I’d never heard of Granit Magazine when one of their journalists contacted me asking if they could write an article on what brought me to my house in north Bohemia. I took a look at the online version of the German publication and instinctively liked it. I actually don’t read German but one of my German speaking friends said it was very nice, the pictures and layout looked fantastic, so I thought I’d go with it! Now that I’m sitting here looking at this amazing article, I’m extremely happy I agreed.
I was initially sent a list of questions all of which I instantly liked but more interestingly found very though-provoking. Why did I come here, and why did I stay? What state was the house in when my family bought it? Where is the heart of the house? Tell us something about the garden...
All of these questions somehow got me thinking not only about how I ended up living in a tiny Czech village, but how and when my journey really started, where does my vision for the house and garden come from, and where do I feel is my home?
When I was a very small child I had an illustrated book of fairytales. I’d sit in bed at night looking at the pictures and dreaming about this magical world filled with gothic castles, timber framed houses, eastern silks and ceramics, balconies overlooking cityscapes of ancient towers. I remember one picture of a campfire in a forest clearing at the base of an ivy-covered stone tower. It was night and there were some men sleeping at the roots of a huge oak tree, their bodies, faces, and the tree‘s branches illuminated by the warm light of the fire. In the darkness at the far edges of the page were the shapes of the magical forest creatures watching as the men slept. There was something so captivating about that picture, I wanted to be there feeling the warmth of that fire, smelling the smoke and the cool woodland air… being so far away, but at the same time having the security of home.
I grew up in the center of England in a small town called Beeston, about six miles from Nottingham, yes! Robin Hood! In the 1970s and 80s it was a very nice place to grow up and I have fond memories of my time there. I had a little yellow BMX bike and cycled for miles alone or with friends exploring my little world. Even though we lived in a 1920s suburban neighborhood, there were areas of natural beauty everywhere, with woodlands and nature reserves that were perfect for a young child to play in.
I’ve always had what I call ’creative phases’ where I have a fascination with something and I just can’t get enough of it. By the age of nine I’d developed a passion for houses and architecture which usually involved me spending my evenings designing and drawing house plans, and my spare days gathering inspiration. Close to our home was a road called Beeston Fields Drive which had some amazing turn of the century homes including a particularly beautiful and quirky thatched ‘witch’s’ cottage.
Slightly further away was a picturesque village called Bramcote where I remember there being an abandoned red brick house in the woods with a beautiful central courtyard. There was a back window that we used to squeeze through to get in and explore. In the opposite direction on the way to Nottingham center was a historic village called Wollaton and more importantly, Wollaton Hall.
Wollaton Hall is an Elizabethan mansion built in 1580 - 1588 which since 1925 has been a natural history museum owned by the city of Nottingham. The gardens, grounds and house have always been free to enter which was truly a gift. Miles of woodlands, lakes, streams, parkland, and gardens provided whole days of exploring and adventure. The house itself is just magical. Surrounded by semi formal gardens of mature cedars, gravel paths, an original orangery, and stone staircases leading up to facades of stunning formality, Wollaton Hall is an amazingly beautiful place and Nottingham is lucky to have it… I was lucky to have it. This was my inspiration, a place I’ll always remember.
As I got older I persuaded, tricked, and bribed my parents into taking me to other houses and gardens of interest many of which were situated close to home. Haddon Hall is one of my all time favorite houses, as is Hardwick Hall. These two are very different but both absolutely stunning. Haddon Hall (originates from the 11th century) is a house that’s evolved over the ages, becoming larger as the owners became more prosperous and times changed.
Hardwick Hall (1590 - 1597) on the other hand, was the creation of one of the richest women of Elizabethan England, Bess of Hardwick, and was a radical, modern symbol of wealth and power. Not far from these two is Calke Abbey which again is just another spectacular house with an interior like nothing you’ve ever seen. If you’re ever in that part of the world, you must go and visit them all.
