JULY: Our first year at Totnes House, our grand Victorian villa renovation

Описание: In July 2025 I was still working on my own to strip out some of the layers of commercial modernity and trying to expose some of the original period features. I started to look for some help though and started working with the team at Shaker Wholesale on the kitchen design. The July weather was delightful and we made the most of the River Dart which runs right through Totnes only a short distance from the house. With no proper kitchen in the house we also got a pizza oven to enjoy a bit more alfresco dining - but it is much harder than it looks (we’ve since discovered semolina is the secret to the pizzas not sticking by the way!).

We’re taking you through our first year at Totnes House one month at a time with new episodes launching weekly (ish) this spring in the run up to our one year anniversary.

Quality apology. This footage was shot on an old iPhone 12 in portrait format for Instagram. It’s not the best quality and reframing for YouTube’s landscape format is tricky. So please bear with us through these first few episodes, the quality will get better I promise. I have a new iPhone17 Pro now which is a huge leap forward and am shooting landscape format too.

About Totnes House. Totnes House is a grand Victorian villa built in 1889 as Totnes Club, a gentleman’s club in the heart of the market town of Totnes. It spent many decades as the Totnes Conservative Club and Tory MP’s office until he lost his seat in the 2024 General Election. In 2025 we started to transform it into a grand family home for our family of five, Jonney, Katie, Finbar, Theodora and Cormac. It’s a mammoth renovation that is going to take us many years, but we’re living here whilst we do it and telling our story with the help of the likes of Sarah Beeny and Ty Pennington both here and on Instagram. Do subscribe to stay up to date with what we’re up to!

About Totnes. Totnes is a beautiful bohemian town packed with thriving independent shops, cafes and restaurants. The high street that runs up the hill and through the arch is a model for what small town high streets should be like. The town sits on the River Dart, only a few miles from the sea at Dartmouth. With the rolling countryside of the South Hams Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty surrounding Totnes, seaside towns like Salcombe and Brixham and stunning beaches like Bigbury and Bantham only a short drive away, there really is no place in the world quite like it.

About the family. Jonney has spent the last 20 years making television programmes for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery, whilst Kate teaches secondary English here in Devon (and as such is a little camera shy!). Finbar, Theodora (aka Teddy) and Cormac are our three incredible children who we’re creating Totnes House for. We have some self build experience, we bought a disused dairy barn in another part of Devon and converted it into a five bedroom home, but we didn’t try to live in that while we converted it!

Ad. You’ll see this little label on quite a few of our posts because we want to ensure we’re completely transparent with you. We carefully select brands that we think are brilliant to collaborate with on fun and relevant content and may sometimes get discounted or free products/services. Rest assured, we’ll never work with brands we don’t believe in and we’ll always disclose that we have a relationship with this little label. In this video we worked with:

www.shakerwholesale.co.uk
www.heritagecookers.co.uk
www.delivita.com