Concept For Living magazine » A home with a heart

A home with a heart

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

A detached Edwardian house that sits in the quaint Cheshire village of Bramhall provided the ideal location for one couple to set up their family home.

When Caroline and Chris Fry began looking for a new, larger home for their family – son Charlie, who’s now 12 and Anna, seven – four years ago, they could think of no better place to move than the village that had been voted as having “the friendliest residents in the country” with apparently more community pride than anywhere else. “I already knew the area and had always wanted to live in Bramhall, so when this house came on the market it was ideal,” says Caroline. “We were living in a semi-detached house in Cheadle before, which was sat on a main road. Our key focus when we moved was to find a detached house on a very quiet residential road with a big garden. And that’s exactly what we got. I saw the potential in this house straight away.”

Caroline, a former top nanny, and Chris, a Manchester businessman, bought the four-bedroom Edwardian house and decided to make it their family home in 2005. The couple say their main aim was to create a lovely family space. The Frys chose to retain a lot of the home’s original features, such as its fireplaces and radiators, but added a loft conversion, conservatory and a stunning, bespoke kitchen that is huge, but cosy, and even boasts a wine chiller, which was completed last Christmas. “Our main goal was to make the place feel as family focused and inspired as possible,” says Caroline. “It’s important to have things around the place, like all the photographs, that make it obvious this is above all else a house for living in, not a show-home.”

Australian-born Caroline drew on a wide range of inspirations when it came to the interior: family, interior magazines, Spain, where the couple have a second home, plus the homes she used to work in as a nanny in London. “Working as a nanny was a fantastic experience, I got to see such a wide variety of distinguished properties. It gave me an eye for design and knowing how and where to place things,” says Caroline. “It also helped me develop a really good idea of what I liked and what I didn’t like.”

This feature can be found in CFL issue 132.