For a long time, a boat on the Norfolk Broads provided enough of a reprieve from London for the interior designer Robert Moore and his partner Jonathan Beak. The big skies and abundant wildlife offered a welcome contrast to their city lives and a chance to live in the country without the commitment. Gradually, though, their friends began to have families and to move out of the capital.
‘We felt a bit like the last men standing,’ says Robert, who launched Moore Design – known for its smart, meticulously detailed projects – 15 years ago, after almost a decade spent working for Paolo Moschino for Nicholas Haslam. He and Jonathan made a five-year exit plan to leave London, but kept pushing it back. Five years became 20, then Covid forced their hand. The aim was to relocate to the North Norfolk coast – they wanted to be near the sea and to continue to use the boat.
Walls in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Dutch Pink’ showcase an Aubusson verdure tapestry from Joshua Lumley and an antique table from Brownrigg in the entrance hall.
Michael Sinclair
However, they kept the search area fairly wide. ‘The most important thing was to find the right house,’ Robert says, explaining that a Georgian rectory was what they had envisaged. ‘I certainly never imagined that we’d buy something with pebble dash.’ However, this handsome Edwardian house, with its Arts and Crafts instincts, won them over instantly: ‘The light and sense of space are amazing. We loved the building’s architecture and the layout with its central entrance hall, which the footprint of the entire house is based around. It also feels hidden away. We later found out that people who have lived here for a long time didn’t know it was there.’
Built in 1911, when the area was a holiday destination, the house was commissioned as a country home by Malcolm Mackenzie Douglas, a Victorian gentleman who’d recently returned from India. During the Second World War, it was requisitioned for the 6th Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment and, in 1940, it received a visit from the then prime minister, Winston Churchill.
Antique armchairs stand beside the chimneypiece with its Rafael Tur Costa artwork, 1969 in the drawing room.
Michael Sinclair