“Throughout my life, even as a child, I’ve always believed in not wasting things,” muses gardener and artist Charlotte Molesworth. “Instead, I try to give objects a different life. There was a rag and bone man in Canterbury in the 1970s who I’d visit quite regularly, so much so that he became a friend and I used to have tea with him and his wife. My wedding dress came from his yard. It was a beautiful satin gown that I chopped up and restyled. Back then, all clothes were such good quality, and it was something I really adored.”
It's a philosophy that Charlotte still passionately subscribes to. As such, the nineteenth-century cottage and garden that she shares with her husband Donald (and a plethora of pets, including a flock of busy hens and several Shetland sheep) is an inspiring mix of salvaged materials that the couple have, over the last 40 years, used to reconstruct the once tumbledown dwelling. “My mother was an artist and I went to art school, but I knew I was probably never going to make a living that way,” she explains, “so I did a teacher training course and got a really good job as an art teacher in Bellenden, which is what originally brought us here. I met Donald, who was working for a farmer looking after a dairy herd. But his ambition was always really to become self-employed.”
At the time, the couple knew of The Grange, an estate in the Kent countryside that once belonged to ornithologist and plant collector Collingwood Ingram. In the early 1980s it was sold to Martin Miller of Miller’s Antiques Handbook fame, and it was shortly afterwards that the couple approached renowned antiquarian with a proposal to take on the estate’s wild and overgrown gardens - a move that ultimately led to them purchasing the then-empty cottage in the grounds. “The building society wouldn’t give us a mortgage, but Miller very generously did,” Charlotte recalls. “Looking after the garden was the most perfect job because it taught us so much about plants.”
Now, their own garden, cultivated almost entirely from cuttings and seedlings that they asked for as wedding presents, is a magical, four-acre idyll with a generous veg patch, winding grass paths and self-sown borders enclosed by plump Box hedges. The pièce de résistance however, are the topiary peacocks that survey the verdant plot. “My mother was a farmer's wife, and farmers' wives work jolly hard as they don't tend to have much spare time,” Charlotte explains. “She always said that topiary was a busy person's way of gardening because you only really cut it once a year. Ours is getting pretty woolly now, but the birds are nesting, so you have to hold your shears and wait until there's an ‘R’ in a month until you give it a snip.”
Among lofty yews, it comes as no surprise that the cottage itself is an Aladdin’s Cave of fascinating objects, one of which is a stout little doll's house that once belonged to Charlotte’s Aunt Penelope. “I don't know when or how it came to be in her possession, but it sat at the bottom of her stairs throughout my entire childhood, so it’s been around for a while,” Charlotte says. “In those days, junk shops really were junk shops, and you could get good stuff. I often used to go with my grandmother, who was Penelope’s mum, so it may have been picked up there.” Solidly made, the heavy wooden toy with its delicate lace curtains is now home to a small knitted donkey, which, like the remaining furniture, is a touch too big for the rooms he inhabits. “Over the years, the original furniture was lost and so what’s left is slightly oversized, unlike the neat little dolls that would have once lived there,” she notes. “The great thing was that we were always allowed to play with the house and take it into the garden - it wasn't just a showpiece.”
Another beloved animal in Charlotte’s menagerie is Dandelion, who lives on the kitchen table among the ever-present bunches of homegrown blooms, or in the winter, vases filled with twigs and leaves. “He was made especially for us, particularly for me, by my great mate Nancy Nicholson when my hugely loved dog Ozzie died before Christmas,” she explains. “Nancy has a little business called ‘Stitch Kits’, where she provides canvases, threads, instructions and everything you need to take up embroidery.” On this occasion, Charlotte’s creative friend used her skills to craft the stuffed lion to encourage her to be brave. “I love his very ornate legs, his woolly beard and his ridiculously punky tail,” says Charlotte.
A silver and enamel daisy broach fortuitously picked up at a local church fete is also something that Charlotte treasures. “The fete has such good quality things, and this was sold to me by our wonderful priest,” explains Charlotte. “This broach is by Georg Jensen who supplies the Danish royal court, and it belonged to her mother, but she just wanted to see it being worn. It goes with everything and I always pin it at my neck. I absolutely adore it, and I wear it every single day.”
Continuing with the handcrafted theme, a sculpture of herself and Donald by artist Jo Redpath is also on the list of Charlotte’s most treasured possessions. “She’s now moved to Galicia in Spain, and she works quite a lot with the ballet in Madrid, making huge figures for their sets,” explains Charlotte. “Before that, she lived in Hastings and one summer, here in the garden we had a very big, naked man with upstretched arms and a cork beehive in his stomach, where the bees came and went.” Working around a wire armature, Jo builds up her characterful subjects using papier maché. “She’s a very speedy worker,” adds Charlotte. “I also like that all her subjects have huge, very rugged and useful looking hands.”
Yet more creativity comes in the form of a charming wall sconce mounted on an etched glass mirror, originally designed by Charlotte’s uncle, a gentleman named Walter Pringle. “He had a little business in Paris, working as an interior designer, and was way beyond his time,” she says. “We have a few things that were made by him, including some chairs and this little light, which is just darling. When we inherited it, the original candlesticks were missing but a friend was able to make these curved arms, and we converted it to electricity.”
Charlotte wears the TOAST Baya Patch Pocket Stripe Organic Cotton Shirt and Pleated Cotton Poplin Pull On Trousers. The Hand Woven Stripe Seat Cushion also features.
Words by Claudia Baillie.
Photography by Leia Morrisson.
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