Архитекторы из Фирла преобразуют исторический поместье семьи Гейдж в национальном парке Саут-Даунс

The Firle Estate in East Sussex spreads out across 7,000 acres of chalky downland at the eastern end of the South Downs National Park, where the landscape runs on to the cliffs of the Seven Sisters. It encompasses farmland and woodland around several largely unchanged villages of flint-knapped façades. The estate has been owned by the Gage family since the 15th century, and their home is the magnificent grade I listed manor, Firle Place, at the edge of Firle village, a picturesque creative community that lies four miles east of Lewes. It was the Gages who let nearby Charleston Farmhouse to a bunch of creatives from Bloomsbury during the First World War. Will Anderson grew up in Firle village. He went off to study architecture and came back to set up Rabble Architecture with two friends. Today he describes himself as a “parish designer”. His first commission for the Gage family was to do up the lavatories for wedding guests in a Georgian stable block. Most commented - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 They were impressed by his ability to reimagine heritage buildings, and Rabble was asked to draw up an entire estate plan. It has since worked its magic on five of the ten guest bedrooms in Firle Place that are now available for private hire. A pilgrim’s bothy in the walls of Firle churchyard is in the early stages of planning. When finished it will provide simple shelter for walkers travelling the Old Way, a 240-mile pilgrimage route from Southampton to Canterbury. But I’m here with my family to experience Culpeper, one of two cottages Rabble has recently completed. The first, Shepherd’s Cottage, sleeping four, opened last year. Anderson and his colleague David Jones gave themselves a joyous brief. They wanted to inject cheeky character into the tenanted rooms, to give guests “a real spoonful of Firle”. And that is exactly what we got when we swung off the A27 onto a no-through lane in the ancient village of Alciston. “I want guests to feel as though they’ve been completely inside a story for a few days,” Anderson says. Much of the inspiration for the interiors came from the children’s classics Anderson and Jones read to their families at bedtime. In the sky blue living room a ginormous fireplace fills an entire wall, inspired by the looming mantelpieces in Beatrix Potter’s The Tailor of Gloucester. A huge wooden coal bucket stuffed with lavender is balanced on a central footstool, and surrounded by obscure art and history books picked up from local auction houses. The custom-made sofa is upholstered in the same blue as the walls, with a repeating pattern of strange figures. These are brass rubbings of the Gage family tomb that Anderson took from Firle church and Jones scanned into a computer and printed onto fabric. The lamp bases are bespoke mini Firle Towers made only for these rooms. (The real tower is a flint folly built for gamekeepers in 1819.) Even the artworks were created by Anderson, Jones and their friends. Need to know - Where is it? The Firle Estate is in East Sussex, four miles east of Lewes, in the South Downs National Park, with villages, rolling countryside and new cottages to rent - How much does it cost? Culpeper has three nights’ self-catering for four from £510 - Who will love it? Walkers and creatives who long to be one of the Bloomsbury group Interiors inspired by Beatrix Potter A bright dining area adjoins the living room, a new addition to the 17th-century cottage, with glazing that opens the rear elevation to uninterrupted views of the Downs. We have brought our walking boots and cannot wait to stomp the ancient lanes that riddle this landscape. There are nearly 30 miles of footpaths on the estate to explore. Firle Beacon, the dramatic 217m hill that commands the best views, beckons. From the road we see paragliders launching themselves off it, sinking into the bristly folds beneath them. Our kids, who are 9 and 12, ask if they are old enough to try it. I don’t dare look up the website. The interiors at Culpeper delight at every turn, and although it doesn’t feel like it, every surface of the listed cottage (apart from the shaggy thatch) has been carefully stripped, insulated and remade with natural materials. The kitchen is a clever re-enactment of a 1950s set-up, with a high-gloss cream ceiling, mustard and sky-blue walls and butter-yellow formica surfaces. The joinery, by Old Town Kitchen Co, is unlike any kitchen I’ve been in yet faintly familiar. Our nine-year-old finds a little hidden cupboard built into a space under the stairs where tea, coffee and biscuits are squirreled away. Meanwhile, the downstairs bathroom elicits squeals from our daughter because the bath is festooned in an eccentric frilly yellow shower curtain — an exact replica of a canopied bed on a page of The Tale of Samuel Whiskers. “If you try and look past the little animals, Beatrix Potter was actually really good at interiors,” Anderson says. There’s more fun to come upstairs in the main bedroom, where the lime-plastered walls are stencilled in orderly rows of pink shapes: a hare, a cross and an oak leaf (Firle comes from the old-English/Anglo-Saxon word fierol, meaning overgrown with oak). The same shapes adorn the canopy above the bed, which has been positioned between two windows. It’s like sleeping inside a wrapped present. We keep the windows open all night so we have a gentle breeze at our heads and a view of the Downs at our feet. Despite being two miles southeast of Charleston Farmhouse and at the foot of the South Downs National Park, with the Ram Inn in Firle providing stylish bedrooms, there are very few holiday cottages in the area that offer what Culpeper and Shepherd’s Cottage do: space to unpack and make-believe. Stocking up at the farm shop Before we do that, we stock up. Culpeper is a few moments from Middle Farm, a farm shop and tearoom where we buy fresh pasties and a pot of tea for lunch, and some slabs of homemade ginger flapjack to take with us on our first walk. The cider barn stocks