A perfect English country house brought to life by a dream team of architects and designers

'We loved the land so much, we bought a yurt so that we could stay here before we started building,' says Nickie. 'We weren't sure how we wanted to use the site, so we chose five architects whose work we admired and asked them all to come up with schemes.' The results of their deliberations can now be compared by visiting the downstairs cloakroom of the finished house, the walls of which are papered with architects' drawings. 'We ended up using three different architects,' says Nickie. 'Nicky Johnston really lis­tened and understood how we live as a family, and how we may want to live in 10 years' time. But he was on the point of retirement, so Jonathan Ross of Relph Ross Partnership translated his ideas into working plans. And Tim Reeve of TFH Reeve, who previously worked on the restoration of Uppark, came up with some of the more whimsical details, for instance the dovecote and the porches, as well as chimneypieces and the staircase.'

Three architects sounds like two too many, but the collaboration didn't stop there. Also in at the start was Willie's sister, Caroline Paterson, an interior decorator with expertise to match her younger brother's. 'She's incredibly talented,' says Nickie. 'We couldn't have done it without her. She helped with everything, from the electrical layout and the thickness of glazing bars to fabrics, furniture and picture framing.' The garden was designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd, but they also took advice from Martin Lane Fox, who is a friend. He persuaded them to make sure that parked cars couldn't be seen from the house and helped plan the long drive.

Despite all this impressive expertise, there is no doubt that Willie and Nickie were driving the project. 'Our wish list included a big kitchen with sofas and an open fire, a courtyard, and water in the garden and grounds,' says Nickie. They also wanted a house that was both elegant and infor­mal, capacious and cosy, and that used local materials and traditional skills. All have been achieved, with the help of the contractors, R Moulding & Co. On either side of what the architects call the 'posh box', which takes its architectural cues from the early eighteenth century–including a stonking exterior cornice copied from Mompesson House in Salisbury–are two wings following the slightly skewed footprint of the old farmyard buildings. In one wing are a shared study–built on the site of the piggery–two spare bedrooms and en-suite bathrooms, and a play­room, which used to house ponies. In the opposite wing, the barn is now the kitchen, with a new oak roof and huge arched windows at either end, and is linked to the drawing room that spans the central 'box' by a garden room, which is used for more formal dining.

The quest for country-house perfection extended to using three different local quarries to achieve the slightly random stonework typical of period buildings, and lowering the slope of the field in front of the house by just over a metre, not to mention the extensive cherry-picking of the best bits from other houses, whether the line of a roof or the turn of a banister. And, although the style of the house is traditional, its eco­-credentials are bang up to date, and include ground-source heating and the use of insulating breeze blocks. 'Our last house was seventeenth century and freezing,' says Nickie. 'Living in a house without rattling windows and cold spots is heaven. In fact, I can't think of anything I would change about this house.' That's what you call a good recipe.