With stalactites in the cellar, a lot of hard work was required to turn a rundown townhouse into a home
It was while driving back from one of their frequent trips to Totnes, a medieval market town in one of South Devon’s prettiest corners, that Hianta Cassam Chenaï and her husband Matthias Peters first spotted the Regency townhouse they now call home. “We kept coming down to Devon for weekends to see his friends and family, then dreading going back to London,” she says. “Then we saw the ‘For Sale’ sign.” Following their Provencal wedding in 2014, the couple traded their 1970s Hoxton flat for the handsome four-storey property first built for the Duke of Somerset (owner of the nearby Berry Pomeroy Castle) in 1830. Even on dull days the neighbouring River Dart beams in its watery light, lending the Grade II-listed house an airy, seaside quality. “It still feels like a holiday home,” she says, to the sound of seagulls.
Though the site had lain empty for a few years following its previous incarnation as offices, the couple were instantly attracted to its grand proportions and closeness to town. Smitten, they didn’t realise how bad a state it was in. “We naively thought we would just give it a lick of paint,” she says. Little did they know that they were embarking on an epic renovation that entailed replacing the stairwell, the roof and windows as well as reconfiguring the layout at the top and bottom.
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