The Times Magazine 55t could be destiny or perhaps just blind
good luck that a city council handed
Patrick and Neri Williams the keys to
this 18th-century Bath emporium. Once
the birthplace of Bath Oliver biscuits,
the space had been a shop near the
Royal Crescent since 1739, and, above
a multitude of rapacious developers,
it is the Williamses who have been
able to give it a new life.
A member of the Society for the Protection
of Ancient Buildings, the Georgian Group and
the Victorian Society, Patrick takes history
seriously. In his work as an interior designer
specialising in period buildings, this obsession
ensures his personal maxim, “The building is
the client,” can flourish.
“Forty per cent of my childhood was spent
mixing lime render and laying floors,” he
explains. His parents, both language teachers,
employed their family in their quest to restore
an 18th-century French farmhouse, named
Berdoulat, with a tree growing in the middle,
during the long summer holidays ofHome!
I
Clockwise from top: the winter
living room; kitchen, with
Berdoulat Crescent Refectory
dining table; exterior bathroom,
on a small rooftop space