As a family, we almost always took our holidays in the north of England or north Scotland where there were endless houses, abbeys and castles ranging from lived in, to total ruins. Cottages built from stone clustering against huge hillsides of lush green grass. Drystone walls separating fields, dotted with sheep. Even the smell of the air, the taste of the mountain water was something so unique, so natural. These places are still in my head like I was there yesterday. When I was fourteen we stayed in a five floor Scottish castle on a twenty-acre island on Loch Awe. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. The house was only partly restored and the upper floors hadn’t been touched since the 1930s. My brother and I would take a boat and row out to tiny islands where there were abandoned fortresses which were nothing more than stone walls, all overgrown with honeysuckle and strawberries. These were truly magical places, places I wanted to somehow recreate. The moment we got home from these holidays I’d go straight into the garden and style my shed like a ruined Scottish fortress, clip our hedges to resemble the ones I’d seen at Elvaston Castle, and plan a water and rock garden with the magic of the gardens at Newstead Abbey.
At nineteen I moved to Epsom in Surrey, to go to university. This was an amazing experience and a fascinating place as it was a truly idyllic part of England. There were ancient buildings very different in style to the ones I’d grown up with, beautiful original cottages, and whole areas of Arts and Crafts architecture with actual houses by Edwin Lutyens and gardens by Gertrude Jekyll. I’d spend many of my weekends walking through the woods, looking over garden walls and soaking in the Englishness of it all.
My 20s were spent in central London, my 30s in Milan Italy. City life was very different and at that time, it was probably what I craved. Both these cities felt like home and I’d discovered the life I felt I’d been searching for. I met amazing people, made amazing friends, saw such beautiful places, absorbed the energy that surrounded me. I’m not sure I ever imagined leaving either of these cities. My desire for gardening was satisfied in London with a deep windowsill filled with plants, and in Milan I had windowsills and two balconies. It’s in this Italian apartment where I crossed paths with the tiny unwanted beige kitten that became one of the lives of my life: Uncle Mario, and we stayed together until his time came to leave at the age of 16. How I loved that fury boy. Life was fun, full of newness and inspiration, but it also lacked something I felt inside, something connected to my childhood, something magical and natural that came from my earliest dreams.
When my father bought No 19 I was pretty excited. I actually wasn’t sure what to think or imagine. When I first came to visit, I didn’t like the house or garden that much, but I somehow warmed to the place. It felt magical and I started to fall in love. As I’ve said many times before, the first night I slept here alone, I thought I’d be scared… I actually felt I’d come home, and I started to feel torn between my life in Milan and the peace of this strange Central European world. I started spending more time here, visiting during holidays, bringing friends, I used to even bring Uncle Mario. I’d meet my father and his girlfriend, Dorothy, here who’d drive from England, my mother and her boyfriend, Chris, our family friends… it started to become more of a home than ‘home’.
Over the years I found myself investing more and more energy into No 19, and when I finally decided to come and live here, something changed. It wasn’t an easy move, and it was a huge learning process for me, but moving to this house, in this village, at that time, somehow brought together all those dreams, emotions, and memories in a way which made me feel I was always meant to end up here. I know that sounds a little over dramatic, but that’s the way I felt and still feel. The work I do here combines all of those experiences from my past homes, it draws on that inspiration, those memories and emotions. When I’m fixing up a room here, I transport myself back to the first floor study overlooking Loch Awe in that Scottish castle. I go back and look at the steps in my apartment building in Milan where Uncle Mario used to play. And sometimes I find myself walking in the woods close to Wollaton Hall…
We all need a place to call home. As for my home, now and for the foreseeable future, it is No 19. But I think my true sense of home also comes from all those memories I draw on to create this place where I live, all those dreams, everything I hold in my heart... The 3 year old me dreaming of a campfire in a far away forest. The 8 year old boy by a lake playing with tadpoles in front of an Elizabethan mansion. Loch Awe in 1987 in a small rowing boat with my brother and his girlfriend. A young man watering his windowsill garden in Florence Street, London. An Englishman laughing while climbing a tower in Siena with his mother on an unbearably hot July afternoon. And here at No 19 Starý Týn with my family and friends watching shooting stars on endless summer nights, feeling the love of the souls we travel with.
If home is truly where the heart is, my home exists in places and moments dotted through time and space which I carry with me on my journey like a bag of souvenirs. And when my time is up and I’m no longer here, my home will always be with me, it’ll always be in my heart ♥️
All pictures used here in this article are my own♥️
Below is a link to the online version of Granit magazine, and links to all the historic houses mentioned above.
