Bachelorhood is usually associated with excess rather than restraint: the takeaway-strewn coffee table, the generously filled laundry basket. But when Sophie Worthington met her husband-to-be, Greville, he was, she recalls, “wafting around like a lone monk, living a life of ascetic minimalism”. A four-poster draped in muslin floated in the middle of the bedroom. Meals were taken at a refectory table, and the bath, designed by the architect John Pawson, was carved from cedar wood for Japanese-style, pre-shower wallowing.
Everything suited the singular setting: an 18th-century chapel which was once part of the sprawling Worthington family estate in Yorkshire. “Greville’s family sold off the main house in the 1980s. The roof was leaking terminally and it was a struggle to maintain the 20-bedroom existence,” says Sophie. “His parents moved into a smaller house in the garden, while Greville decamped to London. A few years later he persuaded the bishop to sell him the presbytery and chapel – for £50.”
The couple married in 1996 and now have three children. “Over time I’ve stealthily put my mark on the house, adding clutter, wallpaper and colour,” says Sophie who, with Lucy Enfield (wife of the comedian Harry), runs children’s clothing label Wild & Gorgeous. “I grew up raking around markets like Portobello and I’ve always had a fondness for the 1970s and 80s. My style is feminine with an anarchic streak, so this house is a marriage of opposites: Greville the monk with my more chaotic tastes,” she says.
The heretical union – part priestly, part boho – is most striking in the chapel, a copy of the library at York Minster. On the colonnaded ground floor a disco ball glitters against stone walls, while Pucci-clad chairs and pink ice buckets are framed by leaded windows. The curvy white Edra sofa was a joint purchase chosen to fit the “huge, echoing space”. The floor is painted black: “It was a cheap and easy way to create atmosphere,” she explains.
Greville, a curator and chairman of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, chose the artworks – a mountainscape by Dan Brown, the blanket by Ian Hamilton Finlay – which were amassed in the early days of marriage: ‘There hasn’t been a great deal of acquisition since we had children,” sighs Sophie. There are echoes of a grander past, too: the dining table, made by celebrated local furniture maker Robert “Mouseman” Thompson, came from the big house. A Worthington Beer ashtray recalls the family business, sold off in the 1920s. For parties, a Roman bath, discovered in the garden, is filled with flowers and candles.
Next door you step into a moody black and gold vestibule: “Like the rest of the house it’s evolved as the children have grown up and funds have allowed; it was once a study, then a playroom and now it’s a cocktail bar.” The upper part of the chapel used to be a stockroom for her designs. “Lucy and I met when we were teenagers in London, flirting around the edges of punk: PVC trousers and lots of lipstick,” says Sophie, who worked as a television producer after leaving King’s College where she studied philosophy. “We started the business at the proverbial kitchen table after we had our first children. To be frank, who’s interested in kid’s fashion until you have your own? We used to dress ours up like little dollies. You can do that until they hit 12 and start demanding to wear slimy football shirts.
In the beginning all the family mucked in: “We’re lucky that Harry and Greville are hands-on dads who stepped in when there was a crisis.” Those early years of “gruelling road trips”, sourcing fabrics, visiting factories and selling their wares have paid off. Now the brand, whose early devotees included Kate Moss and Gwyneth Paltrow, has two London shops and big-name stockists like Harrods and Selfridges. Recently, Prince George stepped out in a W&G jumper, catapulting the business from “rock’n’roll to establishment… like the chapel, it’s a happy clash of opposites: classic with a twist.”
Sophie confesses that “after life in centrally heated London” it took time to adjust to chapel dwelling. “But I’ve come to appreciate it as a nourishing antidote to work.” Everyone converges in the kitchen, formerly a sitting room, redesigned as an open-plan hub with cabinetry made using fallen beech from the garden. “I was brought up to believe in the importance of family, the breaking of the bread and all that. We gather here to catch up, hopefully without phones.”
Upstairs, the Pawson bath was sacrificed for a practical tub. “Sadly, it had to go. It was beautiful but impossible to clean so we sold it to the artists Langlands & Bell. They use it as an outdoor bath on their roof,” says Sophie, with a tinge of nostalgia.
