Personality and fun in some spaces, calm and tranquil in others, Eve and James share their famous cottage with Starbuck the cat and a full-sized skeleton
When someone sees a traditional Welsh cottage from the outside they probably expect the inside to be that twee and deliver a traditional cottage interior design which, of course, is totally up to the resident and, arguably in most cases, accurate.
But that’s not the case at Llantwit Cottage, where couple Eve and James have spent 10 years not only updating it but making it a unique tour through their lives, the personal treasures that they love, and the quirky items that make the house their home.
It is such an expected and distinctive cottage interior that their friend had no hesitation in putting it forward to be considered for the latest BBC Cymru Wales’ series of Wales’ Home of the Year, and it was eagerly snapped up by the producers for its visual impact; eclectic yet curated with care and thought. For more home, renovation and interiors stories sent to your inbox twice a week sign up to the property newsletter here.
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Called Llantwit Cottage and located near Neath, the creation of the couple’s sanctuary almost didn’t make it onto the TV screen. Eve, aged 44 and originally from the Swansea area, explains: “My husband’s a teacher locally, so he was a little bit apprehensive, you know, do we really want people to know where we live?
“But we just felt that it was something that we might regret not doing, no matter how cringe or embarrassing it might be, it just felt like it might be an opportunity not to miss really. It’s such a historic house locally, most people know it anyway.”
Llantwit Cottage was the home of renowned explorer and one of the country’s greatest naturalists, Alfred Russel Wallace, renting it from 1846 until his historic 1848 expedition to the Amazon. His most famous discovery was that of evolution; co-publishing the theory of evolution by natural selection with Charles Darwin in 1858 according to website Dramatic Heart Wales.
Now it was going to be in the public eye again, this time for the eclectic interiors this adventurous couple have created.
Eve says: “I didn’t watch it live, it was my worst nightmare being filmed, so I made James watch it first because I was so nervous how I would come across and what everything in the house was going to look like! When he said it was fine I watched it afterwards on iPlayer.
“But James did go into school the next day and some of the kids had it on their phones and they had screenshots of it and were saying, ‘oh, look at all this stuff in your house!’. I think he wasn’t as worried then because it wasn’t as bad as he was expecting.
“It’s probably the tidiest it’s ever been! I’m a very tidy person anyway, I try to keep everything pretty tidy most of the time. But we weren’t really sure what to expect with the filming crew, so we did a bit of extra spring cleaning just because we weren’t sure how close they were going to get some things – I’m not that crazy about cleaning and tidying all the time!”
The couple moved from a two-bedroom apartment in Cardiff Bay to the ten room cottage about 10 years ago and have slowly transformed it into their sanctuary.
Eve remembers: “We had very little when we moved in, we didn’t have a lot of budget. It’s taken a lot of time, and at the beginning we didn’t do anything substantial because it was such a big jump for us. So it’s taken 10 years for us to get to this and we’ve had to do everything gradually, we’ve had to be fairly organic with how we’ve looked to decorate, and trying to use things that we had already plus buying second hand things, buying vintage things.”
When it comes to decorating a room Eve says there are no rules but there is guidance – they have to love the colours and adore the items they add in, that they mean something to them or have a cool vibe and they don’t want to be a slave to interior trends.
Eve says: “I love all of those high-end designs and all of those beautiful things you see in magazines but it’s just very expensive. You have to do it all in one go for it to look amazing, so it just wasn’t an option for us.
“When we arrived we thought, ‘what are some easy wins, that we can do in terms of just changing some colour, getting some paint, changing some soft furnishings?’ And then it was just a case of not taking ourselves too seriously, really, with what we wanted to do.
“We did try and get a flavour for each space by spending time in it. The snug, for example, we wanted it to be nice and bright, because it’s quite a dark room, it doesn’t get a lot of natural light. So the floor is a lovely sort of copper wood colour, so we decided to bring some coppers and some pinks in. So it wasn’t planned out, mapped out to any great degree, it just developed slowly and organically.
“When we go travelling or we go places, we know, we try and pick up things that remind us of experiences or places we’ve been and that also express our personality, it’s really nice that the house has come on that journey with us.”
Not everyone has the courage to throw interior caution to the wind and express themselves fully inside their homes, worried about how it will look or judgement from others.
Eve says: “What I’d say to anyone looking to be a bit quirkier with their spaces – it’s your home, it’s your safe place. You should never be decorating to impress other people.
“But try to bring your personality into it and don’t take yourself too seriously. Ultimately, do you like it enough? To me, that is the most important thing. I don’t care if people think it’s a bit crazy, if it’s a bit strange, I like looking around my house and seeing things that just make me smile and remind me of something.”
There are many moments to stop and admire the view in Eve and James’ house, from the cinema seats in the snug that have a full size skeleton sitting on them at Hallowe’en time, to the mix and clash of patterns and colours found in some of the rooms.
The library is a good example of bringing statement pieces into a space and letting them sing, even if they are not in ‘matching’ harmony, with walls kept plain to ensure maximum impact but the bespoke dark navy bookshelf at one end used as a visual bookmark (excuse the pun!) within the space.
Eve says: “I wanted that room to be quite sort of opulent, and I wanted deliberately to have the sort of contrasting patterns, so I’d seen the two statement chairs from Abigail Ahern, and I just love them. I’ve seen them in her store in London and they were really comfortable.
“We’ve got green blinds for contrast and then a little sofa that came with us from the flat – it was the first thing I ever bought for it, and I got it recovered in a shade of purple.
“Then I went to Rocket St. George, which is one of my favourite websites, and bought the palm tree and some crazy neon bulbs and the disco ball drinks cabinet and just some really cool things that kind of just bring everything to life.”
Eve also suggests that just a simple change of cupboard or drawer handle or the addition of a quirky cushion, piece of artwork or one of your own photographs can add some extra personality to a space without spending a lot of money or diving completely into a unique and eclectic design.
But some rooms at the cottage are calmer and more homogenised Eve thinks, including paying homage to the memory of Alfred by the introduction of Emma Shipley extinct wallpaper that has a design that includes the dodo and saber tooth tigers, plus Eve found that, quite randomly, within their eclectic collection they even had a dodo lamp.
The décor of the ‘National Park’ bedroom has Alfred’s life as inspiration, kitted out in cabin-style furniture from Barker and Stonehouse, Pendleton wool blankets and tourist pennants based in nature. That room is also where the couple keep and display their travel books and atlases and store all our camping gear.
She says: “I suppose we’ve got a mix of some rooms that are a bit more mismatched, so our main hallway where we’ve got the cinema things, it’s a bit more of a visual soup compared to, you know, our guest room, the pink room upstairs, which is a bit more muted.
“Then the library has a slightly different feel for that space, so over the ten years it has been fairly organic, but there is usually an overarching plan, colour scheme or theme. I do try and build a room based on maybe some key items that we love. And all of our rooms have themed books in that themed room, so then I always know where they are.”
Some people have suggested that the couple’s home can seem childish in some spaces but Eve describes it as ‘a bit of a grown-up kid’s house. She says: “Ultimately, it’s about having that joy, I think, every day in your own home.”
There’s style mixed with personality and fun that embody the heart, soul and spirit of Eve and James in every room, and surely that’s what a home is at its core, not an Instagram showcase but a comfortable place to relax and be surrounded by all that you love, even if that is a large skeleton. For more property, renovation, and interior design stories join our Amazing Welsh Homes Facebook group here.
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