WELCOME HOME

Adaptability and sociability were central to the brief for this Victorian property to make it suit its gregarious owners, then interior designer Stephanie Dunning was tasked to evoke luxe schemes

- RACHEL LEEDHAM

When Tom Cameron showed an advert for this rather grand Victorian house in Surrey to his wife Megan, her first impressions were of a ‘higgledy-piggledy old school’ but closer inspection encouraged her to revise this opinion. ‘The house is situated adjacent to a 20-acre forest, so you drive up through the woods,’ she says. ‘Peering through the gates we saw this magical, beautiful building. We fell in love with it on the spot.’

The house, which was built in 1863, probably as a shooting lodge, is steeped in character, although ill-conceived alterations meant that the layout was far from perfect. During the three years that the Camerons and their three young children occupied it before the renovation, they pinpointed the property’s failings. ‘An indoor pool had been added and it didn’t connect well with the house,’ says Tom. ‘The other issue was that the building faced the wrong way, but we couldn’t work out how to turn it around without destroying its character.’

The eureka moment came when the Camerons’ architects, Hugh Petter and Paul Pizzo of Adam Architecture, suggested demolishing the staircase in the historic part of the house to create an extension that linked all the different levels, so that the key spaces lead off from it in a Catherine wheel effect. The basement was extended to add an entertainment area to the existing family room, while above this, a large outdoor terrace was created to help reorient the house and connect it with the gardens.