Open House: Toast founders Jessica and Jamie Seaton on the simple pleasures of country life at their rural idyll in Carmarthenshire, Wales
Jessica: “One family member said it always smells of wood smoke, stone and good food. I think that’s probably about right…
“I grew up on the edge of a market town but with a very rural outlook, with farming friends and riding stables – that sort of thing. Jamie grew up in Liverpool but went to school in Lancashire, so got a taste for country life there.”
Jamie: “Well, it was rural in the same way prisons can be in the countryside! Jessica and I met at university, where we both read archaeology and ancient history, and moved to Wales straight after graduating to work as archaeologists for a year.
“We caught the tail end of the hippy days in Wales, so there was quite a lot of alternative, back-to-the-land types around, which was our kind of thing. We like that Wales still retains that independent-mindedness today, as well as the beautiful countryside, of course.
“In fact, we realised in our first year here that we liked Wales, but didn’t like archaeology, so we packed it in and started a tiny business making and selling knitwear, little knowing how that would develop.
“The nice thing about Toast was that it wasn’t really driven by a huge desire to succeed. The engine of it wasn’t ambition, it was more doing what we liked and allowing things to happen in a natural way.
“Toast was just what we did, really. It wasn’t formed with plans and mission statements, but with Jessica and myself and people who gathered around us, doing the things we liked and we were lucky enough that other people tuned into it and liked it too.”
Jessica: “Without sounding hypocritical, because obviously the clothes do cost money, the emphasis was always on very simple pleasures. A piece of toast is a very humble thing, and that’s what it’s always been about for us – taking time was more important than having stuff.”
Jamie: “The idea with the clothes was not to tell people how to dress, but to provide the means that they could dress as they wanted to. Clothes that people felt comfortable in, both physically and emotionally, that gave them confidence, but not in a brash or pushy way.”
Jessica: “We used that ethos and same rigorous attention to detail with this house as we did with the clothes.”
Jamie: “For us, living well is living in harmony with your surroundings, with the people around you and with yourself, which this house lets us do.
“We’ve been here for a long time: 36 years. Before this we had a cottage on the other side of the hill with no plumbing and we’d have to walk half a mile to get wood. We realised it wasn’t practical and found this place through a friend.
“This is an old house – the oldest part is probably a couple of hundred years old – and then it’s been added to and added to, taking the form of a long stretch of barns coming off the main house. Little by little, we renovated and worked from them. Then, finally, we moved Toast away from home and we were able to unite them all as a single house.”
Jamie: “It’s all quite simple, the way we’ve done it. My brothers, who like soft furnishings, come here and look at the place as though we were living in a monastery.”
Jessica: “In the main house I suppose it’s sort of a modern take on the traditional country aesthetic. Traditional in that we used materials like lime plaster, slate, elm and lead, but have tried to keep it clean and restful.
“In the barns we tried to make a distinction by using cleaner, pared-back fittings and no skirting on the staircase, for example. But all the materials are still traditional, like the big slate sink, which was cut by a stonemason friend of ours.”
Jamie: “The house faces south, which is an enormous plus, and the gardens are as special as the house, with a feeling that you can’t contrive. They’re the result of decades of work, mostly Jessica’s.”
Jessica: “I like the funny little things we’ve done, like the grass sofa we made high on the bank, where we sit and drink tea. And Jamie gave me the shed in the garden for my birthday, which was made by a carpenter with recycled windows and a turf roof.
“It’s a really lovely view from the gardens, down the valley, where, at the bottom, is a gorgeous fast-flowing salmon river, the Cothi – our swimming spot when it’s hot.
“The landscape inspired me to write a book Gather Cook Feast, which was about a connection to place through food. It was a slightly abstract idea because it wasn’t just about, ‘Well a fish comes from this river so, therefore, it’s appropriate,’ but more about the feel of a place and how that translates to an atmosphere of a season, and into food.”
Jamie: “We’re staying in Wales but moving west, nearer the coast. It was a weird situation. We were walking on a winters’ day by the sea, I was daydreaming and said to Jess, “What I’d really like would be a Tudor house in this area,” thinking that such things didn’t exist. A couple of months later we were sent the details of one in the post and we’ve bought it.”
Jessica: “It comes with agricultural land, so we’ll be farming too, which is as terrifying as it is exciting. The house is in a shocking state so a first we’re going to be living in a hut with a shuttered concrete bunker we’ll convert into a kitchen. We’re up for the challenge, though, right?”
Jamie: “Yes, very much. But we’ll miss it here, it’s been our home for so many years and it’s simply a lovely house to live in. It’s the down-to-earth warmheartedness that I’ll miss most.”
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