When Victoria Clive moved in to the 400-year-old farmhouse on the Nunnington Hall estate near Malton, she wanted to transform it into a cosy home where you could “kick off your shoes, lie down and eat cake”. Hannah Morgan finds out how she achieved the look . . .

The 400-year-old detached farmhouse, on the Nunnington Hall estate, that is home to the Clive family

Victoria Clive took the “softly softly” approach when she started planning the transformation of her husband’s family farmhouse. Charlie had lived with dark green and magnolia décor for more than seven years by the time she moved in, and she wasn’t about to make sweeping changes overnight.

“This was his home and I thought it better to change things gradually so it wasn’t such a shock to the system,” says Victoria.

“I wanted to live in the house for a while to get to know how it worked, how it looked at different times of the year. We didn’t have the budget to simply go out and buy new things, so I was going to have to be creative.”

At first, Victoria painted the rooms white to create a South African-style interior, based on the homes she’d grown up in, but as time went by, she realised it made the house look cold and heartless. It needed warmth and colour to turn the “gloomy” farmhouse into a welcoming home. “I was fighting with my instincts for a long time,” says Victoria. “In the end, the house won.”

Encouraged by artistic neighbours and with growing confidence in her own abilities, Victoria started in the kitchen, which is often full of friends, family and neighbours who “turn up for no apparent reason”.

The biggest transformation was to paint the old pine units to make the dark room look instantly lighter. Charlie had already removed a wall to create a sitting area, in a former dining room, directly off the kitchen, where they could keep an eye on the children and friends could “get comfortable”.

“I wanted this house to be a place where you could kick off your shoes, lie down and eat cake,” says Victoria. “It was never going to be a really modern house. I like a place to have a few shadows and spaces so people can create their own corner.”

The original fireplace and floorboards in the snug reveal the character of the room, which Victoria painted Farrow & Ball Light Stone

All the ground floor rooms – including the open plan sitting and dining area – lead directly back to the kitchen, where a large farmhouse table draws people back for mealtimes and creates the heart of the home.

Victoria has become an expert in finding battered old furniture and turning it into something beautiful and practical. Charlie has learned to restore everything from rickety old chairs to damaged cupboards and tables, while Victoria combines inexpensive antiques with paintings and striking photography by local artisans – most of them working from a courtyard of converted farm buildings in the grounds of Victoria and Charlie’s home.

“It’s wonderful having all this creative input right on our doorstep,” says Victoria. “Our house is very eclectic, very real. There are no designers involved. It’s a house of make do and mend. I grew up following my mother around flea markets and I was painting furniture when I was in my teens. I grew up knowing how to make use of things other people might have thrown away.”

The house has taken many years to evolve, but Victoria’s patience has certainly paid off.

“I’ve had to wait to achieve what I wanted and I think it’s better as a result,” she says. “Charlie has grown to like it to. He understands what I’ve done.”

Victoria uses the dressing table, from Nunnington Hall, to store some of her favourite boxes, shoes and accessories, including an old shoelace box bought from a shop which has since closed

It’s certainly on a very different scale to nearby Nunnington Hall, which was once owned by Charlie’s family. When the hall was taken over by the National Trust, Charlie and his family moved into various properties on the estate, but it took Victoria’s vision to turn the practical old farmhouse that Charlie inherited into a family home.

“It’s certainly a very different house to the one I moved in to 11 years ago,” says Victoria. “It used to feel quite claustrophobic but now, even with the low ceilings and small windows, it’s light and comfortable. And I haven’t had to spend a fortune to achieve it.”