'There is much to be said for decorating slowly and allowing layers to build up gradually': Country Life's Chelsea Flower Show stand designer opens the doors to his own Winchester home

The Country Life ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, designed by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture, is at stand PW215 at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 18–23.

To celebrate, you can buy a year-long subscription for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price. International offers also available. Until May 31.

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.

My childhood was spent among books and architectural drawings. The latter were those of my grandfather, the Classical architect Raymond Erith, and the former were those of my father, who was a bookseller, so it is perhaps no surprise that I now live surrounded by both.

This house is in Winchester, where I moved 15 years ago to become a director of ADAM Architecture. At first, the house was rather empty and simply decorated in muted colours. To make it a bit more homely, I started buying furniture at local auction houses, mainly from Andrew Smith at Itchen Stoke near Winchester, Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury and Bellmans in Winchester.

I found, to my surprise, that it was possible to buy late-Georgian tables and chairs very cheaply and my house soon filled up with brown furniture.

The next things I started to collect were pictures. I had made linocuts at school and had a couple of large architectural linocuts by Quinlan Terry, who had taken over my grandfather’s practice and in whose office I had trained when I left university.

I also love the work of a group of linocut artists in Great Bardfield in Essex, perhaps the best known of whom was Edward Bawden. I was very lucky to find several linocuts by Sheila Robinson, a pupil and later a close friend of Bawden’s, which I bought from her daughter Chloë Cheese about 10 years ago.

As well as linocuts, I have collected engravings with a connection to Winchester, particularly views of the cathedral and the college. There is a lovely print shop that I walk past on my way to and from work every day and which I often drop into at weekends.

I have also bought a few works by younger artists who have been inspired by the Great Bardfield artists, such as Emily Sutton, Ed Kluz and Michael Kirkman.

Although most of my architectural work is in England, there are occasional exceptions and, in 2010, I was commissioned to design a house in New Delhi. I had never been to India before and my visits offered an amazing opportunity to find out more about Indian architecture and culture. The experience also gave me a taste for Indian textiles and my house is now full of cushions, tablecloths and bedspreads in a wide range of beautiful hand-blocked fabrics.

The house is also full of my own work. A few years ago, I joined forces with my friends Francis Terry and Ben Pentreath to put on an exhibition at the RIBA in London that we called ‘Three Classicists’. We produced some large presentation drawings for it, most of which now hang in my office at work.

A few years later, I approached the RIBA about doing a show on my own called ‘Measure Draw Build’, which was held in 2017. After the exhibition, the drawings came back to Winchester and, to ensure they were in a safe place, I hung them all in my small study, which also has an old oak plan chest and a mahogany architect’s desk.

As well as drawings, the study is also usually full of books. It has become a kind of halfway house for books intended for either upstairs or downstairs and, every now and then, I have a big tidy up and they find their way onto shelves. But I find piles of books are a good thing to have around anyway, so there is always something close at hand to read. Many were from my father’s shop, Heywood Hill in Mayfair, and others have been gifts over the years. I also buy books from a stall in the cathedral close that is run by a friend, Miranda Bennett, and which raises money for the cathedral choristers.

As the house has filled up with furniture, pictures and books, I have begun to run out of space. For this reason, I have, more recently, been collecting smaller objects such as glass and china. Over the years, I have collected quite a bit of mochaware and lustreware, although I probably have enough of both now.

One of my most recent purchases were two lots of English Delftware plates, which I have hung on the wall — it seems like the best way to display them, although I’m aware it might seem old-fashioned.

Less old-fashioned is my kitchen, the central workbench of which was made by Bulthaup. I cook on an Aga, which is great for most of the year, but does make the kitchen rather warm in summer. Around the edge of the kitchen are cabinets that I designed to hide appliances and provide lots of storage.

Having painted most of the walls in tasteful blues, greens and greys when I first moved in, I have tried to be a bit more adventurous about colour and pattern in recent years. The house was built in the 1860s, so it seemed appropriate to use a bold wallpaper in the dining room. After much searching, I found a paper called Indian, produced by Morris and Co and designed by the architect George Gilbert Scott. It has a bold, graphic quality that goes well with the textiles and linocuts elsewhere in the house.

One of the bedrooms has been wallpapered in a pattern named Monkeys and Birds, designed by Sheila Robinson and re-issued by St Judes Gallery. I am currently looking at more wallpapers for other rooms in the house, but I don’t feel any great hurry to do this — it will simply happen when I find the right thing.

This is the same approach, I suppose, that I have taken to the whole house; it might be called Slow Decorating.

I have tried to make the house more comfortable over the years. Architects often seem to be happy living in quite Spartan conditions, but, influenced by my fiancée, Jane, and my teenage children, I have tried to create lots of places that are comfortable places to sit and relax for a chat or to curl up with a good book.

Every year, I go to Rome to teach measured drawing to American students and, if I have any spare time, I look out for small Grand Tour souvenirs in the antique shops around the Via dei Coronari. Recently, I found some marble obelisks and a pair of small bronze urns on pedestals. I also purchased a plaster bust of Ariadne, a cast of a Roman bust in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, from an auction house in West Sussex.

I have never really wanted to design a house for myself; I generally find it much easier to make decisions for other people. Perhaps one day, a client will commission me to completely design and decorate their house, which I would love to do — but only if they like bold wallpapers, Indian fabrics and lots of books.

Decorating is probably a job best left to professionals — and I have worked with many amazing decorators over the years — but I do think there is much to be said for decorating slowly and allowing layers to build up gradually. Homes are most interesting, after all, when they reflect the lives of their owners.

This feature originally appeared in the April 1, 2020, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.