“What’s so great about a big group in a house like this is there are grand sitting rooms where someone is reading a book or telling a story in front of the fire. You can have everyone together but still do your own thing”
Photo-Illustration: The Strategist; Photos: Fanny Singer Everyone knows that person who spends weeks sniffing around travel blogs, going deep into Tripadvisor rabbit holes, collecting Google docs from friends of friends, and creating A Beautiful Mind–style spreadsheets to come up with the best vacations and itineraries possible.
The house has real Jane Austen vibes in the sense of the palette and appointments, though there have been obvious updates to it since the Regency era. For example, they fixed the central heating. It was toasty warm in there, which I’m not used to in English houses. The kitchen was well equipped. The house had a surprisingly good assortment of pots and pans. The bedrooms were all pretty grand with hilarious old beds and amazing windows. The house also has an incredible history.
For porridge bread, I ordered from the Flor, which is the bakery associated with Lyle’s, a wonderful restaurant in Shoreditch. Its porridge bread is a very hydrated sourdough loaf with a wonderful, custardy texture. We got pasta and Pecorino and Parm from a little Italian deli near where I was staying in Notting Hill. It’s nothing too notable.
Matt is editing Noah Baumbach’s film and we couldn’t leave until 7:30 p.m. I would not recommend leaving when we left, which was a little after rush hour. I was calling ahead and saying, “Get the water on for the pasta!” If you can, leave at 3:30; that would be ideal. The house is not super-close, so it’s nice to see the English countryside and arrive in daylight to view it in all its glory. Then you have time to turn the lights on, get situated, and start a fire in the parlor before dinner.
Day 2 9 a.m.: Have a B&B breakfast People woke up when they would. My friend Rosy went out and picked daffodils to put on the table. The breakfast felt like I was running a B&B. I set out the toaster on the sideboard. Stacks of bowls, tea, jugs of milk, yogurt, berries, and granola. Then we had a lazy midmorning exploration of the property. The house is on something like 30 acres of land.
Clare is a market town on the north bank of the River Stour. This town has a semi-notable little church, and it’s where we were hoping to find a pub that would have the horse race televised. We were all humoring our friends who had placed bets on the race. Hilariously, one of my friends won 300 pounds. But most of us were more interested in the St. Peter and St. Paul’s churchyard and the ringing of the bells that was happening nearby. These old men were ringing the bells by hand.
Day 3 10 a.m.: Cook a big breakfast On Sunday we woke up slowly and made a big midmorning breakfast of eggs, bacon, hot cross buns, fruit salad, and all kinds of things. We were planning to go out to the coast. Merit’s friend who came from Berlin strung up these confetti-filled balloons in the dining room and made a festive, sweet table. Our friends carved little candleholders out of potatoes for the long taper candles. It’s nice to have a sturdy root vegetable for a taper candle. And we set out tea lights for ambience.
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