Inside Ben Pentreath & Charlie McCormick’s Dorset Parsonage
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29 minutes ago
The couple and design duo give us a sneak peek inside their home ahead of launching their new book, A Year at the Parsonage
Few houses have been followed quite as closely as this early 19th-century house. Tucked into a hillside above the tiny Dorset village of Littlebredy, the Parsonage has been home to interior designer Ben Pentreath and his husband, gardener Charlie McCormick, for more than a decade. Now, as the couple begin a new chapter on Orkney, they’re opening its doors one final time in their new book, A Year at the Parsonage. Ahead of the book’s launch, C&TH got a special tour of some of Ben and Charlie’s favourite spaces. Take a look inside.
Look Inside… The Parsonage By Ben Pentreath & Charlie McCormick
The Property
Built in the early 19th century as the village parson’s house, the Parsonage sits in Littlebredy, where the couple lived until their recent move north. ‘It has three rooms on the ground floor and three bedrooms upstairs – an ordinary house but in an extraordinary setting, built into the side of a hill in a beautiful valley overlooking the tiny village,’ says Ben.
The Brief
When Ben first moved in, the place was ‘sorely in need of love’. Rather than drawing up a grand scheme, though, he let the interiors evolve. ‘I didn’t scheme out the whole house in one go. The creation of the interior happened slowly and incrementally,’ he explains. ‘Adjust one thing – one colour, one paper, one piece of furniture, one lampshade – and the whole room changes. That’s the magic of decoration. And that is just how I like it – unselfconscious, slow-cooked.’
Take The Tour
The Hall
Beyond its beautiful chocolate box exterior, The Parsonage is rich with artfully collected interiors. First impressions came courtesy of the hall, which Ben papered early on in David Skinner Wallpapers’ ‘Malahide’, a trompe l’oeil Gothic architectural design with a fittingly ecclesiastical air. ‘You could somehow imagine a mid-19th century parson coming in and out this way,’ he says. Underfoot is an original Dorset Blue Lias stone floor, joined by a pair of Gothic oak chairs and a 19th-century blue Transferware jug picked up at Portobello Market. With no boot room in the house (a problem for anyone living in the country), it was also a hardworking space: ‘This room was always overloaded with coats and wellies.’ Just off it, the downstairs loo is painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Wet Sand’.
The Dining Room
The couple were never ones for massive dinner parties, says Ben, but on a candlelit evening the dining room came into its own. The walls are dressed in Morris & Co‘s ‘Willow Bough’ wallpaper in the Olive/Turquoise colourway, paired with ‘Brer Rabbit’ curtains from the same Queen Square collection – with a run of engravings acting as the perfect finishing touch. ‘There was truly nothing more magical than the dining room, lit only by candles, reflecting in the glass of the Piranesi engravings that I’d bought as a job lot for a cost of ÂŁ4 each, with delicious food cooked by Charlie, wine pouring, conversation flowing,’ Ben recalls. But beyond the decor, he says that ‘it’s the bay windows that make the room’.
The Kitchen
Ben and Charlie are also firm believers in a collected kitchen – rather than rows of cabinetry, they prefer to keep their homewares on show. ‘This was possibly the most unfitted kitchen in Britain: just an old built-in cupboard by the range, a dresser, a scrubbed pine table and then a sink unit that I’d designed when I first moved in,’ says Ben. ‘For most people this would be an impossibly useless kitchen, but for us it just worked.’ Gloss yellow walls set a sunny tone, warmed by an inherited 1960s Aga, a pine table from eBay and a chintz sofa handed down by Ben’s parents. The pine floorboards are painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Hardwick White’ floor paint, and the couple’s Mochaware collection sits on the shelves.
The Drawing Room
Despite its low ceilings and simple architecture, the drawing room was a soft and happy space – what Ben thinks John Fowler would have liked to call his ‘humble elegance’. The walls are painted in a bespoke shade of ‘Parsonage Pink’, mixed by Patrick Baty of Papers & Paints, and the room is anchored by a yellow sofa by Max Rollitt, upholstered in linen from Polly Lyster of The Dyeworks. A fireplace from Jamb, a Regency bergère and a 19th-century Dresden court piano fill the room with character, along with a column lamp that’s now sold at Pentreath & Hall. ‘The doors lead to the cottage garden, and in high summer the sense of the garden pouring indoors was tangible,’ says Ben.
The Cottage Garden
Which brings us neatly into Charlie’s domain. ‘This was the only flat bit of the Parsonage garden when I got there and it had always been a lawn,’ he says. ‘Not long after I arrived I decided to dig it up and make flower beds.’ Yew hedges with cut-throughs framed the beds, with tall plants placed right at the front, while four pale yellow obelisks designed by Ben (available at Pentreath & Hall) stood in for box balls lost to blight. Step inside and the planting closes in around you. ‘It feels like you’re immersed in the garden, getting swallowed up, with everything spilling out onto the lawn paths.’
The Border
The garden’s other great set piece was its terrace, built with Mike Hobbs and held up by a low dry-stone retaining wall. ‘In a smallish garden, having a terrace running in a straight line for 55m is a big thing,’ says Charlie. ‘I started by planting a dahlia border all the way along it. It was incredible.’ In later years, the border was replanted with sweet William, red roses and poppies.
Design Notes With Ben Pentreath & Charlie McCormick
What was the process like, designing for yourself?
Ben: I often used the Parsonage as an experiment lab. Not so much that I was trying out ideas that I’d later attempt on others; it was a bit more subtle than that. At home, I was looking and learning and developing what I felt about old buildings, colour, pattern, atmosphere and a particular form of decoration that hopefully looks completely undecorated.
Were there any challenges along the way?
Charlie: In the garden, the huge challenge was the massive copper beech tree, which cast so much shade. It was a magical tree, filled with creatures, but it did make the gardening harder. In huge storms we’d lie awake worrying it might land on the house.
How did you create a sense of balance?
Ben: It’s funny how things evolve, because every time you adjust one ingredient, the whole picture changes – even if everything else stays the same. And then it’s a question of adding layer after layer after layer. We buy nearly all our furniture from junk shops and auctions and most of it is completely worthless. But if something appeals to your heart or your eye, you should live with it!
Any fun stories from your time at the Parsonage?
Ben: One early morning, I woke to find a stranger in the garden, peering intently through the downstairs window. I leaned out of my bedroom window above her and said a cheery ‘good morning!’ She was absolutely mortified and ran for the bushes. My snooper later became a good friend!
Charlie: Last November, we had Bridie Hall (who runs the London shop, Pentreath & Hall, with Ben) to stay and I decided to dig up the lawn where only a few months before we’d held our wedding drinks. I dropped Ben and Bridie at the station to go back up to London that afternoon, and by the time they’d arrived at Waterloo I’d texted them a photo of all four finished beds. That became the cottage garden.
Buy The Book
A Year at the Parsonage: The Story of a House & Garden by Ben Pentreath and Charlie McCormick (Quadrille) will be available in bookshops from 8 October 2026.
You can keep up with Ben Pentreath and Charlie McCormick’s projects at benpentreath.com and charliemccormick.com respectively.
Images: From A Year at the Parsonage. Photography by Ben Pentreath.
