Here are some photographs which make me very happy, and may be of interest to some followers! Two weekends ago, Charlie and I went back down to Littlebredy for a wonderful celebratory service for the restoration of the church windows.
If you’re a long term follower, you may remember that about five years ago we started a fundraising campaign to raise money for the restoration of the stained glass windows in our little church. The total cost of restoring the windows and stonework was almost £100,000. The church received an amazingly generous donation in memory of a local person who had sadly died, but we still had a huge shortfall. Instagram and my blog stepped in! We set up a JustGiving page, and within a short period of time very generous followers had raised over £30,000. Grant funding made the rest.
It took a long time to get approval for the works from the Diocesan Approval Committee but we got there in the end, and for the last year, Dan Humphries, the stained glass expert, carefully worked his away around the church, accompanied by Simon Crumbleholme the (brilliantly named) builder, who restored the stone frames. It’s now all finished and the church is in amazing condition for the long term.
It was lovely to be back in the village after all this time for the service, and I’ve written a little blog about this and the following weekend up in Orkney.
If you follow @pentreathandhall you’ll know that we have a regular newsletter which comes out weekly and also my intermittent blog with lots of posts from Rousay and other travels. Be sure to sign up!
But thank you to everyone here who contributed. It took a long time, but we got there!
This week, something very exciting arrived at Westness… what’s called the ‘dummy’ for the new book that @mccormickcharlie and I have been writing for the last year about our time in Dorset, being published by @quadrillebooks this October.
The pages are still completely blank (so it’s like a beautiful new notebook) but everything else about the book is exactly as it will be on publication day. Publishers do this so that you can hold and feel the weight of the book in your hands. When you’ve been looking at screens and print outs, there’s no substitute for holding a physical object to feel certain that everything is just right. And unpacking it was just one of those moments when the beautiful design by Julian Roberts felt to be so.
When we got an inkling that we would be leaving Dorset, we decided to start taking a lot of photographs of daily life at home, partly as a form of memoir, and partly as a practical record.
We’ve spent the last year pulling together many memories, and writing about my early days, Charlie’s arrival and the making of his beautiful garden; and about the time when it came to leave, and about the move to Orkney. And then there is a room-by-room description of the house (including plans), and an area-by-area description of the garden, together with a detailed look at the changing seasons which make up ‘A Year at the Parsonage’ - which gave the book its title.
Now, of course, we’ve said goodbye to Dorset and nothing makes me happier than the fact that we kept a record, and a little book about our time there is coming. The book is now available for pre-order at all good booksellers, and a kind friend in publishing told me a few years ago that the number of pre-orders does make a real difference to a book’s success. If you’d like to be among the very first to get a copy (and I’m remembering the fact that my last book, An English Vision, sold out very quickly and it was a while before the second printing arrived…) Charlie and I would be very grateful if you’d make that pre-order! And as I said in @houseandgardenuk this morning, all you really need to know is that his sponge cake recipe is going to be in the book! Happy Easter!
It’s been wonderful spending a week in beautiful Charleston, SC, helping on a fantastic project headed by Mayor William Cogswell to deliver 3500 new affordable homes for the city over the next eight years. We were part of a design team led by master planner Christian Sottile and his fantastic studio, and including my good friend @hugh_petter from Adam Architecture. Sam Clarry from our @benpentreathstudio was a key part of the delivery!
It was just so good to absorb the amazing qualities of this city and to see how we can stitch new development into disused sites and replacing very outdated 1950s social housing stock with better buildings.
We spent a lot of time walking and visiting…. Also a brilliant visit led by legendary developer Vince Graham to his new town of I’On, just on the other side of the river (slides 13 - 15) which is a completely new place based on traditional principles - the photos here show streets which are just 25 years old.
It was wonderful to meet so many Charlestonians taking great interest in the development of the city which we all love so much! Thank you again to Josh, Christian and all at the city for asking us to be involved.
Of all the questions I’m asked the most here on instagram, it’s “WHAT COLOUR IS THE HOUSE GOING TO BE”.
