Edward Reinvents his Smallest Room into a Space Full of Colour and Wonder

The Court of Noke, Edward Bulmer’s Queen Anne Herefordshire home, has been featured in many favourite interiors press and beautiful books, and the rooms receive mass adulation from all over the world on Instagram daily. So when Inigo, the new historic homes estate agents, suggested coming to Edward’s family home, we wanted to showcase a lesser known room, actually the smallest room in the house but one full to the brim of wonder… Edward’s home has been through many transformations since it was first constructed, nowhere is this clearer today – perhaps surprisingly – than in the current ground-floor WC. When you open the former back door of the 1700s Queen Anne style home from the galleried hallway; you’ll find yourself in a room filled with inspiring wall art that allows your eye to travel, books that will give you a new perspective on life (not to mention the local area) and, most notably, a dark wood Jacobean revival box that has always served as a receptacle of reinvention…

But it hasn’t always been like this. Inigo went to Herefordshire to hear Edward plot a 300-year history of the space his loo now occupies and shares how he transformed the room, bringing colour and vibrancy to a room that is so often forgotten.

Inigo’s Nick Carvell caught up with Edward to discuss the design inspiration for this space. Edward said, “When we were doing this room up 20 years ago I thought it was really important to do the whole ‘old country house’ thing and disguise the toilet bowl. The easiest way to do this was with one of those English commodes, but they tend to be kind of awkward. However, there was another option rather charmingly called an ‘incontinence chair’, which I installed instead. I bought this one in an old antiques place in Hereford.”

The stunning walls never go a miss and in fact Edward didn’t use wallpaper, as many assume, but instead he chose a fabric by Rubelli, that he and his wife Emma saw in a chateau in France. Edward recalls “It was hung all the way down this big gallery on the first floor and looked stunning, so we asked them what it was. When we got the price, we decided that perhaps it would suit a small room best! The imagery is a paysage with a m’lordy travelling through the countryside on his carriage, with rustic types and little villages and bouquets of flowers.” Originally Edward used an off-white paint for the skirting boards, but then changed to our ‘Navy Blue’. He notes that “An unusual skirting board colour is far more interesting in a small room like this, and it really picks up on the colour of the horses in the fabric pattern.”

The loo has become quite the time capsule for Edward and his family’s travels around the country including a miniaturised plaster figure of Michelangelo’s Moses and a Staffordshire foot bath, which sadly got dropped and now has a hole in it! Edward notes “A lot of people have pictures of them in sports teams on their WC walls, but I’m afraid I don’t have any of that, mostly because Emma and I aren’t really very sporty! Instead, there are designs painted by me for our bed, some garden buildings and artwork for the memorial of Diana, Princess of Wales at Althorp in Northamptonshire that I designed.”

The large Jacobean old oak coffer used to be Edward’s daughters dressing up box when they were little; where they used to store all their fairy costumes. Today it’s filled with all sorts of bits and pieces. Edward says, “Even now, guests will sometimes go in to use the WC and come out as a completely different person.” What a lovely feature from Inigo, thank you for the inspired piece and photos!