![\"Image](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/L1630465.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\nFor antiques dealer and interior designer Edward Hurst, a narrative thread is a key part of the process for decorating a house. Called on by the film director Guy Ritchie to transform a farmhouse on his estate into a guest house for shooting parties and other gatherings, he found that the narrative for the house came to him immediately: it was to have the feel of an inn in colonial Williamsburg, the town that was the capital of the British colony of Virginia until the state voted for independence in the late 18th century. \u201cAs soon as Guy told me what he wanted, it was a clear vision to me,\u201d explains Edward. “It needed to be \u2018American inn meets English pub\u2019, but comfortable. There’s a slightly filmic quality to it.\u201d That quality would seem almost inevitable, given that his client has directed, written and produced dozens of successful films and television shows over the past 30 years.<\/p>\n
The pair had met socially at parties at St Giles House in Dorset, near where both Edward and Guy are based, and Guy had seen other projects that Edward had completed and was drawn to the quality and attention to detail on display in all of them. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want a formulaic roll out, he wanted it to be a little bit different,\u201d says Edward, adding that Guy was \u201ca great client\u00a0\u2013 he has a strong sense of his taste and idea of what he wanted. I\u2019m not drawn to jobs where the client has no view \u2013 that holds no interest to me at all. I love a client with a clear vision that you incorporate into the project.\u201d From Guy’s end, that vision was based in the 18th century, and the brief also included the idea of open fire cooking (something Guy personally loves), simple, sturdy antique furniture, and quirky art.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The muskets above the fireplace in this seating area, adjoining the dining room, were bought by Edward from a French street market 10 years ago. They create the feel on the colonial Williamsburg inn he was aiming to evoke, as does the choice of furniture and the fire.<\/p>\n
Alixe Lay<\/p>\n
The pairing was a match made in heaven, given Edward’s passion for antiques. He has been collecting them since he was 12 and furnished the farmhouse from his own stock, as he does with every project. In fact, on an early visit to Guy’s own house, Ashcombe, formerly owned by Cecil Beaton, Edward encountered a painting hanging up which he had recently tried to buy from a sale \u2013 evidence that their tastes were aligned in many ways. There are elements that look straight out of a Guy Ritchie film set, most notably the muskets above the fireplace in one of the two sitting rooms. \u201cIt was very immediate to me that there needed to be muskets there,\u201d laughs Edward. They were not, however, directly influenced by Guy’s approach to his sets \u2013 instead they emerged from Edward’s \u201cgreat love of 18th-century engravings where you have muskets and pistols on walls in that slightly Hogarth period. It was a great opportunity to do that.\u201d Like practically everything else in the house, they were already in Edward’s collection and have their own story. \u201cI\u00a0bought them on holiday in south of France in a vide grenier 10 years ago,\u201d he explains. \u201cOne is French and one is English so they’d probably been there since the Napoleonic war. They cost nothing to buy but then they cost a fortune to get back to the UK. We couldn’t exactly smuggle them in the car \u2013 I had my children with me and it would’ve been a bit risky.\u201d<\/p>\n
All the furniture and art in the house is in keeping with the narrative and history of the property. Most likely built in the 18th century, it was extended by Guy to include the bedrooms upstairs and a central spine of a corridor off which they all sit. \u201cWith this house you have very much the 18th-century ground floor elements and then we wanted to place the newly created bedrooms in the mid 19th century. We wanted to create some logic and present a narrative of the history of the house in the decoration \u2013 to make a reason for the house to have been extended, however make-believe it all might be. I like to time travel with a house a bit and romanticise it \u2013 it makes it more enjoyable, I hope.\u201d Upstairs, that was achieved with a medley of wallpapers throughout the bedrooms, all different but all speaking the same decorative language. As with the colours throughout the farmhouse, they are \u201cquite gentle, quite soft and in keeping with Ashcombe itself and Cecil Beaton’s time there\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For antiques dealer and interior designer Edward Hurst, a narrative thread is a key part of the process…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4094,4022,77,124977,91012,105098,91010,91011,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-662545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-country","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-farmhouses","14":"tag-houses-belonging-to-interesting-people","15":"tag-houses-by-our-top-100-interior-designers-architects","16":"tag-traditional-country","17":"tag-traditional-houses","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115808745750214079","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}