Well, I’m pleased to report there is a blog (posted today) called “What colour is the house going to be (and other stories) over at the INSPIRATION page of @pentreathandhall
So if you want to know the answer, head over there. Of course, loyal readers of the blog will recall that I posted the answer to the question back in the autumn of last year, and again, loyal readers of the @ft_houseandhome will also know the answer already. I feel I’ve definitely posted links to these venerable answers a few times! But it’s one that you won’t find out on instagram alone until Charlie and I actually paint the house. Which will happen right at the end of the construction project we’re about to start on, so if you can’t wait for three years, I suggest you refer to the blog.
In the meantime we had a lot of fun this weekend with a crazy crew from @scenery_ltd taking photos of Charlie and me, and making a little film about our life in Rousay, which will come out in the summer. So it was a nice moment for me to take a lot of pics in the house and I post some of these of our collections merely in the interest to make you feel better about yourself if you are a collector. If your husband, wife or partner criticises your tendency to over-collect, you are welcome to show this evidence of your innocence.
Final photos, amazing orange full moon.
It’s been rather a long time since I’ve posted, but it’s nice to have a little diary of the months of January and February here, and to point you in the direction of two blogs which I’ve posted over @pentreathandhall in the last two weeks describing travels in January and news from Rousay, which is all anyone really wants to see and read.
In reverse order, these photos show last weekend, and what felt like the beginning of spring around the corner (not quite arrived, but most certainly around the corner) at home… William Nicholson at Pallant House, a short Rousay weekend, New York in the last blizzard, not this one, one painting from the wonderful Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, a night in Chicago, and scenes from Charlottesville, VA, and finally an amazing January sunset on an evening in New York.
A whirlwind month, but I’m never happier than being home @westnesshouse
Looking back at the beautiful and amazing landscape that Orkney turned into last week… one of the heaviest snowfalls in a long time. Rousay was so magical. We couldn’t get in or out, but in a way there’s nothing better than just having to stay put. We had Bridie staying, and her New Year trip for a few days turned into a longer stay!
I wrote a little blog about Christmas and the snow earlier in the week. Happy New Year!
Getting together for our annual dinner, which feels like it’s settling into a lovely tradition now, reminds me of something. There is no substitute on earth for sitting and eating and drinking, and celebrating a good year together, in person. Why is that? It’s because we’re all people – we are social beings. We’re not computers, we’re not AI bots, we’re not units. We’re all people, and I think this dinner, so beautifully cooked and so beautifully put together, is what reminds us that the studio is not just a business, it’s not a spreadsheet or an algorithm, it’s not just numbers. We are a collective of skilled, like-minded people of all ages and many talents who have a shared purpose in creating wonderful buildings, interiors, furniture, towns.
Unfortunately because we are architects and designers a lot of it is about numbers or avoiding the terrible things that could happen if our buildings fall down, or the slightly less terrible things happen if someone’s sofa is late for delivery, and I guess, from time to time, it can feel to all of us as if the numbers or the legals or getting things right or avoiding the wrong things can become overwhelming and what keeps you up at night. In fact, this is a real problem of the age we live and work in – which I suppose has become one of incredible aversion to risk, and equally, simultaneously, of ever-increasing bureaucratic complexity. I think an awful lot of us feel this every single day at work.
It can sometimes be hard to remember that we are all, collectively, designers, working together to make the world a more beautiful and I hope a more meaningful place. So it’s good to be in this wonderful candlelit room reminding ourselves that not a single one of these talented and renowned architects and artists made an impact on the world because they were good at spreadsheets or avoided making mistakes. No – they all have a common thread – they knew how to think, how to see, how to look, how to learn, how to connect their hand and their eye through their minds, and they knew how to create things or buildings or places of beauty and meaning.
As the old year turns to the new, it’s been a lovely start to 2026 to be able to share that in the King’s New Year’s Honours list, I’ve been made an OBE (which is an Officer of the Order of the British Empire), for services to design.
I have received some incredibly kind messages from friends who notice these things but It really struck home what an honour it is when some of our neighbours in the Pier Bar in Rousay last night, on new years eve, offered their quiet congratulations having read about it in the Orcadian newspaper yesterday - it’s somehow a more meaningful thing than I think I’d imagined.
