old, old lamp. And with a fun shade. This is block printed on laminated, block printed linen laminated. So I think lighting does create huge interest. And it's lovely to have different heights, different levels to create an ambient feel. I would consider myself a maximalist, but pared back. I like everything to be balanced. I don't like clutter for the sake of it. It's got to be balanced, whether that's through proportion, colour, pattern, furniture, whether it's through painted and wooden pieces, it's all got to be balanced. So yes, I am a maximalist, but I think that it's understated and restrained. I want people to walk into our home and feel very relaxed, and that they can totally immerse themselves wherever they happen to be, whether it's the more formal drawing room, or the sitting room, or wherever, and just be able to relax and, you know, appreciate the decoration and Norfolk. So walking into the kitchen area of this open plan room, we inherited the kitchen, we put an Everhot cooker in and then extended it so that, you know, if you are working in the private and people who are sitting at the dining table or sitting in the sitting area don't necessarily see you so much. I've injected sort of rather formal pots in the kitchen, which is a bit crazy too, but I think they work really well and give the room some gravitas. Too many cookery books. And then this lovely mug rack here, which is great fun, full of messy, messy mugs. And this is rather fun. This is an old, an old terracotta vase that I found in France and had painted, and that hides all the fairy liquid and other bits and bobs, which is great. I love these, these pieces here. I bought them from a great friend, an antique dealer friend of mine called Maddy Kingsett, and they are sort of tiered, tiered baskets, and they just look wonderful in the kitchen with vegetables. So I think they make me smile. And what's wonderful is having a window seat and just wonderful to be able to look out into the garden. Now this was part of the, this is one of the dairies here, which is much lower in height. So we covered the dead light above the window with the blind so that you wouldn't necessarily know that, you know, that the window doesn't go up to the ceiling. And this is a wonderful, wonderful favourite fabric of mine. It's a Lewis & Wood old print, which is so nice. Then this is a great, I love, I love the fact that you can work in the kitchen. And so this table is, is, is a great spot for me. And these are our lovely rattan chairs, which go so well, I think. And that's, that's the kitchen really. So we're out in the garden, leading directly out of the kitchen. So this is a wonderful area here to relax with a newspaper, a cup of coffee, and, you know, look at, look at the wonderful views out into the garden. The house was built quite high up. And so we, George Carter, who did the landscaping for us, he levelled, created, created levels. So we've got this area here leading down steps to the lawn down there, where we've got these wonderful trees, and then a ha-ha leading out into the, into, into the field. So it's, the sort of garden is, is, is, is sort of amongst the landscape, which we love. And so we love coming out here to, to relax. And this is our garden furniture for, for this season. So it's been incredibly popular. We've recently won a prize, which we're very proud of for the best garden furniture collection design. It's aluminium and painted to look like rattan. And so we have a sofa, coffee table, side tables and armchairs. It's very, very lightweight. So it can be moved in and out with great ease or moved around with great ease, but there's no need to move it inside because it is totally weatherproof. This is our collaboration with Butter Wakefield that we've just, that we've just done. We, we were at Chelsea Flower Show, which was so fantastic. We designed a collection with Butter of which this was our hero print. And then we've got lovely stripes to go with it. And there's a full, full range on the website. We've done vases, trays, planters, and candlesticks, table runners in this wonderful print, table, table, tablecloths and napkins. So it just works so well with the collection. I think for a home to become alive, you need creatures like these, dogs, and art and objects and personality. You just want it to, you know, have old things, new things, worn things. It doesn't really matter as long as it's got personality and character. This is our drawing room. And this is where we entertain. So if we were to have a dinner party, this is where we would all, this is where we would all come. It's a, it's a fabulous room. It had a flat roof, a flat ceiling. We took the, the pitch up and it has really, really helped and made it a wonderful, a wonderfully spacious room. And I think what really has made the room is these fabulous silk panels, Chinese panels, that again, we had in our house in Suffolk. There are three pairs and the colours are so soft and it just, it really sets the tone of the room. And I was thrilled to find this rug. This is a wonderful rug, abstract hand-knotted rug