Hampshire Manor House
When Faye Toogood, British designer and Designer of the Year at the 2025 Maison&Objet in Paris, moved with her family from London to the countryside she was in search of a spacious family home to allow them privacy, spaces to work and room to both entertain and for her collections of ceramics including Constance Spry vases. In 2020, she and her husband found a two-story Victorian manor house sitting within acres of garden and lawn, surrounded by grassland leading to the banks of the River Itchen, visible in the distance.
Faye approached Plain English to help with the design of the kitchen and ancillary rooms. The conversation began with an empty plan and a discussion about where best to put the kitchen and how best to adapt a traditional set of spaces for modern living. Working with Faye was a collaborative effort and together we developed a plan that, as an important first step, dealt with some awkward areas in the original space to settle on the best way to move forward with our design. The result? A large family kitchen with an adjacent Butler’s Pantry and a Larder, Housekeeper’s Cupboard and Laundry fashioned from a former Utility Room.
Today, the kitchen is at one end of the large room, converted from two separate rooms but unified by a new floor of reclaimed Staffordshire blue tiles which echo the inky blues of the hallway wallpaper, a design by Toogood for Calico. The kitchen and dining areas are connected, symbolically by our oak topped Worktable whose legs give it a furniture-like feel avoiding the heavier look of a conventional fitted island. Above the Worktable, a pill-shaped fiberglass lantern designed by Toogood provides a modernist counterpoint to the traditional detailing of the joinery. An existing alcove became the Butler’s Pantry which has a small sink, Bianco Eclipsia worktop and open shelves to store and display crockery, all separated by a glazed screen. Bordering the Worktable on two sides are our Spitalfields cupboards, hand-painted in ‘Boiled Dishcloth’ with a Derbyshire fossil stone worktop. The run of cupboards below the window overlooks the kitchen garden and contains a sink and dishwasher and ends with a tall integrated fridge and larder cupboard which is conveniently located between the kitchen and dining area.
A glazed door leads to a lobby which contains the Laundry and Pantry. The Pantry has a traditional arrangement of open shelving for jars and preserves over a reclaimed slate worktop which sits on brick piers with shelves below for wicker baskets. At the end of the Larder is a T&G clad Housekeeper’s cupboard for household essentials.
Finally, a tall, glazed screen then leads into the Laundry Room which doubles as a Flower Room in the growing season. A Pippy Oak worktop contains a deep farmhouse sink with a drying rack and slatted shelves above for linens, and a playful skirt to conceal the appliances.
Read more in the New York Times. Inside Faye Toogood’s Hampshire Manor
The Menagerie
Mapesbury Estate
