A charming 16th-century farmhouse in an idyllic setting in Surrey

There are few pairings more visually satisfying than a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. The pages of this magazine are a celebration of ‘afters’. But sometimes it is good to be reminded of just how magical a designer’s fairy dust can be. The ‘before’ of this Surrey farmhouse, as seen in the estate agent’s brochure from four years ago, shows a simple, red-brick cottage with new windows, set in a large lawn ringed by fencing. Inside, walls are painted in shades of magnolia, there is pale fitted carpet, a modern open-tread staircase and a fitted kitchen with beige tiles and laminate worktops. The effect is pleasant but bland. Even the painted bedroom ceiling dating from around 1560, and miraculously still intact, seems to have lost its spirit as it looks down on a plain divan. Which is why Louise Jones – who now works under the name Fairfax Jones alongside fellow interior designer Caroline Fairfax – very nearly did not bother to arrange a viewing.

‘My partner David and I had been looking for somewhere to buy for over a year and I dismissed this at a glance,’ she says. ‘But then the price dropped. We drove to see it and before we even arrived at the door, I decided we should buy it. I loved the setting – it’s down a long track, surrounded by fields and woods, but it takes only half an hour to get to London from the nearest station. The garden was a blank canvas and we both love gardening. The house was also a blank canvas and I am, after all, a decorator, so I knew we could sort it out.’

The first wave of Louise’s wand was needed to reconfigure the space. Dating from the 16th century, the original building comprises three rooms in a row on the ground floor, with a ater single-storey extension along the back. Louise whipped out the fitted kitchen from its small room in the extension and turned this space into a pantry, furnished with freestanding antique storage including a colourful painted Swiss armoire.

In the adjacent dining room, she pulled up the carpet to reveal an old brick floor and turned this much larger space, with its walk-in fireplace, into a capacious, comfortable and decidedly unfitted kitchen. This simple swap restored the historic heart of the house instantly. Upstairs, three smaller rooms were united to make a splendid main bathroom with a ceiling rising into the eaves, revealing the ancient wooden framework that supports the roof.

Next to the kitchen – and divided from it by a huge double-sided chimney breast – is the sitting room, with a fireplace as generous as that of the kitchen. Beyond this is the third ground-floor room, which is now the dining room. ‘The old brick flooring runs through all these rooms, but was hidden under the carpet,’ explains Louise, ‘I cleaned every inch of it myself. At one stage, I hired an industrial machine, but it didn’t work as well. So I spent the weekends on my hands and knees, scrubbing like Cinderella.’ There was no fairy godmother to help, but Louise insists she is ‘quite happy cleaning’. Her efforts have resulted in as big a transformation as relocating the kitchen. The effect of the handmade bricks, with their variations in colour and pitted surfaces worn smooth by generations of feet, provides a huge boost to the character of the farmhouse, which had been so thoroughly erased.

The flat plaster – another character killer – has been ‘roughed up a bit’ and the modern, double-glazed windows have been painted in sympathetic colours and enhanced with forged-iron fittings from Jim Lawrence. Furnishings are a mix of early English, such as the 16th-century dining table Louise picked up for a song at auction, and 18th-century country pieces. These include a handsome Cumbrian oak sideboard she has converted to hold the double basins in the main bathroom and a walnut oyster veneer chest-on-stand in the sitting room. Her love of Arts and Crafts is evident in the CFA Voysey wallpaper that brightens the downstairs loo and a wonderful William De Morgan pot in the back hall.