more than 300 ciders and perries, but we choose a bottle of Breaky Bottom English wine to have on the lawn later (middlefarm.com). We turn left out of the cottage and pass neighbouring Alciston Court Farm, where horses nicker happily in the stables. The farm was built in the 14th century by monks from nearby Battle Abbey, and the remains of an ancient square dovecote can be seen from the road. The farm’s 16th-century tithe barn is the biggest in the county, with a deep sloping roof that holds more than 50,000 tiles. Before long the no-through road turns into a track between dusty fields that are being hastily harvested. It’s six miles to Firle Beacon and back, but we have dinner plans so we go halfway before retracing our steps. We’ve booked the refurbished Trevor Arms in nearby Glynde for dinner. It’s a Wednesday night but the pub is buzzing, and I’m delighted to spot a man with a loosened bow tie propping up the bar (we’re a mile from Glyndebourne opera house). We order two pints of ale made by the local Burning Sky brewery and Sussex wagyu cheeseburgers with malt treacle onions and dripping-cooked chips (£20). The smoked haddock and salmon fishcake with fennel slaw (£22) is soft, fresh and crispy, and the “small eaters” steak and chips (£14.50) comes with Café de Paris butter — so much better than nuggets and ketchup. What a great, unfussy village boozer (mains from £18.50; thetrevor.co.uk). Artwork by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell in Berwick church The next morning we walk towards the spire we can see from the back garden: Berwick church. We are the only ones there. The interiors, flooded with natural light from the plain-glass the windows, were made famous by the work of Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and her son Quentin. During the Second World War they were commissioned by a local bishop to brighten up the place. Instead of painting directly on the walls they worked in their studios on sheets of plaster, with friends and family posing for them. The walled garden behind Mary and Angel Gabriel is in fact the view from Bell’s top-floor studio at Charleston. It’s fun to imagine them carefully transporting the finished scenes down these country lanes before piecing them together in Berwick. Lewes beckons, and my algorithm wants me to go to Taith for the top-floor views, but it doesn’t sell iced matcha (the tween’s summer obsession) so instead we are lured across the road to Caccia & Tails, which is painted acidic yellow. (The local colour expert, Simon March of Colour Makes People Happy, had a say here.) Inside it’s part New York diner, part Italian café. We love it and stay for the hash brown brunches (mains from £10; cacciaandtails.com). Assuming you’ve shopped the high street, snooped around the painted rooms at Charleston Farmhouse and/or launched yourselves off Firle Beacon, remember that performances at Glyndebourne opera house are year-round (glyndebourne.com). And at Firle Place, which has a café, you can book a private house tour to gawp at the collection of English and European old master paintings (£15pp; firle.com). If you’re seeking the sea, Seaford beach is ten miles south of Firle and has a communal sauna (from £15pp; thenomadicsauna.co.uk). I’m not quite sure what the Friday night Aufguss Rave Sauna session entails, but I’d like to find out. Instead, on our second night and last night at Culpeper, we fetch more supplies from Middle Farm and play a sedate game of Monopoly Deal at the dining table until dusk. With the kids asleep, I find myself engrossed in The Life of a Country Carpenter, a self-published pamphlet Anderson has sourced and positioned just so on a polished sidetable. Like everything else in here, it’s a hyper-local tale you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Which sums up the whole experience of being here. All recommendations within this article are informed by expert editorial opinion. If you click on a link in this story we will earn affiliate revenue Nell Card was a guest of Firle Estate, which has three nights’ self-catering for four from £510 (firle.com) More characterful cottages in the UK By Nell Card Little Allt-y-Bella and Cwrt-y-Bela, Usk, Monmouthshire These two recently launched rentals are the unhurried handiwork of the world-renowned garden designer Arne Maynard, who has shown the cottages on his grounds the same care and devotion as his magnificent garden. The floorboards have been cut from timber grown on the farm — even the furniture has been handmade by him. Both cottages sleep two: Little Alt-y-Bella is nestled in the curve of a stream that wends through this glorious patch of Monmouthshire; Cwrt-y-Bela is a slightly larger former shepherd’s house with beautiful brick floors.  Three nights’ self-catering for two at Little Allt-y-Bela from £900; three nights’ self-catering for two at Cwrt-y-Bela from £1,050 (alltybela.com) The Collector’s Cottage, Malmesbury, Wiltshire This just-finished cottage once belonged to “one of England’s top antique dealers” and has recently been gently buffed up by the owners. It’s in a great location for those wishing to accumulate their own storied objets: there are good antiques shops in Malmesbury, and Tetbury and Cirencester are nearby for day-tripping. Or you can ditch the car and explore the unspoilt fields that unfurl from your front door. One night’s self-catering for three from £235 (kiphideaways.com) Northlight, Isle of Skye This is the restored cottage of two celebrated wildlife photographers who know a thing or two about apertures. The interiors of this former homestead are pale and pared back, with picture windows that frame all the colour and drama of the Uiginish peninsula on Skye. Stillness is encouraged. Light the wood-burner, wait for the mist to unravel from the Black Cuillin and have your binos ready. The owners have reported seeing otters, seals and the occasional minke whale bobbing along with the current in Loch Dunvegan. Those brave enough to join them will be grateful for the outdoor sauna. Four nights’ self-catering for four from £1,695 (uniquehomestays.com)