by somebody called Gideon Hatch. And the colours just work so well with, with the screens. And then we've decorated the room around it. But again, as I said, you know, we've, those, the panels were from a previous house. So everything really has just arrived. And apart from cushions and possibly some lampshades, really, it just, you know, if you, if the bones work and the proportions work from house to house, you can really move pieces around so easily. So the coffee table is, it's a, it's a Chinese piece. It's just a great piece of furniture to put interesting objects. So as normal, we've got masses of books, got lots of lovely shells. And then these are really pretty. These were my mothers. These are lovely Lalique birds. It's a great place to put flowers. And then we've got some polychrome delved vases here and, and it just works really, really very well. And what's a lovely piece is this games table. So this is a trick track table. And this one is various different, different woods, mahogany, walnut, some cherry wood there. And it's a games table. So on one side, you know, so it's a writing table like this. And then on the other side, you've got bays for cards. And this is, you know, drafts on the top. And then inside, you have backgammon just got such, such character. So they're called trick track tables. I just think it's, it's, we do play and it's just a wonderful thing to have. So this is the main hall. And it's, again, got a lovely feel. It's got two lovely hanging lights here, French and with this lovely curved, curved glass, which is which is so nice. And they're lovely, a lovely scale in the room. So again, you've got this rather sort of scruffy, scruffy feel of hats on a hat stand. And then, you know, some very sort of, sort of formal art with these lovely, lovely oil paintings here. This piece is very special. This is my husband. My husband bought this, I think it's late 19th century, and it's decorated with feathers. So these are all white feathers. And then you've got lovely, lovely coloured feathers, decorating the front. So that's very, very nice. And then what is so special is the, is the staircase. It's a cantilever staircase. And I remember, I remember loving this the moment I saw it. And it goes all the way, you can see right to the third, the second floor. And it's, it's just very pleasing. It's just got lovely proportions and the handrail is so, is so attractive. The runner is a jute runner, which has a stripe in, in, in blue. And it's something we've just bought out. And I couldn't resist, couldn't resist putting one in the hallway here. And in fact, I think I'm gonna, we need another one for the, for the end of the hall too. But they're, they're very nice, very durable, and a really good weight and, and the perfect look for, for the house. When we first came to the house, all the, all the, the Yorkstone here was covered up with horrible, horrible modern tiles. We took those up and then found these, but they've got great character and are part of the house. I think the best compliment is that anyone coming here would give is that, you know, it feels so calm. You know, there is so much going on here. There's, you know, it's full of colour and cushions and art and a great mishmash of everything. But I think that it does have a sense of calm and balance. And, and I think that is, that is just very, very important. And I think that's sort of what defines my style. And, you know, people come and they say, gosh, I, you know, wish my home was like this. So I think that's a compliment. Okay, let's go upstairs. Come with me. So here we are on the first floor landing and what is so attractive about the house is these, these, these fan lights and entrances to another area. So we have, and it sort of creates a little suite on all of its own. You've got a bedroom and a bar and a bathroom. So let me show you through. So this is our guest bedroom, which is a wonderfully light room. And, and, and it's just so pretty. And it's just wonderful waking up in the morning to this incredible view of the, of the garden leading onto the, onto the field. As a holiday house, we chose, I, we chose some sort of quite daring in those days, colours, pinks and, and lime greens. So this lovely fabric here and the rug, which is a wonderful Christine, Christine Vanderherde design, which we bought many years ago. But it's, it's, it's wonderful. I think this, this area here is so pleasing. Again, a French Louis XV table, which has writing table, which we've, which we've used as a, as a, as a desk. And it sits so perfectly in front of the window with two lamps and, and a mirror. And it's just, it's, it's such a, such a lovely room. Everybody loves staying in it when they, when, when they come and stay. The bed is, is, is rather wonderful. A French headboard and a lovely crochet, hand crocheted bedspread on cotton. And then lots of lovely cushions again, which play on the pink and green, as do the lamps either side of the bed. So this is the bathroom adjoining the guest bedroom. And again, the bath is situated in front of the, the lovely sash window. And