An Englishman’s home is more than a castle

Apr 16 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

Emma Pinch looks at a new book that takes a peek into that most private of places and one of our greatest obsessions

WHEN photos emerged of the home footballer Phil Neville was putting up for sale, most of us squealed with delighted horror at the nouveau riche crests and exquisitely hideous yellow and black Versace carpets. Because nothing says more about us than our home. It’s our own little republic. And if, within the safety of our castle and moat – sorry, privet hedge and semi – we like flying ducks, velour couches and anaglypta, it is like the coin says, mon droit.

It’s a mindset that sent the Vikings packing. But when Ikea came knocking 21 years ago, seducing us with cheeky admonishments about undesirability of chintz and 40p hot dogs, we were soon trooping obediently up the M62 on a Saturday to stock up on flatpack pine furniture, curvy mirrors and tealights.

On the anniversary of its invasion, sorry launch, Ikea has launched a hardback book, UK at Home (nice with Liathorp in oak or beech), featuring snapshots of people and their homes across the country and celebrating our peculiar relationship with them. Homes visited and snapped with their owners include one carved into rock, and stylishly and comfortably decorated, to those in grim tenement blocks and pensioners being forced to move. Its premise is the question, what is home to us? And whey are we so obsessed by it?

Home in Britain is intrinsically wrapped up with security.

“In Britain, we don’t tax wealth but we do tax earnings, and surprisingly that’s a trend that’s continued even with Labour,” says Richard Ralley, social and psychological science lecturer at Edge Hill University. “For ordinary people, it’s about putting your money in your house and making it comfortable.”

But why do we cling to houses even when it doesn’t make financial sense?“As a nation, we are much more concerned with losing money than making it. We don’t trust institutions like banks, religion or govern- ments. Last year, the average income from a buy-to-let was 1%, and many more are sitting empty – you could have made 5% putting it in the Nationwide. But the queues outside Northern Rock proved something we believed deep down.

“Property owning is literally in our blood, from Anglo-Saxon times to the 18th-century enclosures, when common land was fenced off. A smallholding was food and freedom.”

Anglo-Saxon, as used by the French, Richard says, has come to denote the dog eat dog, wanting our own thing mentality.

“When the British went to America in the 18th century, the locals were baffled when they started fencing land off,” says Dr Ralley. “They had no concept of it and thought they would share it. The little Englander mentality is, ‘I have my own piece of turf and everybody else can sod off’.

“When my cousin bought a French property recently, the first thing he did was put a fence round the house. There was a pond there that animals used to drink from and they had assumed it was common land.

“If the British were allowed, we would have machine gun turrets round our homes. Instead, we have leylandii. So many letters to problem pages begin: ‘My neighbour’s tree is hanging into my property’ . . . you just don’t see this in other countries.”

The obsession with owning and improving doesn’t really do us any favours, he says. “Dutch people live where they work and rent, and move when they get a job somewhere else.

“We quietly stay where we are to pay off the mortgage, in a job we’re not happy in, trying to add value to it from the inside. Now that there’s a housing shortage and lots of cheap buy-to-lets, perhaps first-time buyers will adopt the European model.”

The home of our dreams, according to interior designer Oliver Steer, a qualified architect, is a seamless blend of traditional features with modern materials – grasses are currently popular – and hi-tech comforts.

His own home is a modern flat in Edwardian style, in the grounds of a converted Grammar School in St Helens, containing the high ceilings and windows most of us ache for. He’s an Englishman whose home is rather castle-like – he’s added a chimney breast, with an embedded plasma screen, oil paintings and velvet-covered spoon backed chairs.

Š“For me personally, if it looks lovely and smells good, or smells neutral and you wake up in the morning with a nice bedside table at the right height, that is a slice of ideal living. I stay in a house in Dorset that ticks all the boxes for sensory perceptions: it’s spacious, with the best quality carpets, best quality sofas, you can feel it and it shows.

“If you can sit at home and think I love this house, you feel life is really good at the moment, it can improve your positivity as a person. It can have an effect on how you perceive other things and how you approach life. That’s what we’re striving for.”

Happiness is a home where the decor matches the occupier’s personality.

“People will come and choose a modern, minimalistic style box, when it’s not really their life style, because they want to put in furniture they’ve had for years and their dress is quite old- fashioned,” he says. “It’s the shell on your back. It has to reflect you.”

Brian and Sue Radam’s house, in Southport, certainly reflects them. Or rather it reflects Brian. They have 400 lawnmowers in their home, workshop and museum – among them Princess Di’s old machine and Hilda Ogden’s.

“We’ve been married for 34 years. Brian wasn’t quite as obsessive then as now,” explains Sue. “Moving anywhere else would be difficult. We have a shed of lawn mowers in the garden and about half a dozen in the house, but the ones in the house are quite nice. There’s a small silver one in the hall from the 1800s which is quite nice, a picture of one in the kitchen and in the lounge and a WW1 aeroplane propeller on the wall.

“There are no mowers in the bedroom, I do insist on that.” But the unusual decor doesn’t cause disharmony: “We’ve got no kids, just lawn mowers. But I’ve got used to them. They represent a part of the life we share.”

Sir Paul McCartney writes the foreword to the Ikea book. He’s fenced off plots of land all over the globe, and can bask in the security of knowing large chunks of his fortune are safe in solid bricks and mortar. He can afford the airy proportions, ergonomic curves and traditional wood fires beloved of celebrity magazines.

Home is, of course, as precious as the people inside it.Š“For me, the word ‘home’ is one that conjures up so many emotions. My own earliest emotions are filled with a warmth and security that come from a good family environment,” he says. “The word can also conjure up not so pleasant memories – friction, arguments, the sadness of growing up and, for parents, just trying to keep a family together. But these memories seem to fade as time goes by, leaving a positive feeling in their place.

“In Liverpool, when I was growing up, my formative years were filled with family, uncles and aunts, friends circulating though our house and making it a very warm place to spend time in. Later, when I travelled abroad, it was very rewarding to come home and switch off, knowing that my family would completely understand and welcome me back.”

* UK AT Home: A Celebration of Where We Live and Love, is published by Duncan Baird, and costs £19.99.

emma.pinch@dailypost.co.uk