My parents used to joke that our house was a boys’ prep school that had escaped from the sea. Totterdown House, my childhood home in Inkpen, near Hungerford, Berkshire, was a Victorian house of no great beauty exacerbated by a pebbledash finish that my parents could never afford to remove. Looking at the house with adult eyes, I can see now that the attraction was location, location, location. It had beautiful views up to Combe Gibbet and was incredibly peaceful.
Once through the front door, you were met by a lovely staircase that split into two. The hall was spacious enough for our Christmas tree; it also had a fireplace with a club fender and a hall table. To the left of the staircase was the sitting room, and beyond that was the drawing room, with a conservatory, which we hardly ever used. We kept the record player in there, so I’d often go in and dance around by myself. To the right was the dining room — a big, dark room with two large circular tables.
My mother was a pioneer of the open-plan kitchen, and there she created an island on which she kept her sewing machine, and which had lots of space for cooking. There was also a big round table and a woodburning stove with two chairs round it. We lived in that room. Off the kitchen was a little playroom with a stable door.
My mother relaid the room in carpet tiles, but my younger brother, Henry, once painted his Airfix soldiers in there without putting paper down, and left little white rings all over the floor. She chased him round the kitchen table with a cricket bat!
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The property was far larger than my parents could afford, but they believed that you beggared yourself for the house. All their money and energy went into that property, and it was beautifully decorated. Not only was my mother good at painting furniture, my dad [Lord Hindlip], who at the time worked for the valuations department overlooking house sales at Christie’s, used to find bargain furniture and pictures.
I inherited their passion for interiors. I didn’t have posters of pop stars in my bedroom, but I remember buying an embroidered garden scene from an antiques market in Hungerford, and thinking it was truly beautiful. For my 14th Christmas, my mother made me a four-poster bed, and I’ve never felt quite such a passion for anything since.
Dad worked incredibly hard during the week, but at weekends he would start all over again — chopping wood and mowing the lawn. Mum also worked hard, framing pictures for a living. But it wasn’t all nose to the grindstone. We went on lovely holidays to Cornwall and Scotland — and, after my sister Sofie was born, Dad was earning a bit more, so we started going on foreign holidays.
Sadly, I don’t think I would give my children the freedom we had. My brother and I, aged seven and nine respectively, would go off on our bikes, with honey sandwiches and a bitter-lemon bottle full of orange squash, and play all day. Not that we had to go far for adventure. Halfway down our garden, Dad put up a rope swing over a little stream, and we’d play for hours making fairy and Action Man camps. Nobody worried.
We left Totterdown when I was 17. My brother and I were horrified, but my father was European chairman of Christie’s by then, and could no longer commute. My mother was also required to be at his side, attending dinners in London, so they bought a new house on Victoria Road, in Kensington.
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My two sisters had a completely different upbringing to me, because they went to school in London and holidayed abroad at a much earlier age. Natasha, who is 14 years younger, pretends to play the violin when I point this out, and says, “Yes, it was much harder for you.” Actually, it wasn’t harder — but it was different.
Kirstie Allsopp is supporting Red Nose Day on Friday. You can buy a Henry Holland apron from Home Sense for £12.99, £6.50 of which will go to Comic Relief; homesense.com