This house on the edge of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, isn’t shy about showing its roots. Once a Napoleonic jail and now a family home with art studios, it’s all for exposing its history rather than smoothing over the edges with Brilliant White.
“A developer had bought the whole building – a barn that had fallen into disrepair – and was turning it into three dwellings,” says owner Sarah Heaton, a ceramicist exhibiting at one of two major northern design shows this month. Work had stalled, partly because the jail’s Grade II-listed status was throwing up plenty of caveats. She and her husband Graeme Reed, an illustrator, offered to take one of the units off the developer’s hands. They ripped up the existing plans for boxy rooms and seamless white walls, and started over.
The kitchen had been a malt house, with a large open fire and perforated clay ceiling tiles that enabled barley to be laid out and toasted on the warm floor upstairs. Today, it has gun-metal grey units and contemporary pendant lights.
Against an almost uninterrupted run of exposed brick walls, steel joists run the length of the ground floor, while supporting timbers were cleaned up but still reveal scratches, scorches and the odd initials etched into them. “In conservation terms, these count as ‘historical graffiti’,” Heaton says. The couple and their architect, Derek Trowell, drew the line at leaving the original cobbles, laying a concrete floor with a burnished finish that’s “halfway between polished and rough”. A spiral staircase adds an old-school industrial edge, and furniture is mostly from charity shops and eBay.
Heaton’s own career took off in the early 1990s, when design in this region went hand in hand with industry. “My contemporaries went to Wedgwood, Portmeirion, Royal Doulton, all the big names,” she says. Times have changed for the Stoke potteries, but Heaton still works part-time as a designer at Burleigh Pottery. “I sit there with my MacBook Pro and the guy next to me is engraving copper: old and new, keeping the traditions going.”
Despite the decline in manufacturing, northern centres such as Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle are increasingly seen as hubs for craft and design talent. “Students now stay on rather than head to London,” Heaton says. “Studio space is affordable, and there are quality galleries to showcase your work.” This month, she is exhibiting her tableware at the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair in Manchester.
Yet Heaton’s biggest orders will most likely come from farther afield. “Buyers from South Korea and Japan have huge respect for the British ceramic tradition,” she says. “In Britain, we’ve got used to putting price first. When someone can buy a mug for 50p in Ikea, selling one to them for £15 or £20 is a hard task. We need to get back into the habit of treasuring things.”
• The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair runs from 8-11 October in Manchester. The Northern Design Festival runs from 21-25 October in Newcastle upon Tyne.
