Featured Speaker: Ben Pentreath

For more that 15 years, award-winning architectural and interior designer Ben Pentreath and his husband, acclaimed gardener Charlie McCormick, made their home in the storied old Parsonage in the hamlet of Littlebredy in West Dorset. Set amid chalk hills and grazing sheep, the 19th-century Parsonage sits above the head of a serene valley, a place where time stops and imagination takes root. It is against this ancient setting that the story of the Parsonage — and Ben and Charlie’s years spent making it a home — unfolds.

A YEAR AT THE PARSONAGE: The Story of a House & Garden

is Ben and Charlie’s love letter to this chapter of their lives.Although the Parsonage has since become one of England’s most iconic and beloved country homes, never before have Ben and Charlie opened its doors in such an intimate, personal fashion. With chapters written by both Ben and Charlie, as well as charming original illustrations by Ioana Pioaru and photographs taken by Ben throughout, this volume walks readers through the history of the Parsonage; its rooms and the couple’s slow, incremental improvements to the property; and Charlie’s work envisioning and expanding the home’s humble garden into something magnificent and memorable.

Built in 1820 in a restrained neoclassical style and situated in a village that felt frozen in time, the Parsonage is living history. When Ben takes up residence there, he begins making small changes and renovations, experimenting with different paint colors in various rooms, and when Charlie joins him five years later and begins to realize the potential of the garden, the old Parsonage truly becomes a home.

From there, the book takes readers room by room, highlighting the details and improvements made over Ben and Charlie’s time there: a dining room with gorgeous 19th-century bay windows that create an interplay between home and garden; a vibrant yellow kitchen piled with books, a beloved heirloom couch, and Charlie’s “God Save the King” banner over the door;
a guest bedroom with rich olive-brown walls; and a flower room overflowing with vases, seeds, and many a miniature treasure. Each room is evidence of a life well lived and a reminder of the importance of play and experimentation in decoration. As Ben writes, when one element of an interior is changed—be it a p aint color, a wallpaper, or a piece of furniture—the entire character of a room shifts.

In a lush, immersive chapter on the Parsonage’s garden, Charlie—hailing from a family of New Zealand farmers and self-taught gardeners—walks readers through the process of expanding the garden from a small, one- acre plot to a sprawling property, complete with a cottage garden enclosed with yew hedgerows; a garden border brimming with a riot of dahlias;

a vegetable garden, apple orchard, and meadow; and an allotment garden replete with narrow pathways, pumpkins, and cut flowers. Much like Ben’s incremental approach to updating the Parsonage’s interiors, Charlie’s gardening philosophy is intuitive, contrasting structure with wildness, making small changes each year, and incorporating his own favorite colors and textures rather than following any particular gardening trends.

The book concludes with images and reminiscences of the Parsonage across all four seasons—from the tulip blooms of spring to the blowsy days of summer, to the pumpkins and squashes of autumn harvest to the mild, dark days of winter. Sprinkled throughout are some of Ben and Charlie’s favorite seasonal recipes, including Charlie’s famous sponge cake—never shared before!—and the marmalade they love to make in the heart of winter.

A YEAR AT THE PARSONAGE is a warm, intimate window into a beloved home—and a cherished period of Ben and Charlie’s life—that will inspire and guide readers on how to make a home and live in it well, with true style, elegance, and personal character. It is also a moving ode to the passage of time and the impermanence of all things—gardens, chief among them. As Ben states in the opening chapter, “It felt like a moment to stop, reflect and be grateful—truly, deeply grateful—for the magical Dorset years, and to record them for a moment of posterity. For there, in a tiny village— little more than a hamlet, really—we lived in a sort of paradise for over 15 years.”