Look Inside… An Artist’s Eclectic Dorset Home

You’d think if you were an artist, you’d get to call the aesthetic shots in your home. 

When Weef and Rebecca – he a newspaper designer turned artist, she a print and clothes maker – began renovating this historic Bridport home in Dorset, they were forced to strike the balance between his artistic credentials and her creative instinct. Surprisingly, it seems the balance was easy to find. ‘The balance is,’ laughs Rebecca, ‘I get my own way.’

Discover This Bridport Home In Dorset

Like many people, by the end of lockdown Rebecca and Weef were itching to escape the grey streets of London. Packing up their bags, they relocated from their SE postcode to the postcard streets of Bridport in Dorset. 

Though Rebecca’s daughter had lived in Dorset for a short while, she and Weef weren’t overly familiar with the area. ‘We came down to Bridport, and straight away, we both just thought, this is lovely. It’s really quirky. It’s really pretty. It’s got a really nice vibe.’ She found South Street, where they now live, to be much like Notting Hill 20 years ago: colourful, historic and eclectic.

With their London house selling almost instantly, the pair were forced to move fast. And they did. When she walked in, Rebecca knew this was the one. As her husband went upstairs, she went round the back and told the agent the decision was made. ‘You could just see what could be done with it. Though it was a bit of a rash thing to do,’ she admits sheepishly.

Despite the instant attraction to the street, Rebecca admits that ‘the house itself was a bit bland’. The five-bedroom Georgian property had been Grade II listed in the 70s and many of its less appealing features implemented then too. ‘It needed some real imagination,’ she says.

Today, the home is unrecognisable to when they first moved. The pair conducted a head-to-toe renovation. There was new guttering, a new roof, new electrics, and the replacement of a leaky boiler which had to be ripped out from its spot behind a fake Yorkstone fireplace. 

The biggest challenge? The kitchen. ‘Originally the kitchen was in the middle of the house,’ explains Rebecca. ‘It was just ridiculous. Whoever designed it wanted shooting. It’s just crazy. Who has a kitchen in the middle of the house with no windows or no ability to get rid of any kitchen smells?’ After moving it to a far more sensible location at the back, they had the flat roof extension taken out, and a beam ceiling and big barn doors added in.

But before the kitchen could be completed, Rebecca had made a problem for herself. She’d gone into a local vintage store and fallen madly in love with a massive, antique dresser. Buying it (sans Weef’s permission or measurements), she disappeared off on a three-week work trip when it was delivered. The next thing you know, she’s getting a call from her husband: ‘That dresser is not going to fit in this house.’

Jamming it in via their neighbour’s access route, it was still too tall to fit. Temporarily split in two, eventually Rebecca and Weef took their ceiling out, had some floor removed, and managed to squeeze it in the kitchen. ‘This dresser is never leaving the house,’ she laughs. ‘The kitchen is my favorite, because I loved that piece. I fell in love with it the minute I saw it, and I knew that I was going to create a kitchen around it.’

Once the structure was in place, it was time to paint. Working your way round room by room, each opens up to a new shade of the rainbow – sun-yellow kitchen, dusky pink living room, leafy green snug, peachy wardrobe, lilac-striped guest room, and bright blue corridors, all brimming with Weef’s paintings. ‘When I’m decorating I’m always thinking about where to put Weef’s artwork,’ she says. A quasi-gallery day-to-day, the house turns into a more literal gallery during open studios and Dorset art weeks.

Though Weef’s canvases and frames will move home with the couple, the house itself is a piece of art, with many of the walls hand-painted and stencilled by Rebecca. ‘I’ve always seen walls as a canvas, like anything else, to create on.’

The hallways, as Rebecca puts it, are ‘the most over the top’ feature of the house. A ‘real labour of love’, she completed the Morris-inspired project over a series of several weeks. There’s also additional stencilling in the bathroom and bedroom, plus hand-painted stripes in the guest room.

The highlight of the home can be found in the downstairs bathroom. Where there was once a plain strip of glass, they commissioned a stained glass maker to transform Weef’s painting of Rebecca reading into a window. ‘A little secret we’ve both had in properties that we’ve done, is that we’ve often added in artworks which are perhaps not that obvious but would stay in the house,’ she says. Recently a friend sent them a photo of Weef’s old flat in Clapham which showed a mural he had painted on the walls still remained there after 15 years. 

Having always had a penchant for bright colours (upon viewing the home, her first husband commented that ‘some things never change’), much of the eclecticism is also brought out by Rebecca’s love of secondhand. Everything she and her husband own is ‘really old’ or bought from the local area. Rebecca herself used to run a shop in Bridport which sold secondhand clothing alongside handmade pieces. ‘The shop was very much an extension of the house,’ she says, ‘which was very much an extension of how me and Weef actually are.’ They even had a fragrance made for the shop which they used throughout the home as well. 

Much like their home, the shop also displayed Weef’s artwork. Last summer, a couple stumbled inside only to discover they had already purchased one of Weef’s pieces 35 years ago during a holiday in Greece, where he was working and living at the time. Now a full-time artist, one of Weef’s main criteria for the house was having a studio to call his own in the garden. And thankfully this home’s history with a different species of makers made it the perfect spot.

The cottages on South Street were once rope-makers cottages and so boast long thin back gardens designed for ropes to be laid out and dried –  the perfect dimensions for tucking a studio down at the end. Bridport is famous for its rope, having produced the rope for Wimbledon nets, the 1966 Wembley World Cup goal and the Royal Navy. The oldest street in Bridport, South Street is rich in heritage; the house opposite Rebecca and Weef’s is the oldest in town. Aside from its original Georgian shutters and lengthy backyard, the history of the home is also recorded through hieroglyphic etchings out front. Their meaning? Rating the ale made at each address like an archaic TripAdvisor. (Though Rebecca is unfortunately unable to decipher the quality of ale made at this particular home).

Now opening up this home to its next chapter of history, Rebecca and Weef must sadly move on, having to relocate in order to care for family. Though Rebecca hopes the new buyer won’t paint over her work, she recognises ‘that’s what people do’ – ‘I can’t personally think why you would want to buy a house and then just blank it all out again. But once you’ve sold a house, people can do what they like.’

On the market for £645,000. Find out more at jackson-stops.co.uk