PROPERTY
HOM ES SW EET HOM ES THE STARTER HOME
Your idea of the perfect garden? In today’s world it has to be a calm sanctuary with a proper ecosystem to benefit the environment around it. The garden I’m working on with Savills at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show is designed to be the filtering lungs of the city.
S E C R E T S
Little Tew, Oxfordshire, £2.5m Quarry Barn is a rare opportunity to create your own modern and contemporary 8,000 sq/ft family ecohome between Soho Farmhouse and Daylesford Organic Farmshop. It has full planning permission for a residential dwelling, surrounded by 31 acres of gardens, paddocks and woodland. knightfrank.com
DAVID HARBER The sculptor has had a sleepover at Jeremy Irons’ castle Where was your first home? It was a Sixties
bungalow in Blewbury in Oxfordshire, which I demolished in order to build a Grand Designsstyle green oak timber frame house. Fondest memories? I loved watching the construction. The living accommodation was on the first floor, up a vast flight of stairs and you could see the entire oak frame laid out in front of you. As a maker of things, it was very pleasing. Where do you live now? My wife got itchy feet, so we moved a quarter of a mile to a 15th-century mill house, which had nothing much done to it for hundreds of years – except for a 1940s kitchen. Favourite room? The living room. It’s modest in size with beautiful leaded windows, a brick floor and a low ceiling. It feels as if you’re in the back of a galleon. Any grand plans for it? We’re bringing it up to date with a big, contemporary extension, geothermal heating, power generated by the mill wheel and a glass link to the existing house. We are aiming to be carbon neutral.
In a dream world, where would you buy? An apartment in New York. I love the energy of the city, so long as I can dip in and out of it.
THE FOREVER HOME
Most extravagant purchase? I’m very mean and tend to fill my house with prototypes of things I’m making. I do have a decent sound system, though, and we once haggled for a rug in Tangiers – then we had to work out how to get it home.
Do you have a second home? Twelve years ago, we bought a bucolic lemon pressing mill in Sicily. The area felt very raw and undiscovered at the time. Even now it is unsullied by mass tourism and the locals are very friendly. Favourite London neighbourhood? Notting Hill. I lived there when I was 20 and again when I met my wife – we lived above a shop on Portobello Road. Whose home would you most like to see inside? Jeremy Irons, a client,
has a castle in Southern Ireland, which I loved staying in. It is a mind-boggling place and he has renovated it with taste. Any tips for first-time buyers? The sooner you make something your own, the better – it will be your base and your emotional stability. The bottom rungs of the ladder are broken, though, so you’ll need a stepladder! David Harber is collaborating with Savills to sponsor a sustainable garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019. davidharber.com n
Faringdon, Oxfordshire, £2m Manor Farm is a 17th-century Yeoman House near Faringdon, in about ten acres, with ancillary accommodation, stabling, dovecote and barns with development potential. The property is full of character and has some stunning period features, large reception rooms and six bedrooms. jackson-stops.co.uk THE SECOND HOME
Sicily, £7.325m Baglio San Vincenzo is a magnificent Sicilian wine estate with a renovated Baglio (fortified manor house) surrounded by Greek temples, the sea, olive groves and rolling hills. The house is vast with loggias, a wine cellar and 13 bedrooms. Outside is a swimming pool with outdoor kitchen and the gardens are exquisite. italy-sothebysrealty.com
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H O U S E
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