IN 2017, WHEN the British designer Faye Toogood, already the mother of one, learned that she was pregnant with twins, she found herself craving more space and privacy than life in central London allowed. And so, along with her husband, the broadcaster and writer Matt Gibberd, and their eldest daughter, Indigo, now 12, she moved to the small city of Winchester, in Hampshire, where she’d spent her teens. The family, which soon included the twins Etta and Wren, now 7, lived first in a rental cottage, then in a Victorian garden flat down the road from Toogood’s parents. Finally, in 2020 they settled into a two-story Victorian outside of town, eight miles east of Winchester’s Norman Gothic cathedral. A country manor whose stucco facade is interrupted by an elegant arched loggia, the house is a departure from the spare, conceptual spaces that the couple always inhabited in London. And, they insist, it was never their intention to live on such a grand scale: The six-bedroom house encompasses 6,500 square feet and sits on five and a half acres. But Toogood, 48 — who, since establishing her namesake studio in 2008, has become well known for her sculptural furniture, modern decorative objects, workwear-inspired clothing and minimalist residential interiors — often leans heavily on intuition as a designer and took a similar approach to house hunting. “This is the house,” she says, “that invited us in.”
transcript
House Tour | Faye Toogood
The designer and her husband, the broadcaster and writer Matt Gibberd, lead a tour of their 19th-century manor near Winchester, England.
Hello. Welcome to our home. Can’t wait to show you around. Hello again. This is our front door with a skull knocker that we’ve had on every house we’ve ever owned. This is our entrance hall that we wanted to feel like an English woodland. This is a Toogood coat made entirely of marble. We wanted this home to reflect our British heritage, while mixing it with modern interventions. I’m an obsessive collector. So there’s always lots of things around the house. Lots of English Delft. This is our dining room. It looks particularly good at night because we just light the candles and the open fire. This coat was the genesis of my fashion brand. We painted 49 of them and hung them in the streets of Covent Garden. This is where I arrange flowers that have been grown in the garden. The room also holds my collection of creamware. This is a desk I’ve designed, and I share it with Matt. We met 25 years ago, and some of these postcards date back to that time. This is the kitchen. It’s a traditional English kitchen with an Aga, Plain English units and quarry tiles on the floor. We’re on the landing, and this is my shelf of maquettes. Some make it into production, and some don’t. This one made it. In the kids’ bathroom, there’s an hand-painted wallpaper. In the children’s bedrooms, it’s important that they’re the artists, and they get to paint their own canvases. The handcrafted oak four-poster bed is made by my friend Max Rollitt. We wanted our bathroom to feel very elemental. So we used a really deep-veined marble, a beautiful bath and a collection of shells. Here we are in our secret dressing room. I like the refinement of this 18th-century Chinoiserie cabinet with the rawness of this brick sculpture. Thanks for coming. It’s been a pleasure to have you. Bye for now!
The designer and her husband, the broadcaster and writer Matt Gibberd, lead a tour of their 19th-century manor near Winchester, England.CreditCredit…Jerome Monnot
Built in the late 19th century, the slate-roofed mansion sits high above the main road, its crescent-shaped, south-facing lawn giving way to a patchwork of fields and grassland that slope down to the River Itchen on the horizon. It was the picturesque setting that drew Gibberd, 47 — who is the grandson of the English architect and town planner Frederick Gibberd — to the property. “The view,” he points out, “is the only thing you can’t change.” In remaking the home to suit her family, Toogood also worked from the outside in, first repainting the pistachio exterior a light taupe and then adorning the frontage with pale pink climbing roses. Inside, the goal was to soften the space, which had been stripped of its original finishes by the previous owners and, says Toogood, “lit up like a football stadium” with recessed fixtures, which they removed. After restoring the moldings and fireplaces — which had been covered up, layered in paint or fitted with modern wood burners — they installed traditional Victorian cast-iron radiators in many rooms, refurbished the sash windows and renovated the kitchen, adding internal glass windows and doors, an Aga stove, Plain English cabinetry and Derbyshire fossil stone countertops.
In the sitting room, a glass chair, coffee table and console designed by Toogood, floor matting by Rush Matters, armchairs upholstered in Jubilee Rose by Colefax and Fowler and curtains and cushions fabricated by Downers Design.Credit…Martin Morrell
The kitchen, with cabinetry by Plain English, is fitted with a pendant light by Toogood, an Aga oven, Jamb sconces and reclaimed Staffordshire floor tiles.Credit…Martin Morrell
In the bedroom of one of her daughters, a clip light from Original BTC, a Toogood-designed Spade chair for Please Wait to Be Seated, her Roly-Poly stool and a bed curtained in Pierre Frey and Robert Kime fabrics.Credit…Martin Morrell
WHEN FRIENDS FROM London visit for the first time, the couple say, they’re often taken aback, having expected to find the pared-down interiors that Toogood is best known for designing and that Gibberd has championed with the Modern House, the London-based real estate agency-cum-digital magazine that he co-founded in 2011. Instead they’re met with Pierre Frey floral curtains in the dining room, Jean Monro rose fabric on the primary bedroom headboard and botanical chintz armchairs in the sitting room. But Toogood points out that the décor is less a departure than a return: She and Gibberd first met working at The World of Interiors, where they developed an appreciation for print and pattern under the tutelage of the magazine’s founding editor, Minn Hogg, an affirmed maximalist.
