[door squeaks]
- Hello, AD. I'm Sienna Miller.
Welcome to my cottage.
[upbeat music]
I'm gonna start in the kitchen
because that's where everybody always ends up.
In the last year, I've redecorated the house
with my great friend, Gaby Dellal, who is a film director,
but has the best taste of anyone I've ever met.
So in lockdown, when she was panicking about what to do
'cause her film was pushed,
I said, "You can do up my cottage," and she did.
I bought this house when I was 25,
in a moment of real panic.
I was sort of in London, and life was very intense,
and I just was dreaming about having a place to get away to.
And I saw this place online.
It's about 45 minutes from London,
and it was on to rent or buy.
And I thought I'll rent it for a year,
and I came to see it
and fell completely in love and bought it.
It's really my sanctuary.
It's where I come to do nothing.
1920s Crittall doors, bring me a lot of joy.
I mean the new ones just don't look like that.
So I'm thrilled with them.
And I think that having such an old house,
it's a magical thing,
but having contemporary touches in it really work.
This is probably my favorite thing
'cause it's just the most beautiful Lacanche stove.
I have dreamt about having a big stove,
and I've never ever had one before, and I love to cook.
So if I'm in a city or in the country or anywhere,
and there is a Sunday, there will be food being cooked,
and it's magical to have this much space.
And Christmas dinners before,
we had a tiny oven, and it was hell.
So that's been wonderful.
Now I bought it off this couple that had done it up,
and they sold me the house with all the furniture,
and it was lovely.
It was very traditional English cottage.
It's now much more sophisticated and evolved
and I think much more how my taste actually is.
I'd sort of inherited somebody else's vision
and made it my own, but it was never quite right.
So we've done a complete refurb in here.
[sensual music]
Thatch is funny.
It's like the biggest tiny house you've ever seen.
Somehow it keeps on going.
It's like a rabbit warren,
and it's got five bedrooms so it can sleep.
I said six, it's got six bedrooms.
It can sleep twelve people, but it's little.
So I realized that we needed a big space for lots of people.
And so when we've got a lot of people,
this is where we would have dinner.
I love that we've got the height, that balcony there,
'cause it is low otherwise,
but this is all part of the extension
that was done in the 1970s.
And obviously, we've got this enormous fireplace.
At Christmas time, we put the tree here,
and we move this armchair
and decorate all of this with foliage
and lights and a roaring fire.
And some tipsy person will get on the piano,
bash out a tune.
This was a gift from my first boyfriend,
which I've still got, and I'm very attached to.
And I love all the colors in this space,
because although it's old,
it's got a kind of contemporary feel.
It's funny because it's such a cozy house,
but it really does work in the summer as well.
In lots of areas of the house,
we've added mirrors just to kind of create the illusion
of more space than there is.
And there's a beautiful one there,
which is fun for kids to look at and perform in.
Design of this was done, as I said by Gaby Dellal,
who is really my other mother.
I love colors and different textures.
This is a corduroy armchair.
We actually recovered this 'cause it was my mum's
from when she and my dad lived in Hong Kong.
It was a big white armchair that's completely falling apart,
but has sentimental value.
So it's recovered with kind of clashing prints.
The art is from all over the place.
This was a gift from my godmother, Christine.
This is a new artist who I met recently,
Frida Jones, and she's brilliant.
But I love the details of this stained glass, for example,
because of the light that it creates.
And I think Gaby, being a film director,
is very intensely focused on light and playing with that.
This used to be an old stable door,
and we've replaced it with a beautiful old door
and lovely painted glass.
That's where we stop the booze.
You have to be quite creative
with a little house of where you keep things.
Well, I can see a few spider webs,
but that's the countryside.
And wine, essential at a country cottage.
[upbeat music]
This is the snugly room where we all watch TV.
This is the old, old part of the house,
and it used to be the kitchen.
So it is very, very low but magical and cozy.
And in winter, we light the fire,
and it's a beautiful old roaring fire,
and watch old movies at Christmas.
And it's about as dreamy as it can be.
The color on the walls, it's a cream color,
but it's also got a tiny hint of pink,
and Gaby actually had this pigment made up
so that it's got a real warmth, but it's not too heavy.
This is by my godmother, Carol Davis,
who's an extraordinary artist.
That was a Christmas present from Mum.
And I love mixing old style of painting
with contemporary painting.
And there are all sorts of bits around the house
that you'll see, but she's pretty cool, this lady.
All this part of the house
from the '70s extension part is original and 16th century,
which is extraordinary that families
in 1550 were living in this house.
And I really haven't touched anything.
Not that I could 'cause it's all landmark trusted,
but it's all original beams.
And the sense of history is really magical.
So these two pictures on the wall are by my friend,
an amazing director called John Mabry.
And he came over to my flat when I was living in London,
and we had a late night, and I woke up in the morning,
and there these pictures.
Oh, look, 2006, John Mabry.
Yeah, those are two of my favorite things I own.
And they're just on scrappy bits of cardboard,
but I think they really make the room magical
'cause he's pretty magical.
So this is, yeah, this is where we relax.
This is it, the snug.
Not very big, but very cozy.
[upbeat music]
This is the original staircase
that we kind of scrubbed and painted there,
and we exposed this and made it into a bookshelf.
It's a funny amalgamation of kids' books.
My copy from my classics class of "The Odyssey"
of Homer with some notes in it, very impressive.
Some Shakespeare, history of England,
which I've pilfered from someone.
Some Stanislavski.
I went to the Lee Strasberg school of acting,
and Lee Strasberg's inspiration
was Konstantin Stanislavski.
So this is called "An Actor Handbook," that is well thumbed.
