Home Sweet Home

Above: The hallway with original flagstones

Above: The girls' new sitting room

Above: The Rowlands in 1907

Above: Poppy the dog sitting in her favourite spot!

Above: A cosy corner near an original alcove

Above: The dining room, originally the kitchen

It’s not every day that a couple of American tourists visiting Dorset knock on your door claiming to know the history of your home. Imagine then, how surprised Paul and Catherine Macrae were when Ron and Beth Thomson called at their home on the outskirts of Sturminster Newton bearing the family history of its earliest occupants whom they had been researching.

Ron Thomson’s father, it transpired, knew the first owner of Holly House, Samuel Rowland, and had watched him building the new home for his family in the latter years of the 19th century. Samuel, who was a successful cattle dealer in Sturminster Newton, lived there with his four sons and wife Polly, who died in 1934, until his own death five years later when the property passed to one of their sons who was also named Sam.

During the Second World War Holly House served as a temporary home for young evacuees who were waiting to be housed, and at one time there were 18 girls living there! One of those girls was Sylvie Rose who recalls travelling down by train from Waterloo to Templecombe Station on a very hot day in May 1940, and feeling very scared and homesick. Her first view of Sturminster Newton, glimpsed through the window of the ambulance in which she was being conveyed, was of the old mill and River Stour. It was an unforgettable sight which she thought was ‘so beautiful and such a contrast from London’. Sylvie quickly fell in love with the North Dorset countryside and when the war ended she decided to remain in Sturminster Newton where she still lives today.

Paul and Catherine Macrae have lived at Holly House with their four daughters, Holly and Tess and 10-year-old twins Abigail and Alice, for the past eight years, but it hadn’t proved an easy property to find. Following the birth of the twins, the Macraes began searching for a larger family home. Apart from low-ceilinged cottages which wouldn’t accommodate Paul’s 6’4” frame, there were very few sizeable family homes on the market at that time in the Sturminster Newton area where Catherine had been born and lived for much of her life.

When they eventually came across Holly House, it was just what they had been hoping to find. The late-19th-century red-brick property was in a quiet location and had been modernised in recent times, but it still retained many of its original features as well as a wealth of character. It had a history, too.

Building a family home...

When Samuel Rowland built his family home, at one end of the property he had added a ‘garage’ for his horse-drawn cart with an adjoining stable for the horse and a hayloft over. The garage had since been converted to a kitchen, and the former stable to a garage, but both retained their original floors. In the kitchen, flagstones were acceptable, but the cobbled floor in the stable which sloped towards a central drain just wasn’t practical and didn’t fit in with Paul and Catherine’s plans to convert this area into a playroom for the girls. A wooden floor over the cobbles was the answer. As there was no heating in the stable, or the hayloft above which had been converted into a double bedroom, radiators linking to the existing heating system were duly installed.

The hayloft bedroom, the largest of Holly House’s five bedrooms, had a false ceiling and lacked not only character but also an en-suite bathroom and fitted wardrobes. Paul and Catherine decide to take out the suspended ceiling, so that the room would be open to the eaves, and keep the exposed brickwork which gave the room a ‘cottagey’ feel. Much to their surprise, and delight, they noticed the names of various wartime evacuees pencilled onto the brickwork! One wakeful night, Catherine recalls, she had lain in bed counting the brick courses in the wall to work out if there would be enough height to add a mezzanine floor. There was, and so a pine-floored gallery and balcony was built to accommodate a bank of fitted wardrobes with part-glazed doors which could be accessed from the room below by an open-tread pine staircase.

As one might expect, the girls’ bedrooms are gloriously ‘girly’ with lots of pinks, pastel shades and bright fabrics. Adding interest and colour to the walls are gilt-framed pictures of enchanting fairytale-like scenes, and  collages of old bits of wrapping paper and glitter which Catherine made for her daughters. She admits, with a wistful smile, that when the twins started school she rather missed the childish arty activities they had shared and so she continued to ‘cut and stick’ in those rare, spare moments. Catherine’s other love is sewing, especially cross stitch, and in the kitchen is a set of cushions which she has made and charmingly decorated with pictures of cows.

While her daughters were at school Catherine was also able to make good use of her skills as an accredited practitioner in the ancient Egyptian art of ‘hand sugaring’, a form of hair removal using lemon, sugar and water which are massaged into the skin and then deftly ‘flicked’ off. After initially working part-time in the spare fifth bedroom, and as her reputation grew and she needed more space, two years ago Catherine opened her salon ‘Sweet Solutions’ in Sturminster Newton where she also offers training courses in traditional hand-sugaring. Since then, her eldest daughter Holly, who completed a beauty course at Stroud College, has joined her mother in the salon and their range of services has expanded.

Rooms for improvement...

The busy Macraes have also found time to make various improvements to the ground- floor rooms of their home. In the sitting room they have exposed the original wooden-planked floor and installed a wood-burning stove in place of the previous, modern fire. A sun room which had been added to the rear of Holly House at some stage was taken down and a slate-roofed, single-storey extension running almost the width of the property built in its place. This gave Paul and Catherine a new utility room and a light and spacious sitting room for the girls as well as usefully increasing the area of the converted stable into which Paul’s mother could then move.

Thanks to lots of hard work, the garden at Holly House is a delight, too, especially on a hot summer’s day when dappled shade provided by the orchard, or the cool, cascading waters of their wildlife-rich pond, offer a pleasant alternative to the flowery, sun-kissed patio.

Samuel Rowland’s family and Sylvie Rose were clearly happy at Holly House. The Macraes are too, and lovingly call it their ‘happy home’. Catherine adds: ‘We really are privileged to live in a house in which so many other people have enjoyed living.’

PORTFOLIO

Location: Sturminster Newton, North Dorset.
Built: circa 1890s.
Accommodation: Ground floor: sitting room, dining room, kitchen, utility room, cloakroom/WC, office/study, playroom/sitting room, self-contained annexe. First floor: four bedrooms, family bathroom, master bedroom with en-suite bathroom and mezzanine floor.

Catherine’s salon, ‘Sweet Solutions’, which specialises in traditional hand sugaring and a range of beauty treatments, is in Station Road, Sturminster Newton.
Tel: 01258 473817.