Inside Veere Grenney's 18th-century Palladian folly

[birds calling] [relaxing music]

I bought the lease in 1985.

I sold my flat in Notting Hill Gate

and 90% of the value of my flat in Notting Hill Gate,

I bought the lease on here, which was complete madness.

But I'd had this fantasy about this house from that moment.

I suppose, I'm an interior designer,

but if you want further analysis,

if you are a domestic interior designer,

I suppose you make houses or spaces beautiful but livable.

This house, obviously,

it's by Sir Robert Taylor, built in 1755.

It's got a very Georgian feeling to it.

When I first saw a photograph of it

when I was in New Zealand,

'cause David Hicks had the lease of it

in the very late fifties, early sixties

and saved it from demolition.

Almost 40 years now, I have spent probably every weekend

that I ever can in this house

and it is the perfect, perfect ideal for me,

for a single man.

A wonderful Palladian room,

a small kitchen and dining room,

a small bedroom and bathroom,

a guest house which I created with two bedrooms

and garden and lawn and formality that goes with it

and there's no better views in the world.

Now I was born in the very south of New Zealand,

in my twenties, I spent years traveling the hippie trail,

as they called it.

In the early seventies,

arrived in England, stayed in England,

and there was no trajectory for someone like me

from New Zealand who knew nobody,

how you manifest your arts.

I worked in restaurants,

'cause I had no qualification to do anything else.

But then I always loved the world of antique furniture

or pictures or anything beautiful.

So I there had a stall in the Portobello at the same time

and then after that, had a shop in Westbourne Grove,

selling anything that I could find

that I regard as beautiful.

And I met one day, Mary Fox Linton,

who was a very successful decorator at that time.

She asked me to come and work in her shop, which I did

and I was 32 or 33 and that was my first job.

This room is a canvas to paint,

the glorious things that needs no paintings.

The architecture itself lives, it has all those elements,

the allegorical elements of Palladian architecture.

So in this room it has four busts on the wall,

which represents the four ages of man

and they are bust of Roman emperors.

And in the two alcoves there would've been,

I suspect Adam and Eve, or a shepherd and Shepherdess.

I had this color mixed by a very, very sweet friend

at the time called Elizabeth Wynn,

who was a very well known decorator,

her aunt was Nancy Lancaster.

And it was a color

that Nancy Lancaster used to have in the hall at Kelmarsh.

And it's successful to me,

'cause it's brown based, it's not sugar based.

So it's not plaster and it's not sugary Barbie pink,

but it's a lovely soft Palladian pink,

if such a thing exists.

One thing that was difficult with the room is the curtains.

Never drop these,

I just pull down roll of blinds every night.

They've always been the same style.

The satin and then the taffeta is the white inside.

And I always love white with it,

to brighten it, to lift it.

They've always had the inverted pleat,

the very neat little bows,

which make them look very like couture

and just the ruffled edges at the base.

I've noticed that every room we do,

there's always a good bit of clash somewhere.

Pink and yellow is the best combination in the world,

it can also be the worst.

This chair is a classic John Farlow chair

and the painting is original Adam painting,

I mean it's divine, it's very pretty,

I think it's the most elegant thing in the world.

The sofa is one I designed

and it's meant to be with these broad arms

to follow the shape of the bay window.

Yeah, love the, love, love, love this chintz,

which is an old GP & J Baker,

revived by Robert Kime.

The chandelier is, in fact,

it's a wonderful company in London, whichever one uses,

called Vaughan, who make the most wonderful reproduction.

I can't bare, always un-decorated.

I usually want wallpaper, fabric, paintings.

Well the fabric is the French document

and it's late 19th century

and when you look at it closely,

there's so many colors all over it.

There's like, so you've got a color behind,

then you've got, the pattern as such,

it looks like a sort of gauze, almost a veil.

and then the flowers on top of that.

But it's all just part of the print and a stripe as well.

I mean talk about about, they must have been on drugs.

You've never got so much in one eye full

in your entire life, if you look at it closely!

[Veere laughing]

It's pretty remarkable.

[relaxing music continues]

This is the dining room.

When the house was built, this would just be an undercroft.

It wouldn't have had windows.

