'Comfortable, cosseting and far from the madding crowd': The recently refurbished Cornish cottage that proves Victorian decor is making a comeback

Black-and-white images of Victorian domestic interiors tend to reveal an unhinged eclectism that would send a minimalist running for the smelling salts; folding screens, aspidistras, antimacassars, ostrich feathers, dried flowers, taxidermy — even the family dog was in danger of being festooned with a tasselled pelmet if it was foolish enough to stand still for long.

This aspect of Victorian interior design is the subject of Domestic Gods, in which the author, Deborah Cohen, examines why some Victorians had such an insatiable appetite for stuff. It kicked off early in the century, but grew exponentially later on when ‘rising incomes combined with the bounty of industrial manufacture carried this tide of consumption to new heights’.

Where the Great Exhibition helped create the desire, the emergence of new temples to consumerism, Selfridges, Liberty and Derry & Toms sated it. The focus of her book, however, is on a certain type of Victorian home, namely those of the urban rich in London and the other burgeoning cities, the fortunes of which grew exponentially during the Industrial Revolution. Of course, there were plenty of Victorians who were more considered in their approach; contemporary depictions of Kelmscott Manor when William Morris and his family lived there depict rooms arranged with enormous discipline and Robert Tait’s painting of Thomas Carlyle’s house in Chelsea shows a more modish interior decorated with similar restraint.

Beatrix Potter’s home, Hill Top in Cumbria, offers an insight into the decoration of humbler houses of the time. Although Sir John Betjeman and Gavin Stamp succeeded in changing perceptions of Victorian architecture in the closing decades of the 20th century, late-19th-century interiors have rarely received the adulation enjoyed by those of the Georgian period.

There have been flickers of interest; Uncle Monty’s London drawing room in Bruce Robinson’s filmWith-nail and I revived interest in the sybaritic pleasures of Victorian upholstery (and Ziegler carpets) and the appeal of Morris & Co and Liberty fabrics have never really gone away. In the 1970s, Laura Ashley achieved considerable success summoning up a stylistic amalgam of Victorian and Edwardian country style, but it was soon eclipsed by the pared-back aesthetic of Terence Conran’s Habitat.

There are signs, however, that a new generation of designers is discovering that the simpler style of rural Victorian interiors offers the perfect way to bring to life smaller houses and cottages of the period (a decade ago, the knee-jerk reaction was to paint them white from top to toe).

For their 19th-century owners, these houses were sanctuaries from the demands of hard work and the weather, in contrast to the maximalist homes of the affluent townspeople, for whom, as Prof Cohen writes, ‘possessions became a way of defining oneself’. In more modest homes, furnishings were valued for comfort, pleasing looks and utility, in line with William Morris’s maxim that one should avoid anything in a house that is neither beautiful nor useful.

An artfully conceived example is Plum Cottage in Padstow, Cornwall, which has been brought to life by Jess Alken and her husband, Ash, the latest addition to their growing collection of highly atmospheric holiday cottages on the north Cornish coast.

Its interiors were designed in partnership with Tom and Katie Cox, the siblings behind HÁM Interiors. The mixture of antiques, artwork and new pieces inspired by the past, combined with a layered mix of fabric and wallpaper, creates a look that is a stylish celebration of Victorian domesticity. Alken was brought up at nearby Harlyn House (now The Pig hotel), and this project offered an opportunity to restore a house of more manageable proportions. The result is all you’d want a cottage to be: comfortable, cosseting and far from the madding crowd.

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