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“It’s really my sanctuary. It’s where I come to do nothing,” says Sienna Miller in a video tour of her picture-perfect Buckinghamshire home.
The camera pans to a pretty, half-timbered thatched cottage, surrounded by wildflowers. “It’s such a cosy house, but it really does work well in the summer as well.”
For those charmed by the 2022 Architectural Digest video, there’s good news: the actress’ secluded countryside bolthole is for sale with Savills for £1.95 million.
Miller bought the Grade II-listed property, set in the Chilterns, in 2008, according to Land Registry records. “I bought this house when I was 25 in a moment of real panic,” she says in the video.
“I was in London and life was very tense, and I was just dreaming about having a place to get away to, and I saw this place online.”
The cottage, called Thatch, was listed for rent or for sale at the time. Miller intended to rent the house for a year, but on viewing it, her plans changed. “I fell completely in love and bought it,” she told AD.
The house was sold fully furnished, with interiors that were “very traditional English cottage”. Despite adding her own touches to the space, lockdown presented an opportunity for Miller to finally put her stamp on it – with the help of her friend, the actress and film director Gaby Dellal.
“I’d inherited someone else’s vision and made it my own, but it was never quite right,” she says. “It’s now much more sophisticated and evolved, and much more how my taste actually is.”
This included a total refurbishment of the kitchen, which was painted in rosy pink and fitted with a large Lacanche range cooker to satisfy Miller’s love of cooking.
She fitted tiled herringbone flooring, coloured glass in the door, a white Smeg fridge and original Crittall doors which lead onto the garden. “The new ones just don’t look like that,” says Miller. “I’m thrilled with them.”
Thatch dates from the 16th century and was extended in the 1970s, giving it an L-shaped footprint.
Today —despite Miller’s comments about the house’s “tiny” size— it covers almost 2,000 square feet across two floors, with five bedrooms and a separate studio outside.
“Thatch is funny,” she says. “It’s like the biggest tiny house you’ve ever seen. Somehow it keeps on going – it’s like a rabbit warren.”
Alongside the kitchen, there are two sitting rooms, a utility room and a bedroom downstairs.
Both sitting rooms, located in the older part of the house, have wooden floors, low, timber beams and large, brick open hearths. It is the archetypal English country cottage; the stuff of The Holiday-inspired fantasies.
“[It’s] magical and cosy,” says Miller about the snug. “It’s a beautiful, old, roaring fire, and [we] watch old movies at Christmas and it’s about as dreamy as it can be.”
Upstairs, there are four bedrooms. Miller’s daughter Marlowe’s “feels like something out of Jane Austen”, with its original wooden walls painted black, and its white ceiling beams white.
Miller’s own bedroom is in the newer part of the building, with a freestanding bath, ensuite bathroom —where she keeps all her “cosy clothes”— and a private balcony with views over the surrounding countryside.
Again, there are dark wooden floorboards and beams paired with a white timber ceiling, with the wall behind the bed decorated with hand-painted Maison C wallpaper.
Thatch is part of a larger private estate; it is the only freehold cottage to stand there, surrounded by just over half an acre of land.
Outside, there is a garden, pond, barbecue – and 187-square-foot studio, which has been turned into a charming guest bedroom. There’s a bathroom, wood burner, and ceilings decorated with vintage signage.
“This is what we call ‘The Outhouse’, where I send my friends who are madly in love, because it’s very romantic,” says Miller.
In recent years, Miller has toyed between life in the US and the UK. After putting her Queen’s Park townhouse up for sale in 2016, she relocated to New York for seven years.
In 2023, though, she is reported to have sold her West Village home for $5.3 million (£3.95m), returning back to her London roots.
“I was really in love with New York as a place, but since Covid it just wasn't the same,” she said last year. “It was time to come home. [London] was always home.”
Now, it appears Miller is ready to part with her idyllic countryside cottage. And it could be yours – if you have £1.95 million to spare.
“Thatch is an utterly charming country retreat,” says Hugh Maconochie at Savills. “The picturesque setting offers a peaceful rural lifestyle, while remaining conveniently close to essential amenities and transport links.
“Dating from the 16th century, the cottage has history in abundance, yet the thoughtful interiors and outdoor seating areas are perfectly placed for family gatherings. If you close your eyes and imagine a quintessential thatch cottage, this is surely it”.
