Present perfect

Talented interior designer Sophie Kirk has helped transform the homes of the rich and famous, from Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, and controversial zoo owner John Aspinall to billionaire bankers and entrepreneurs living in the most sought-after properties in London.

Working for top designers like Nina Campbell and Anthony Little in the capital, her company car was a Range Rover and she regularly flew to Paris for work. That jet-setting lifestyle seems a world away from her life today, settled deep in the beautiful, lush countryside of the North York Moors National Park, where she keeps chickens and horses, and enjoys walking the family dogs.

Here, the mother-of-two has worked her magic on her own family home, a Georgian mansion, complete with holiday cottage, four ponds, tennis court, and stream set in eight acres, which she and husband Charlie have painstakingly restored and sympathetically extended.

After 30 years in interior design, Sophie has also converted a potting shed in the property’s old stone courtyard to set up The Present House Company, her online homeware and accessories gift business. She sells stylish pieces including pretty French sponge bags, Italian picture frames, tassel necklaces, solid glass ball tealight holders, pretty pocketbooks, napkins and colourful hand-made dishes she has designed herself.

Inspired by designer Nina Campbell’s accessories shop, based beneath the company’s London Walton Street office, Sophie decided she would create her own online version. “I love accessories and have always secretly wanted a shop, but this is something I can do from home,” she says.

Arguing that we should only give presents we want to receive ourselves, she chooses items for her site accordingly: “I’m not after the latest things. These are timeless gifts that will look good in 20 years’ time. Most are hand-made with the utmost care and attention to detail. There is nothing better than finding the perfect present that says just the right thing.”

Sophie’s own home is full of character, the classic antique furniture, stone floors, rich rugs, tasteful lamps, paintings and beautiful patterned fabrics perfectly reflecting her discerning taste and elegant, English country house style.

She and Charlie totally refurbished the 1850s property, which was once a country pub with rooms, adding a kitchen extension and spacious orangery. The couple also installed a tennis court and converted the outbuildings in the courtyard.They put in new stone floors downstairs and opened up tiny rooms and dark corridors to improve the flow of the house and create a large, light-filled entrance hall. “It’s been very exciting finally being able to create what I wanted,” says Sophie.

The once-tiny kitchen is now vast, with a central island, huge larder cupboards and painted dresser, with large dining and seating areas in the adjoining orangery. “The whole family lives in here now. It’s wonderful for entertaining,” she says.

Sophie can be refreshingly quirky too. A funky, transparent acrylic bubble chair, complete with vintage retro Bovril cushion, hangs from the specially reinforced ceiling in the orangery. “I always wanted one of these,” she laughs. Pointing to other Bovril memorabilia dotted throughout the house, she explains: “My great-great-grandfather, John Lawson Johnston, invented Bovril.”

As the daughter of elected hereditary peer Arthur Lawson Johnson, 3rd Baron Luke, who also worked as an art dealer, Sophie has inherited the courtesy title ‘The Honourable’ although it is a prefix she rarely uses. “The title doesn’t mean anything, really,” she says.

Her fascination with the world of property and interiors began almost from the moment she was born. Growing up with a father who specialised in 19th century water colours, and a mother who ran her own successful London rentals property company, you could say it was in the blood. She remembers, as a child, accompanying her mother - who, at 76, is still working full time in the business - at weekends and in the holidays, when she enjoyed sorting through property brochures. “My mother has been a huge influence,” says Sophie.

After A levels, Sophie went to secretarial college and her first job, working for an interior designer whose clients included the Royal Family of Oman, inspired her. She was soon promoted to the design team. “I was there five years and learnt everything,” she says.

It gave her the grounding and confidence she needed when, as a 24-year-old, she went to study at the New York School of Interior Design, living with an aunt in a luxury apartment in the iconic two-tower San Remo building overlooking Central Park. The only English student on the course, it was an incredible experience, she says.

Once qualified, her first job was with Nina Campbell in London. “That was the springboard that launched my interior design career,” says Sophie, who went on to work for Anthony Little of Osborne & Little, and later for Colefax & Fowler, before setting up on her own.

She worked on Sarah Ferguson’s home, at a time when Prince Andrew’s newly-divorced wife was being hounded by the Press. “I remember being sent out for loo paper and all the photographers outside. It was quite a sight.” She was also part of the team putting together John Aspinall’s last gambling club in Mayfair, where novelty lampshades and ornate mirrors were created to house hidden cameras. In the private dining room, alcoves were decorated with exotic fruit, sent to Aspinall’s private zoo to feed the animals at the end of the night. “It was incredibly opulent,” says Sophie.

Her clients, inevitably, had expensive tastes and Sophie recalls creating a kitchen in a Chelsea basement kitchen with walls made to look like an old library, full of leather-bound volumes. “It was stunning, but when the basement flooded it had to be done all over again,” she says. Another customer had walls hand-painted to look like tortoiseshell. “It was like a cavern. It took weeks and weeks.”

The pinnacle of her career was working for the prestigious Colefax & Fowler, in a magnificent Georgian building next to Claridge’s, where clients included a number of stately home owners and colleagues worked on the interior of a private jet.

Sophie moved to Yorkshire when she married chartered surveyor Charlie, six months after setting up her own interiors business in London, and the couple rented a small two bedroom stone cottage on the edge of the North York Moors, moving into their current home nearly 14 years ago. While Charlie bought a drainage firm and expanded to set up further companies hiring out shoring equipment and doing tarmacking and groundworks, Sophie continued to build up her interior design business, taking on everything from small cottages to country mansions.

Sophie worked around her daughters, Mamie, now 18, and Evie, 17. “I always worked from home with the girls literally at my feet,” she says. “I just kept going and never stopped, I have been blessed to go from project to project.”

Setting up her new venture over a year ago was a little scary, but she soon discovered items at trade fairs in London and Paris that she wanted to sell. “I have had to build up my client base,” she says. “But it is going well. I am lucky to enjoy the lifestyle I have while being on hand for Charlie and the girls.”

W: thepresenthouse.co.uk

T: 07747-474022