♥️Granit Magazine: https://granitmagazin.de/Ausgabe/Granit3.pdf
♥️Wollaton Hall Link: https://wollatonhall.org.uk/
♥️Haddon Hall Link: https://www.haddonhall.co.uk/
♥️Hardwick Hall Link: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hardwick-hall
♥️Elvaston Castle Link: https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/leisure/countryside/countryside-sites/country-parks-and-visitor-centre
♥️Newstead Abbey Link: https://newsteadabbey.org.uk/ ♥️Calke Abbey Link: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/calke-abbey
Below is a google translation of the Granit Magazine article into English.
Glad you're here - House Tour in Bohemia
Welcome to No 19
When Nick Adam Lawes talks about his house, it sounds like a story of two things that just had to magically come together. Nick is British and has been living in a small village near Decin on the edge of the Bohemian Uplands for more than 10 years. The house was originally bought by his father to use as a family vacation home. At the time, Nick was living and working as a designer in Milan, but he traveled as often as possible to the small village in Bohemia. He brought friends with him, the family met here, but he also spent quiet days in the house. "When I slept alone in the house for the first time, I felt at home in a special way," he says today. Life in Milan was exciting, I enjoyed my job and yet there was this longing for Bohemia”. When the capital of Milan was coming to an end, there was room to live in the old house for a longer period of time. Nick finally moved from the Italian city to the village in northern Bohemia, without a driver's license, without knowledge of the Czech language, but with a vision for the house and a primal power that stems from childhood memories, a love of everything historical and a good sense of form and color and materials. For all this, the house was a grateful recipient.
Although the house from the 1980s was still in good condition, Nick quickly recognized what was not doing the house well. Before it got into the hands of Nick's family, a lot of the old stuff was removed from the house and modernized according to what was possible in Czechoslovakia at the time. The house needed air and light, and wanted to be freed from paneling and plaster. Nick's father bought numerous building materials in England over the years, floor tiles, slate, tiles etc waiting to be used. At that time, the financial resources were not available to commission a specialist company with a comprehensive renovation. Luckily, says Nick today. “That way I could feel more about what the house really needed and how I wanted to transform it. I didn't know much about the building renovation. My best advisors back then were actually youtube videos. Today I can hardly believe that I designed the floor in the entrance hall with my father's old building materials. I learned how to recreate the old doors, how to secure and reinstall old wooden floors, what a great gift leftover fabric can be, or how to apply plaster the traditional way. The house was just waiting for all this.”
Together with Nick, his German shepherd Luca, 11 cats and his best friend Rob, also from England, live in the house today. Both are also passionate gardeners and complement each other very much when it comes to garden design. We still manage to put roses somewhere in between, we both love them very much, there are actually too many of them, but the David Austen roses are really irresistible.
The result of their work on the house and garden is impressive, international interior magazines have even taken notice of the ensemble in the remote north Bohemian village. Recently, ELLE DECORATION was a guest for a shoot. Nick remains humble and says a carpenter would immediately spot where I went wrong,” with a twinkle in his eye.
Life in No. 19, as Nick calls his house, is a mix of English, Italian and Bohemian culture. Family and friends still get together and enjoy happy days, especially in summer. Nick continues to work as a designer and has started his own label. From no 19 it says. The house wants to give him something back for his troubles, it seems. Under this label, Nick produces wonderful things from wonderful fabrics, such as sustainable bags, which are available via the internet (www.fromno19.com). “I am very grateful how North Bohemia changed my life and now has a significant impact on it. And even my creativity gains a lot of new impetus here, a short train ride and I'm in Prague.”
For tinkering in and above the photos:
As a child I was very inspired by our holidays in Scotland. We lived in an almost dilapidated castle, the furnishings of which were almost unchanged from the 1930s. For me one of the most beautiful houses ever.
Giving away things that others would throw away is a way of life for Nick. Flea markets are his world. Above all, old porcelain from the 18th and 19th centuries, which is painted according to the Chinese model, must be included.
Is the house a bead and breakfast? Nick has to answer this question again and again to his social media followers. The answer: not yet. But who knows…
The story is warm and heartfelt. The pictures, as always...amazing. Uncle Mario had such a beautiful face. Your world is magical!