A clockmakers’ grade II-listed village rectory

By Celia Rufey

Published: Thursday, 21 July 2022 at 12:00 am

Time hangs in the air, with clocks ticking and striking the hours at the Georgian home of artists Elizabeth Harbour and Llewellyn Thomas. ‘Clocks are part of my family history,’ Llewellyn explains, ‘and everyone notices the ticking when they visit us for the first time. For us it’s part of the soundscape of this house and tells us we’re home.’

Long before the clocks came to live with them, the couple were both students at the Royal College of Art, studying illustration. The move from London to Kent in 2005 was brought about by their decision to find a family home with their two young children, and to get Llewellyn closer to Maidstone College of Art where he was then teaching.

They purchased half of this Grade II-listed village rectory, built in 1732, for its location, style and size. Llewellyn’s research affirmed his belief that an ambitious rector called on Queen Anne’s Bounty, a scheme that increased the salaries of poor clergymen, to deliver a 10-bedroom rectory to satisfy his pretensions.

Even half of this splendid residence gave the new owners exceptional space, including room for a studio at the top of the house. Artistic space has always been essential for the couple to sustain their working life together as printmakers and designers. And as well as selling their own works, Elizabeth also runs classes in local village halls.

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Llewellyn discovered further talents while improving the house: it transpired that he was a bit of a builder, when he rebuilt the front garden wall brick by brick. Next he replaced the south wall of the kitchen with a Georgian glazed screen of his own design that allows light to stream through the kitchen window into the hall.

His understanding of historic design practice is such that he knew where to find the correct antique muff blown glass and lambs tongue moulding to complete the screen. Then he hand-built the kitchen cabinets, sourcing old doors as well as making new ones. All the shutters in the house were folded back and sealed up, so he restored those and constructed new ones for windows that didn’t have any.

The authentic approach the couple have taken to alterations in the house is matched by the choices they made when furnishing and decorating rooms. Very little is new, beyond the pieces Elizabeth and Llewellyn make themselves. The collection of antique clocks is a significant presence, of course, in the main rooms and hallway.

‘They have come from my father,’ Llewellyn explains. ‘He was an amateur antiquarian horologist and my mother painted more than 3,500 clock dials for the antique clock trade.’ The family connection is particularly evident in the William Cook clock that stands beside the front door. Cook was a London maker and, though the movement dates from around 1700, the clock case was made by Llewellyn’s father using oak from trees that fell down on family land on the Surrey border in the Great Storm of 1987.

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The exterior of this charming Grade II-listed rectory was given a new coat of Farrow & Ball’s All White paint. Metal drainpipes replaced the old plastic ones and homeowner Llewellyn fitted lead drip sills above the lower windows.
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The longcase clock has an early 18th-century movement; Llewellyn’s father made the case. His wife Elizabeth built the little house on the side table from tiny shells.
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Contemporary folk artist, Julie Arkell, made this as a present to celebrate Elizabeth and Llewellyn’s wedding in 1998.
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Elizabeth’s hand-printed Tulip paper lines the shelf wall in the sitting room. The shelves are crammed with collectables, including items from a Clarice Cliff tea set and a teapot designed by Graham Sutherland.
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Reinstated and repaired shutters at the sitting room window mean curtains aren’t needed, but elsewhere textiles are important. Cushions are covered in Elizabeth’s hand-printed designs. The longcase clock dates from the late 17th century.
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Staffordshire figures, eggs painted by the couple’s children, and a Mary Wondrausch mermaid, made when she was in her 90s, share the sitting room mantel.
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Unlike many separate dining rooms, the family take meals in this room every day. The early 18th-century gateleg walnut table came from Llewellyn’s family and the 1860s Aesthetic Movement chairs were purchased online. The clock in the corner is by John Thomas.
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One of Elizabeth’s hand-painted scenes, House & Horse, sits on top of the toy cupboard made by Sir Hildebrand Harmsworth, a 1930s playboy who kept a Rolls Royce in northern France so he could take a boat across the Channel and drive down to the Med.
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A dolls’ house Llewellyn made from a kit, then decorated, for daughter Esme, has a permanent home on a vintage plan chest in the hall.
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The kitchen floor tiles are original, with cabinets and shelves made and fitted by Llewellyn. Elizabeth sourced light shades from antiques shops and suitable lengths of flex to bring the fittings down from the high ceiling.
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The American clock above the high mantel was one of thousands to have had its face restored by Llewellyn’s late mother. The Staffordshire dogs inspired Elizabeth’s tea towel design, which many people buy to make up as cushion covers.
An even older clock stands beside the sitting room window, out of direct sunlight. It was made around 1685 by Isaac Papavoine, an immigrant from France, who set up a workshop near Covent Garden. It has been in Llewellyn’s family for 50 years.

