“It’s a house that’s part 12th century, part 15th century, and it goes up to the 19th century,” Vinader says. “It’s a hodgepodge of periods.” Restoring it from scratch meant doing everything from building bathrooms to installing fireplaces in the old manor.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader1/26“The roof is what was added in the 19th century,” says Vinader. “The architect who was working on the royal palace, 10 minutes away from us in Fakenham, lived in our house. He added that 19th-century capstone exterior.”
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader2/26“The back of the house is the older, 12th-century part of the house,” Vinader says. “The pond was original to the home when it was built in the 12th century. It fed the area.”
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader3/26The white front door is surrounded by a Victorian capstone facade. “It’s a very typical fronting in Norfolk, for buildings of that period,” says Vinader.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader4/26The jewelry designer built her own sitting room, and added furniture and objects she’d been collectsing for years.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader5/26In the sitting room, the blue chairs are mid-century, by French designer Charles Ramos. “We had them covered in blue mohair. I bought them from a dealer in London,” she notes.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader6/26“This room is very much an everyday family room,” Vinader says. “My mother-in-law, who is an architect, designed the room for us.” The fireplace was an addition built from scratch, and the large windows face the pond.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader7/26“We’ve got picture walls and all of our treasures—a mix of Chinese furniture, Moroccan rugs,” she says, of the details in the sitting room.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader8/26The designer decorated her daughter’s playroom with an antique bookcase, originally from a school in the 1930s. The fish trophy from the 1920s is by John Tully—it was caught in the same pond where the designer’s husband caught his first salmon in Norway.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader9/26A red 18th-century Spanish table sits in her husband’s study. “We like to mix things—rustic furniture with vintage, 1950s pieces. I’m originally from Spain, so some of our furniture is Spanish.”
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader10/26The chairs in the dining room are covered in a fabric Vinader found in India. The room is located inside the 19th-century extension, which they altered to have a large, sunlit room.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader11/26A 1960s Italian chandelier hangs above the dining room. “I have a bit of a weakness for chandeliers. Whenever I find one I really like, I buy it.”
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader12/26“I basically bought some old Spanish cabinets from the 18th century, and I had them for a number of years. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them. When we started doing up the house, 19 years ago, I had them build the kitchen around the drawers.” Everything new is painted red and all of the wood is antique.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader13/26The designer bought hand-painted 17th-century tiles with a fish scale texture to decorate the kitchen.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader14/26“I very much wanted it to look like a country kitchen,” she says. “It has elements of an old Spanish farmhouse.”
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader15/26A smaller dining room has mint green walls and antique Chinese chairs and ceramics. “It’s one of the oldest rooms in the house, and it also faces the pond,” she explains. The fireplace is original.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader16/26The walls of the library are painted a calming shade of blue, accented with oceanic objects and a marble fireplace.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader17/26“We have a big collectsion of books, but we also have a big collectsion of seashells,” she says. “My husband and I lived in Mexico for a very long time, and they’d literally come up after a big storm. We shipped a lot of our finds from the beach after we moved back.”
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader18/26A family photo shows Vinader’s grandfather-in-law architect Leslie Martin, with Queen Elizabeth II, opening the Royal Festival Hall, which he helped design.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader19/26The designer’s study is in the 19th-century extension. The rug is Moroccan and the bookshelf has art and design books that inspire Vinader. The silver lamp is the iconic Arco by Achille Castiglioni and the table is a vintage 1970s piece.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader20/26Vinader wanted to create a Spanish aesthetic in the main bathroom.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader21/26“We had to build all the bathrooms. So, for this particular bathroom, I bought tiles from Seville, in Spain, and created a sort of Spanish tiled bathroom next to my room.”
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader22/26Most of the colors in our house come from a lady in London who makes these beautiful handmade paints,” says Vinader. “She’s called Francesca’s Paints. She has these very special colors, and this is one of her most exquisite.” The old sign was bought at an auction.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader23/26A guest room with a gold Tom Dixon lamp faces the pond. “It’s a very peaceful room,” she says. “The bedspread is hand-printed from Jaipur, India.”
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader24/26Vinader’s bedroom has a canopy over the bed. “It’s very toned down and very light. Lots of linens and silks.”
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader25/26The reading chair in the main bedroom is covered in white linen, and the red chest is from Vinader’s mother, who used to have an antiques business in Spain.
Photo: Mark Luscombe-Whyte / Courtesy of Monica Vinader26/26The bedside tables in the designer’s room are Danish, from the 1960s, and topped with a poppy floral arrangement.
