Fountain House, 8, Beck Head, Kirkby Lonsdale, Lancashire. £885k

The truly interesting houses in this region are much older, but Tudor and Jacobean and even late 17th century houses in rain sodden Lancashire and Cumbria can be very gloomy.  As I have said before this area is over priced compared to sunny East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk.  But here is a bright, 18th century house if you need to live in this region and appreciate period features without wanting to indulge in the cold comfort of small, stone mullions and the floor of one room being the ceiling of the room below and no corridors and all that pre 18th century higgledy piggledy, jazz harpsichord and crumhorn blues.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-63548063.html

The obvious downside to this and the reason I think it won’t sell until they reduce it in price, is that it is next to the road, sans garden.

https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101145799-fountain-house-kirkby-lonsdale#.XTVzDMrTWf0

  

The Entrance and Staircase Hall is nice and bright, the staircase itself is beautiful. 

And the gothic window is stunning. I’m glad the entrance hall retains its Minton tiled floor. 

The drawing room is nice and bright, if boringly furnished.  The open fires seem to work, but you’d 

struggle to keep that pale three piece suite clean, if you were burning coal.  Why be a slave to 

cleaning? Get a coal coloured three piece suite, or pewter, or charcoal, and a patterned rug that won’t show the soot and the dog hair.  Then you can spend your time binge reading your way through the old orange Penguin paperbacks in your library.   The dining room’s a bit dull.  A large still life of fruit and dead rabbits and tulips and that sort of thing would be nice on the back wall above a Regency sideboard of top quality Cuban mahogany.  The sideboard should have a display of silver on it or plate and its own overflowing fruit bowl with pineapples and grapes and perhaps a silver tea urn or spirit kettle. One or two big triptych, regency mirrors are also required and a convex ‘butler mirror’ and perhaps one of a Chippendale type with gilt Ho Ho bird.  Mirrors are essential in period interior design, they add interest, give perspective and allow the use of deeper colours in the decorating scheme.

It seems strange to think a person who would have a stone floor, refectory table and benches and an open fire in the kitchen would have those naff kitchen units.  The cupboard doors have chamfered panels to resemble eighteenth century furniture, but why go in for pretend things, when you can have real things at a lower cost?  Free standing cupboards and dressers, little  spice cupboards on the walls are the order of the day in here. The lighting is good and the wall colour is suitable. 

The bedrooms are all spacious, bright chambers.  More pictures are required and mirrors and if you can’t have an antique bed then at least have interesting bedspreads, Durham Quilts, Welsh tapestry blankets and so on and go in for regency bow fronted chests and  early eighteenth century low boys for dressing tables and Queen Anne toilet mirrors in burr walnut with early glass or Regency ones in mahogany, which one can easily acquire for under £50. For goodness sake don’t go in for pine, it is the height of naff. 

The property does come with a nice garden at the back, which seems reasonably bright due to the limestone gravel, which should probably be compulsory in all the gardens of North West England.