Period Style Floors for The Mill House

The Project

The owners of The Mill House wanted to create a replacement pool building and garden sympathetic to the setting; a listed house built in 1703. The owners wanted the design to blend into the countryside of the South Down National Park. Externally they wanted to create a traditional winding country path across the lawn leading to a Windmill.

In the kitchen they wanted a traditional orange coloured brick floor to complement the larger rustic stones in a contrasting colour. The owners also wanted to use square terracotta tiles somewhere in the house.

The Design

The owners, Mr and Mrs Shenton: “My wife and I love traditional architecture and visiting historic buildings. Our new pool building was to be built using a classic oak frame design, which works perfectly with Yorkstone and terracotta. We decided to use terracotta tiles for the hallway, downstairs cloakroom and shower room as the size and colour works perfectly against the oak beams and doors. We planned to use Jacobean Brick Pavers for the kitchen floor but as we wanted a herringbone design, the sizes were too random and the surface too rough for easy sweeping and cleaning so we chose to use them for the curvy garden path instead.“

Product Selection

The owners were enthused by Westminster Stone’s link with the National Trust through which they obtain patterns and moulds for their flooring. They felt that their products offered a fast track solution to the perfect floor for the building's design, without having to source reclaimed materials (which can be extremely time consuming and costly to source). To that end, they chose Lancashire Mill flagstones for the cottage end of the kitchen, which has a flat ceiling and lots of cross beams which tones in really well.
For the hallway and cloakroom wethey chose Old Provence Terracotta Tiles which give a slightly Mediterranean, Romanesque appearance creating a lovely image when entering the pool building. Honey Cathedral Limestone flooring was used in the pool room, the tones of which are stunning and mirror the rest of the room, especially the oak and grey/green doors.