it's such a joy having a bath here and looking out of the window. We've got a wonderful rug on the floor, which is our Namda rug. It's made in, it's made in Kashmir, chain stitch, hand chain stitch, which is rather special. And it's just such a great, great view out to the garden. After five years, I left Colfax to start dealing on my own, which was quite a frightening transformation, quite a frightening move. And so I started by, by sort of exhibiting on doing sort of brocantes at the likes of Kensington Town Hall, you know, the small little antique fairs, tabletop antique fairs. And then I went to France and fell in love with, with a certain type of furniture. It was the sort of transition period between Louis XV and XVI. It's the sort of very much the paired back lines and the lovely pale woods, not frilly, fussy French furniture. And I was very fortunate because it took off and it was a look that it was a look that everybody loved at that particular time. So very, very exciting times. And it was, it was, it was wonderful. It was about 15 years of, of sort of full on antique dealing combined with a little bit of interior design. Then I moved away from it and spent time with the children, moved to Norfolk and realised that I wanted to get back into the antique world again, not to exhibit at the antique fairs, but to have a shop in Norfolk. So I opened a shop in 2014 and soon realised that it needed much more than just antiques. It needed homeware. So I sourced other brands homeware and, and after two years or so, after a trip to India, I started designing my own collection of, of block print, table linens, cushions, et cetera. And it grew from there, you know, so now we, we design and produce rugs, tableware, cushions, lighting, lampshades, furniture, and you know, the 360 of interior design and homeware. So this is the master bedroom. It's very cosy, very comfortable. The pieces hanging on the wall are very special. It's a, it's, it's an old screen, probably eight folds or so. And the, there's wonderful, these are all semi-precious stones, which have been, which have been cut and, and stuck onto board. We had so many walls to fill with paintings that came up with this idea to cut the screen up and, and, and, and use it in this way, which I think works very well. So you've got two, two either side of the, of the armoire and then, and then you've got this selection here. And again, it's got a very lovely, relaxed, calm feel to it. This armoire is, it was touch and go to get this in here, but I think it's so over-scale, but it works, it works so well and it gives the room great gravitas. And then moving over to the, to the fireplace, this is a mirror of, of, of ours. Again, these are semi-precious stones. It's made by artisans in India and to our, to my design and just thrilled with how it, how it looks. It just sits so well. So that's, that's great. And again, you've got French pieces of furniture either side. I don't like pairs of anything, particularly. They need to be corresponding. The furniture needs to be corresponding, but here you've got a, a small commode. You've got a three, three-drawer commode with a marble top. And what's nice is you've got a small table the other side, but they both balance well and they're both the same height. So they work really well as, as a pair. This is the front of the house. So the formal entrance where we have six areas of grass, which is fun with peppered with, with, with stone balls and a lovely fountain here and, and bench and yew trees, yew trees behind. So this is a fabulous spot to have lunch. And obviously, you know, we, we, it's perfect for a party, can seat lots of people and, and it leads on, on from the kitchen. So we love, we love using it. We have a series of wonderful old olive jars which punctuate the, the various areas of the garden. And I think, I think look so, so, so pretty. Again, a lovely soft colour and, and they work very well. So there, there are some, there are some lovely vistas. You know, this path here that leads onto the, onto the urn and then, and then out to the field. And then these lovely bleached limes, which have slightly overgrown, but they're very, very, very good looking. So this terrace is, is, is wonderful. Leading from the back of the house. Again, we tend to eat out here at night. It's so, so peaceful and, you know, you've got the, you've got the views to the, to the, to the field, through the trees, et cetera. So it's absolutely wonderful. And then we've got a wonderful village church through, through the trees there. That's, which is, which is so special. So there are services once a month. And so we, traipse over the field, through a little gate to church. I think home to me means somewhere that I can come back to after stressful days, long journeys, travels abroad and feel totally at ease and relax and be able to unwind and feel comfortable and be surrounded by things I love. Homeworthy, thank you so much visiting and sharing my home. It's time to go now, but thank you so much and hope to see you soon. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.