I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to post about this award here because it’s hard to avoid being a bit cringemaking when you thank an awful lot of people who make up the warp and the weft of your cloth, ranging from my first boss Charles Morris who scooped me up from an art history course and gave me the confidence to start in the world of architecture; the Prince of Wales’s institute which took me in as a precocious and very annoying student and knocked some sense into my brain (especially my tutor Alan Powers) - opening up a world of possibilities that it was okay to design in a classical language of architecture; to my wonderful five years with Anne Fairfax and Richard Sammons in New York, who both taught me more than I ever realised at the time. Then there’s my friend Marianne Cusato who now is a brilliant teacher at the University of Notre Dame; George Saumarez Smith and Francis Terry, with whom I put on the Three Classicists Exhibition; William Smalley, who taught me the importance of quality; Bridie who has run the shop with me for all this time, and everyone in the studio - my fellow directors and the entire practice filled with dedicated and happy makers of our craft; all our wonderful clients, collaborators in the worlds of landscape and engineering, and all the builders and craftspeople who execute our designs, be they interiors, buildings or towns. And finally, last but never least, there’s Charlie, who’s done more to make me who I am than anyone.
I’m sad Mum and Dad are no longer around to see this day, because it would have made them very happy!
It’s been a beautiful few days on Rousay, here’s a small glimpse of the chapel on Christmas Eve, and some of the amazing weather we’ve enjoyed over the last week - flat calm seas and amazing sunsets.
I’ve had a lot of travels recently - which makes it all the more wonderful to be home!
Now that we are back in Rousay, New Zealand and Australia seem so far away, its strange to think that we’ve only been back for a little over two weeks… and of course as we’ve just had the shortest day of the winter in Orkney, they’ve had the longest day of summer. I love that balance; they will be tipping into Autumn soon, just as we begin our journey into spring, and so the cycle continues. It was a wonderful trip for a family wedding and catch up, and then a road trip to see friends and familiar landscapes, and then I was working for a day down in Arrowtown and back over to Australia. A lovely last two days in Sydney and when we were having our lost short morning swimming in warm water and lying in the hot sun at Bondi, it seems unreal to imagine the horrors that would be unfolding there just a week later. Praying for peace, as always.
Then we were back to London and arriving early that morning, we went for a walk and witnessed a beautiful dawn over St Pauls.
Travels were not quite over - I had a beautiful visit to Florence for a weekend. That’s where these photos start. And then, home at last.
I’ve written a couple of small blogs about all this over at @pentreathandhall
At home for the holidays and having a nice look back at some photographs from earlier in the autumn to record to the grid. I’ve posted a lot of these images on stories but they are ephemeral. Here are a few shots of autumn in Rousay, in November, when I was home for two weeks or so around my birthday. What a beautiful time it was…. Super still days, golden sunsets, happy times and Nancy all grown up now.
We’ve been working on the Duchy of Cornwall’s and King Charles III’s extraordinary Poundbury project for over twenty years now. Over that time it’s been amazing to help to steer the shape of the development, its warp and weft, to create areas with varied architectural character and yet which hang together as a whole; which respect Leon Krier’s revolutionary and beautiful masterplan, and which yet bed the place closely in an authentic English architectural vernacular. Poundbury has changed in these last two decades, as the final shape of the settlement becomes clear, the squares become occupied with shops and businesses, the school thrives, and the landscape settles and matures. Now it’s just three years from completion.
In all this, my studio has worked closely with a very dedicated team of people at the Duchy, and local house builders @cg_fry@morrish_homes who have done the most remarkable job to bring the vision to life - but above all with an architect who I’m so happy to call my friend and great collaborator - @geosaumarezsmith . Together, George and I have now designed maybe 1250 (or more) houses and buildings in Poundbury, to the point where, when I’m walking around, I can’t quite tell which of the houses he’s done, and which have been drawn in our studio!
Last night the recent phases of Poundbury won a coveted architectural award given by @thegeorgiangroup at their Annual Awards. It’s very infrequent that the Group gives an award to a housing development, I can’t think of the last time that happened. So it’s a real honour for the whole project to have received this recognition of the highest standards of classical architecture, promoted by these awards (which have been running for the last 22 years and have made a huge difference to the flourishing of the classical revival in the UK). I couldn’t be there with George because I was actually down in Dorset showing a group of American developers the project - which is what it’s really all about!
Thank you to @adamarchitecture for submitting the project and to the judges. @benpentreath
