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60 |ARTS & CRAFTS HOMES Winter 2017

son’s son Basil was an avid reader, and so bookcases were built

to fit beneath the Well Room’s eaves; Basil eventually became

schoolmaster at the nearby Bedales School in Hampshire.

Stoneywell was wired for electricity in 1938, which meant

rainwater could be collected in roof tanks and heated for bath-

ing, so a landing was partitioned for an Art Deco bathroom in

black and white. Shortly after the project was completed, an

electrical fault started a fire in the thatch roof. Although the

cottage and its contents were saved, the bathroom had to be re-

built, and the thatch roof was replaced with slate. At this time

the Gimsons raised the roof to create larger rooms upstairs.

Sydney and Jeannie Gimson, and their sons Humphrey

and Basil, would spend their summers at Stoneywell for the

next four decades, and return for Christmas as well. The house

and most of its original furnishings remained in the Gimson

family for the next three generations. The house was let for

nine years during World War II, and then Basil moved in full-

time in 1947. Basil’s son Donald inherited Stoneywell in 1953

and moved in with his wife, Anne. They did little to change the

cottage, other than installing central heat and creating a peri-

od kitchen. They maintained the rough landscape strewn with

granite outcroppings, and added heathers, rhododendrons,

azaleas, and magnolias tolerant of the acidic soil. The cottage

is surrounded by four acres of gardens amid eleven acres of

protected woodland. a

Following a national appeal, the National Trust was able to pur-

chase Stoneywell and its furnishings from Donald Gimson in 2013.

It was opened to the public in 2015. nationaltrust.org.uk/stoneywell

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window. ABOVE The rainwater collection

system at an outbuilding at Stoneywell.

COURTESY NATIONAL TRUST ANDREW BUTLER

FOR SOURCES, see p. 71.