Two people who enjoy the fabric of cottage life

By Tommy Barker

Bill and Brigid Hatchett ran interior design shops in England, and have a soft spot for fabrics.

Now, they have rolled out their bolts of material and rolls of fine fabrics on display at their 'new' old home near Bantry in West Cork.

They came to stay with a friend in a rural spot half a mile off the road 10-minutes from Bantry and ended up buying her out.

But the good friend who gave up her home is still a friend despite the 'eviction' and stays in their guest cottage when she feels the powerful draw to return (the guest cottage was the old cow byre, prompting the caveat 'let the byre beware.')

Brigid has Irish roots, London-born Bill was a chemist who moved to marketing and then took the soft option, crossing over to interior design and soft furnishings as a speciality.

Brigid, who had trained in modern languages, made a seamless transition to seamstress and their eventually linked careers took off.

They moved from London to Devon, and had a series of Hatchett designer/fabric shops, usually in quaint old buildings, sometimes mixed in with coffee and tea house and art galleries. Some of the art works from those gallery days have made the cross channel journey and adorn the walls of this 150-year-old extended farmhouse.

Their Bantry home and work base is a more private affair than the Devon galleries, but clients still come to Bill's office and showrooms for consultations. Projects unfolding here range from hotels to country

houses, from homes for 85-year-olds to hair salons for twenty-somethings.

Bill Hatchett's design guide isn't to go with the ebb and flow of fashion trends:

"My job is to give people confidence to be individual, to go with their own style and tastes, what they are comfortable with. I hate the whole lifestyle designer culture where people feel intimidated if they don't buy into the fashion of the moment.

"Designer style is simply a person's opinion at a point in time. There's no such thing as objective 'style', work with what you are comfortable with," he argues.

"It is the people that matter, home décor is only a means to making people feel better, not a reason in itself."

Chez Hatchett, their house (027 53771) is a case in point, not some show-of exercise designed to impress.

It underscores his design philosophy and his ability to respect a building's own integrity as well: despite a major rebuild and overhaul, this house packed with accumulated family possession and art pieces has an identifiable West Cork feel.

"We had to respect the building's character. Too many West Cork farmhouses have gone or been altered radically to have changed this totally, we wanted to put it back in sympathy but with hi-tech services as well," Brigid says.

The house is typically long and low, and made longer with an end extension quite seamlessly stitched on, yielding up a cosy family room with untypically large window.

With four doors to the outdoors and two sets of stairs giving a flow around the house, and with rapidly maturing and settling gardens, there's every reason to go out and around to get from room to room.

A Stanley range in the kitchen keeps the heart of the home cosy and, as floors had to be dug up for drains and damp-proofing, it was a natural extension to put in partial underfloor heating.

Open fireplaces still reign, though, and the decor is neutral and natural, with painted old chamfered beams and some superbly executed joinery (the two new stairs have treads in oak) done by Bill and Brigid's son Toby, a boatbuilder who followed the folks to Ireland and now works for the Coachhouse Kitchens business in Coachford, Cork.

The work from start to finished look seen here took 20 months, and the house looks like it has evolved organically rather than as a result of frenzied work of a full team of trades' people.

The original house had a central hall way and small rooms to either side: that partition was blown away, and now the space is one large airy room, with open hearth and exposed stone arch above the open fire where burning turf is a down-home Irish version of aromatherapy.

Bill' own interior design advice is to work around something that excites or encourages them, be it a view, a piece of furniture or some curtain material which sets a colour tone and theme or scheme.

Much of the furniture here came from their own parents and family links (as did a superb set of lovingly constructed scale model trains, made by Bill's father) and the common thread (if that's not too insulting a term for so much seat covering, in such rich and sumptuous fabrics) is that they are all inviting to look at and comfortable to sit in.

"It seems obvious when you say it, but seats should be comfortable, not just because they look good," they say, having just found their very own West Cork 'seat'.