The clock in the dining room is a 30-hour movement by John Thomas, a West Country maker, and dates from 1730. ‘It’s a curiosity,’ Llewellyn explains, ‘because the case is in solid mahogany rather than the usual veneer on pine. This extravagance was perhaps possible because of easy access to the port at Exeter, where timber was imported.’ The clock at the end of the hall is a John Harrison regulator.

Harrison was the man who, in 1735, worked out how to calculate longitude and this clock, made between 1977 and 1996 by Andrew King of Beckenham, is an exact replica of the one in the Science Museum. On the landing, a Louis XIV-style French lantern clock from 1710 would appeal to antiquarians, Llewellyn suggests.

The clocks add scale and status to the house, but Elizabeth and Llewellyn also love to visit antiques shops to collect small items to decorate mantels and chests, side tables and cupboards. Staffordshire figures jostle a Mary Wondrausch mermaid on the sitting room mantel.

‘She revived the 17th-century English slipware pottery tradition,’ Llewellyn volunteers. A shelf along the wall hosts pieces from a Clarice Cliff tea set that belonged to Elizabeth’s grandmother, a teapot with a rose motif designed by Graham Sutherland and mugs and plates by Eric Ravilious.

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Another special piece in the room is known in the family as the ‘Brontë Box’. ‘I spotted these dolls in an antiques shop in Lewes,’ Elizabeth recalls. ‘They are early 19th-century wooden Dutch peg dolls in their original clothing. Our daughter Esme was with us and had been watching a programme about the Brontë sisters and said she thought they were the Brontës, so that’s what we’ve called them ever since.’

The dolls are housed in a wall-mounted box Llewellyn made in an 18th-century English folk art style, lined with antique-style wallpaper and featuring old letters, some in French, tucked in for extra context. ‘We’ve always collected decorative papers,’ Elizabeth says, ‘and now we’re adding to that tradition by making our own.’

Elizabeth describes the spirit of their house as ‘reassuring’, with the decorations she makes inspired by their antiques, including the Staffordshire dogs. ‘I wouldn’t have come up with so many ideas without the stimulation of these surroundings,’ she reveals. ‘It’s been a catalyst for that, and the generous space allows us both to work across rooms; I can print in the kitchen and lay the prints all down the long hall to dry, while Llewellyn settles in the dining room, working up designs for printed paper to cover keepsake boxes, then cutting the designs in lino.’

This companionable way of working is well established and unsurprisingly activates the positive current of time and motion running through this house, where old clocks chime and art never stops.

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Llewellyn hand-coloured the floorboards before cutting and laying them in the bedroom. Chasse de Diane toile de Jouy wallpaper by Charles Burger surrounds the 19th-century Spanish bed, bought from an antiques shop on London’s Wandsworth Bridge Road.
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The skill Llewellyn developed painting scenery at the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne, while working for the famous Harkers Studio, was drawn upon to create the paint effect on the bedroom wardrobe.
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Family mementoes, including Elizabeth’s grandfather’s pocket watch, are partnered with a pair of wooden brooches designed by Elizabeth.
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Llewellyn laid the chequered floor in the bathroom and the basin came from a local reclamation yard. ‘The bath was already in the house and we thought it was possibly antique,‘ Elizabeth says, ’but when we turned it over, we found its casting date was 2002!’
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Artists Elizabeth Harbour and Llewellyn Thomas in the garden of their Grade II-listed village rectory.
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Llewellyn restored the greenhouse and replaced the corrugated roof with a glazed one. ‘We eat in the greenhouse, entertain in it and in spring we marble-print paper in it,’ Elizabeth says. They sourced the 8ft French table and an equally long bench so that lots of people can be seated. The large garden supplies all the flowers they need here and in the house.
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This French lantern clock hangs on the landing.