So David Hicks asked the local architect,

someone called Raymond Erith, who was a genius,

and Raymond Erith put in the,

[Veere speaking French]

The window opens and hooks onto the ceiling

and it is like being on a ship,

'cause you look right down the canal.

So it's like a ship's cabin and it's like a ship's galley

and it can do everything in it.

The table's an old farmhouse.

It's actually a wine tasting table from France.

It's in fruit wood.

I just polish it all the time,

but don't treat it with any respect at all,

it still looks fine 30 years later.

On the chairs is probably our signature fabric.

It's called, Temple.

And it's a bit like a Greek key,

it's not, it's a play on the Greek key.

This is a lovely painting by Maggi Hambling,

who's a wonderful British artist who I know.

The one on the right is a great friend of mine,

Gareth Devonald Smith, one of his little collages.

So again, they're just a collection of things

that I love and buy.

[buoyant music]

What I did with the space,

is I made the doors into shutters.

So when I'm not here, I close the shutters

and inside I put a pair of French windows.

So the whole point really was to be able to sleep here

and look down the canal.

And upstairs I put in a full bathroom

of a bath and a separate loo and a wash-hand basin.

So it's a little self-contained ship's cabin, really,

with a full double bed down here, looking down the canal.

Sits my fabrics on the curtains and the headboard

and then lovely Indian miniature pictures around.

I mean, there's not very much that you can do

as I just like it being very, very simple,

almost Scandinavian in feeling,

'cause it is what it is, what it is, what it is!

And you can't do anything about it.

The ideal of Palladian architecture

was a wonderful building and a landscape.

It wasn't about gardens and adornment.

So in this house, I have hedges,

which besides defining the landscape,

give me an opportunity to have secret gardens

that aren't seen when you look at the external of the house.

I've always had a thing about dailies.

I planted these dailies, it must have been about 1990.

Judith who looks after the garden for me,

always puts lots of manure over them, so they're kept warm

and I just keep on coming back every year.

It's the best value in the world.

Those, I mean, I'd say for almost 30 years

have just repeated to look like that,

every single year. Madness!

We are now in the little guest house.

It was probably built as, or converted,

as dog kennels at one stage,

when there was probably a bigger estate and a hunt.

David Hicks made two bedrooms out of them.

So they are very modest little rooms,

but they're perfectly comfortable.

They're centrally heated and they have everything you need.

Whenever, in my opinion, you have a guest room,

you should try and make it a little bit romantic

and a little bit different from the norm,

because hopefully as a guest you're there for a few days

and it's a treat, as opposed to day-to-day life.

So this is an old Swedish bed I've had for years.

Usually, I can't bare bed covers.

So I love beautiful blankets, crisp sheets and pillows

and then usually essentially a nighter down

or a throw on the bed,

because there's nothing nicer than an afternoon nap,

with just a throw or a nighter down.

In the other room,

there are a charming little pair of old hospital beds

as a pair of beds and this just being a double.

So, and then I just use it, the walls

as a repository for all the paintings

I've got nowhere else to hang.

So there's some by my sister Sarah,

there's sketches of one of my old apartments,

just a complete mishmash of things that I love

and they look nice on the walls.

Oh, I love geraniums so much,

I wanted greenhouses for my geraniums

and so, I bought very inexpensive greenhouses

and I dug them down in the ground

so you don't see them from the house.

And I love them, particularly in the big room,

I've especially grew this color pink,

which looks lovely in the pale pink of the room.

Well, I mean, there's nothing nicer

than a Sunday morning fiddling in the greenhouse

with the geraniums, so it's a very lovely thing to do

and they're very therapeutic.

There wouldn't be ever a moment when I just don't love it

and I've loved it so much all these years,

I mean, when I think back on my life and all my career,

I don't think I could have the career I had

unless I used to retreat here most weekends.

And the lovely thing about being here, I love walking.

So it's always about walking, always about the dog,

always about having friends to stay.

I've had weddings, my niece's wedding here.

My parents, great birthdays here.

So it's been a great place of celebration

for lots of occasions in my 40 years,

but it's also been that wonderful place of meditation,

retreat and appreciation.

And it still is only about appreciation,

because to live with this view and in this place,

that appears to be untouched by the rest of the world

is pretty rare.

[buoyant music continues]