Inside Lydia Millen’s ‘very secluded’ Northamptonshire cottage

Getting back to nature

”This whole weekend, other than three hours when I went to the stables, I’ve been in my greenhouse and my kitchen garden,” she says; the latter is a space where she grows vegetables and fruit. ”What’s lovely is that we’ve made use of a part of the garden that we didn’t really know what to do with.”

Previously, she says, there was ”just a bit of lawn and some trees”. The goodies currently growing include radishes, raspberries, beetroot and rhubarb. ”It feels like a simpler life when you can pick something and use it in your kitchen.”

© Peter Flude

The kitchen is one of her favourite places. ”I’d felt quite out of sorts growing up; I didn’t really have a solid base. A kitchen island that everyone congregates around feels like the beating heart of the home. It’s just lovely.”

Lydia’s parents divorced when she was young, and she says that she was ”sort of between the two of them” as she grew up in Hertfordshire. Eventually, after attending university in Northampton, she went to live with her grandmother for two years.

”She is the best woman on earth,” she says. “It was just us in her cottage [near] Oxfordshire. She let me save until I could buy my first home with my boyfriend, who is now my husband.”

It’s clear that her grandmother, who is 92, has had a strong influence on Lydia’s aesthetics. “I get a lot of my style from her. I look back at her outfits and think: ‘I would wear that now,” she says. 

© Peter Flude

”My office feels most like my grandmother.” Her office is home to the doll’s house that her grandfather built her as a Christmas gift, with interiors designed by her grandmother. For its walls, Lydia chose hessian fabric in homage to her grandmother’s love of decorating with textiles.

© Peter Flude

The office took two years to complete. ”I constantly second-guess myself,” she says. ”Now, as I move towards my forties, I feel like I’m more confident and I’m like: ‘Yes, we’ll go for red!”’ Children aren’t on the cards for the couple. ”I feel so grateful for everything I have that I can’t imagine more,” Lydia says.

”For a long time, I was like: ‘Why don’t I want this?’ I love my life the way it is. I’ve got six nieces and nephews, we’ve got godchildren, and I’m so lucky. And then I get to spend the whole weekend in my greenhouse.”