House Style with Charlie Luxton
After showing us around his carefully renovated old-time farmhouse in Wiltshire, Charlie Luxton, owner of the country inn Beckford Group, shares his house style.
You’re happiest at home when…
I’m sitting quietly in my study – with the door closed – reading a classic car magazine with a glass of Portuguese wine.
This is a daily dream that rarely happens. My work in hospitality is all about trying to keep staff – we have 120! – and guests happy, so I like to be in a quiet space when I’m at home.
If you could save one thing, what would it be?
Newlyn, a painting by Jeremy Le Grice, or an untitled work by Peter Haigh.
Jeremy was a cousin and painted in Cornwall most of his life around West Penwith, where our family has lived for 300 years. Jeremy’s work in oils is very evocative of the coastline and takes me back there whenever I look at them. I have a huge love affair with Cornwall and took a lot of ideas from The Abbey in Penzance, owned by Jean Shrimpton, before I opened The Beckford Arms pub. It lies in a beautiful, relatively untouched area which is, by being at the far end of Cornwall, still honest, and in the winter deeply unspoiled.
What is your favourite living space around the world?
Ett Hem in Stockholm, designed by Ilse Crawford.
It has an incredible warmth, depth of design, and consideration of how to use the spaces. The bedrooms and ground floor spaces make you want to curl up with a book and relax – surely what a great hotel should do.
What was the last thing that you brought for the house?
A four-level ebonised whatnot from Bridport Auctions with wonderful finials, made in the 1920s – for £38!
I trawl through saleroom.com continually and get a huge kick out of finding a beautifully designed antique for good value, which might add an unexpected twist to a space.
Top three coffee table books?
A Frame For Life by Ilse Crawford, The Organised Home by Remodelista and Eat, Drink, Nap by Nick Jones.
I can spend hours browsing through these, as well as the quarterly Elle Deco magazine. I worked with Ilse Crawford on the design of High Road House in Chiswick and learned a huge amount about how design and people’s behaviour need to be considered together. I worked for and occasionally with Nick Jones for 10 years as his operations director, and his outlook on all things hospitality is what I try and put into my own business – with a few things added obviously!
If money was no object, what changes would you make?
I would add a clear glass extension with a Plain English kitchen.
The kitchen is the last area we need to attack and I love the classic simplicity of Plain English.
You’re having people over for dinner: what do you cook?
Chicken and celery casserole – it sounds peculiar but is very good, which of course I would say.
When we have people around for supper – never dinner – we drink wines from my wine shop in Bath, Beckford Bottle Shop.
What does Sunday here look like?
Sunday papers desperately trying to be read – three children and dogs make it hard! – and a roast chicken.
Sunday is very much a family day. We try and get the children out of the house and do something together – until they become teenagers, we are still having relative success.
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