Edward Hurst brings colonial Williamsburg to a farmhouse on Guy Ritchie's Dorset estate
When approached by director Guy Ritchie to decorate a farmhouse on his estate, Edward Hurst instantly knew what he wanted to do with it and the result is a wonderful meeting of minds
5 December 2024
r antiques dealer and interior designer Edward Hurst, a narrative thread is a key part of the process for decorating a house. Called on by the film director Guy Ritchie to transform a farmhouse on his estate into a guest house for shooting parties and other gatherings, he found that the narrative for the house came to him immediately: it was to have the feel of an inn in colonial Williamsburg, the town that was the capital of the British colony of Virginia until the state voted for independence in the late 18th century. “As soon as Guy told me what he wanted, it was a clear vision to me,” explains Edward. "It needed to be ‘American inn meets English pub’, but comfortable. There's a slightly filmic quality to it.” That quality would seem almost inevitable, given that his client has directed, written and produced dozens of successful films and television shows over the past 30 years.
The pair had met socially at parties at St Giles House in Dorset, where both Edward and Guy are based, and Guy had seen other projects that Edward had completed and was drawn to the quality and attention to detail on display in all of them. “He didn’t want a formulaic roll out, he wanted it to be a little bit different,” says Edward, adding that Guy was “a great client – he has a strong sense of his taste and idea of what he wanted. I’m not drawn to jobs where the client has no view – that holds no interest to me at all. I love a client with a clear vision that you incorporate into the project.” From Guy's end, that vision was based in the 18th century, and the brief also included the idea of open fire cooking (something Guy personally loves), simple, sturdy antique furniture, and quirky art.
The muskets above the fireplace in this seating area, adjoining the dining room, were bought by Edward from a French street market 10 years ago. They create the feel on the colonial Williamsburg inn he was aiming to evoke, as does the choice of furniture and the fire.
The pairing was a match made in heaven, given Edward's passion for antiques. He has been collecting them since he was 12 and furnished the farmhouse from his own stock, as he does with every project. In fact, on an early visit to Guy's own house, Ashcombe, formerly owned by Cecil Beaton, Edward encountered a painting hanging up which he had recently tried to buy from a sale – evidence that their tastes were aligned in many ways. There are elements that look straight out of a Guy Ritchie film set, most notably the muskets above the fireplace in one of the two sitting rooms. “It was very immediate to me that there needed to be muskets there,” laughs Edward. They were not, however, directly influenced by Guy's approach to his sets – instead they emerged from Edward's “great love of 18th-century engravings where you have muskets and pistols on walls in that slightly Hogarth period. It was a great opportunity to do that.” Like practically everything else in the house, they were already in Edward's collection and have their own story. “I bought them on holiday in south of France in a vide grenier 10 years ago,” he explains. “One is French and one is English so they'd probably been there since the Napoleonic war. They cost nothing to buy but then they cost a fortune to get back to the UK. We couldn't exactly smuggle them in the car – I had my children with me and it would've been a bit risky.”
All the furniture and art in the house is in keeping with the narrative and history of the property. Most likely built in the 18th century, it was extended by Guy to include the bedrooms upstairs and a central spine of a corridor off which they all sit. “With this house you have very much the 18th-century ground floor elements and then we wanted to place the newly created bedrooms in the mid 19th century. We wanted to create some logic and present a narrative of the history of the house in the decoration – to make a reason for the house to have been extended, however make-believe it all might be. I like to time travel with a house a bit and romanticise it – it makes it more enjoyable, I hope.” Upstairs, that was achieved with a medley of wallpapers throughout the bedrooms, all different but all speaking the same decorative language. As with the colours throughout the farmhouse, they are “quite gentle, quite soft and in keeping with Ashcombe itself and Cecil Beaton's time there”.
