“It felt like Trematon called us, and we had to accept the call,” says Frieda Gormley, one half of the British interiors brand House of Hackney. “We never expected to make a place like this our family home.”
In a curious bit of serendipity, she and her husband, Javvy M. Royle, have become custodians of the Castle of Trematon, a storied motte-and-bailey estate built by a nobleman in 1068 and bestowed on the Duchy of Cornwall in 1337 (Prince William is Trematon’s current owner). The couple, who founded House of Hackney in 2011 and quickly achieved cult status in the design world, were busy Londoners with no plans of moving to the countryside. But five years ago, during one of their summer trips to Cornwall, they visited the gardens at Trematon, which were open to the public that season, and saw a scenery that left them mesmerized: meadows full of wildflowers, fruit orchards, woodlands, and lush vignettes reminiscent of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Just three days after their visit, an acquaintance called to say that the castle’s custodians, landscape designers Isabel and Julian Bannerman, wanted to end their tenure.
Would they be interested in picking up the baton? “I got a shiver down my spine,” says Gormley, “like a bolt of lighting.” And so, after signing reams of documents, which made them long-term tenants of the castle, they moved to the windswept western coast of England with their two kids, Javi and Lila. Since then, the home has received coverage and admiration, but earlier this year, it benefited from a delightful decoration refresh.
Their residence, an 11,000-square-foot Georgian manor with nine bedrooms, had been added to the grounds in the early 1800s, and while the previous custodians kept the building in good shape, its interiors were in need of a makeover. “We had renovated other properties before, but definitely not of the same scale,” says Gormley, mentioning their former Victorian town house and the clergy house that they converted into the brand’s flagship, both in East London. “On paper it was a daunting task.”
Yet the pair approached this project with a spirit of curiosity, allowing the building itself to dictate what direction to take. “After spending a year in it [just ast it was], we realized it didn’t need too much, the proportions were so beautiful,” says Royle. “But there was a lot of restoration to be done, and we stripped things like paint to make it a blank canvas and give it a new lease of life.”