I can't remember reading it,
but I must have done 'cause that's dogged.
Maybe I gave up.
Lots of history and memories there.
[upbeat music]
This is Marlowe's room.
There's Marlowe on the bed reading.
We love that book.
- [Marlowe] Greek mythology.
It's a Greek mythology book.
We sound like a bunch of classicists, and we aren't.
But I like what that says.
This room is really sweet.
It feels like something out of Jane Austen.
The beds are quite little for somebody
who's growing quite fast, but Gaby was brilliant.
She found these, this amazing linen,
and then it's actually wool.
And then she found sheep skins,
and she got them sewn onto the headboard.
So it's just a cozy detail for little girls going to sleep.
And again, the windows are so small,
that it's hard to get curtains.
You don't want little crock curtains.
So we've got these sheepy bits of fabric
that hook up and come down at night.
Yeah, this room is pretty much what it would've been.
We haven't done anything to it
except paint it and move furniture around.
But it's got a really magical feel.
Did you not manage to get that back up? [laughs]
And we've hidden loads of the toys.
None of this house ever looks this tidy,
but that's the beauty of making a film.
[upbeat music]
Leaving Marlowe's room, this is the hallway.
This is the stairs we came up, and I didn't show you that,
but that's a 1930s French London,
Parisian London that I love.
There's a guest room, again a lovely space.
And then this is the hallway.
We created this reading nook for Marlowe
because there's not much space in this hobbity little house,
but we've got lots of her toys and books.
And in homeschooling, there was a little desk there
so she could look out at the meadow.
[upbeat music]
So this is my bedroom.
This has been completely changed.
And we could do that
because it's the 1970s part of the house,
and it's not listed.
But this bedroom before kind of ended
where those beams ended.
There was a cupboard there.
My bed was here, it was really low and quite pokey.
And Gaby had this genius idea to knock into the rafters
and keep the beams as they were.
I actually just sometimes
can't believe the difference in this bedroom.
I should try and find a photo of what it used to be like,
but it was nothing like this.
This incredible wallpaper is by Maison C,
And I've been obsessed with that print.
It's sort of naked witchy ladies dancing,
which I think is appropriate for my mood.
And lying in here any time of year
and being able to look out of the window.
Gaby found these old doors with old panes of glass,
and we've got the Morano lantern thing,
which does create the most magical light.
And then in summer, I like to open these doors
and sometimes sleep with them open,
and having them open and lying in bed,
or having them open with the bath and the bird song
and the trees is definitely
about as happy as I will ever be.
There's a plane going overhead [plane buzzing]
'cause there's a flying school nearby,
but they're not ugly old planes.
They're quite pretty, some of them,
and that's what you hear there.
[laughs] Quite unfortunate when you're rolling sound.
[upbeat music]
This is the bathroom with old saloon doors,
A lovely shower, these beautiful Moroccan tiles.
But you know, here's some of my stuff.
Bit of my perfume, which I love.
I'll add that now. [bottle spraying]
And then in here are all the cupboards.
100s of pairs of jeans and comfy jumpers.
This is where I keep the stuff
that I probably wouldn't be seen in, but is really snugly.
Snugly clothes, lots of tracksuit bottoms.
This is clever because the light comes on,
I love that, when you open it.
You'll see everything is like a shearling
or a bit of knitted sock.
It's cozy clothes when you're at Thatch.
That's my closet.
The light does bring me a lot of joy.
But not much room to wear much makeup,
which is a good thing,
because I never wear makeup when I'm at this house, ever.
Who needs to?
[upbeat music]
So this is, again, this is part of the hallway,
and this is, we call it the Juliet balcony.
Marlowe sometimes stands up here with her friends,
and we'll put on performances.
And what's quite fun about that is,
there is this beautiful red velvet curtain
that you can pull back in a very theatrical way.
This curtain was from my first ever flat in London.
It had really, really tall ceilings, and I had these made,
and then Gaby lined them with this fantastic old linen,
and they look so beautiful.
And yeah, peek over the edge,
and see how good of a performance space this actually is
'cause you can have dinner down there
and look up at the kids.
[upbeat music]
Come out into the garden, the meadow.
There's a little pond.
There's Marlowe's Playhouse and the barbecue,
but come to maybe the most romantic bedroom on the property.
These amazing old doors.
And this is what we call the outhouse
where I send my friends who are madly in love
because it's very romantic.
There's a wood-burning stove in winter.
People like to write or read here.
There's a little walk-in shower loo.
What I think is magical about this was that,
what it used to be was just a horrible storage space
with old bicycles and old furniture.
And it was nothing, it was never used,
but it was always a really beautiful building.
Gaby cleaned it all out.
And she added these amazing details on the roof.
They're old signs that she found
and embedded into the ceiling.
And that was a surprise.
The only thing that she didn't tell me she was doing.
It's details like that
that I just think add magical character to a place.
It's very peaceful in here.
And actually I need to come and spend a night in it
'cause it's really, really relaxing.
[upbeat music]
So the cottage is on a private estate
that has belonged to a family for 100s of years.
And the gardens down at the bottom are designed
by Capability Brown
who was an extraordinary garden designer,
and they let me roam
around their beautifully manicured parkland.
That this property that belongs to me
is about one and a half acres.
And it's the only free-hog cottage on the estate,
but there's a gamekeeper up the road,
and there's somebody else
who works on the estate down there.
So it feels very, very isolated,
but it's nice to know that there are people nearby.
Yeah, this is the meadow.
[upbeat music]
Thanks for coming, AD.
I hope you enjoyed looking around my home.
Come back anytime. Bye.
[upbeat music]
[door latches]