Character building

How do you make a newly built space look like an old one? The transformation of a house on the Cornish coast, by HÁM interiors, may provide the answer, believes Arabella Youens

- Arabella Youens

SITUATED in one of north Cornwall's most desirable locations between the restaurants of Padstow and the watersports of Harlyn-Atlanta in Trevone has been in Jess Alken-Theasby's family for generations. Two beaches, one sandy, the other rocky, lie seconds from the house, which was built on a clifftop in 1899. Mrs. AlkenTheasby's great-grandfather was the artist J. H. C. Millar, a favourite of George V, who painted the views that can be enjoyed from almost all aspects of the Victorian main house and a further four apartments. The exception is this building,' explains Mrs Alken-Theasby.

'It only has a glimpse of the sea, so we knew we had to do something different with the interiors.' When her great-uncle bought the guest house in the 1950s, the building was used as a shelter for boats and for mending crabbing nets. With her husband, Ash, she set out to bring it back to life. Today, thanks to the work of brother-and-sister interior designers Kate and Tom Cox, of HÁM Interiors in Henleyon-Thames, Oxfordshire, it has been has been bought back to life as the Net Loft. The family now regard it as Atlanta's 'eccentric relative'.

With two bedrooms, a large living room, an outdoor dining terrace, and cinema room (ideal for those all-too-predictable wet Cornish days), the revamped former outbuilding sleeps four.