Modern Comfort, Classic Style

With purposeful vision and their own meaningful mix of old and new, a British couple brings heart to a seventeenth-century home tucked amid the rolling hills of Oxfordshire.

Just two hours from London, yet virtually a world away, Tim and Lizzie Thornton-Allan’s impeccably restored seventeenth-century home in Oxfordshire blends gracefully and organically with the landscape, as if its sole purpose is to provide elusive structure to the wild, sprawling gardens that wind across the historic pastoral property.

“We fell in love with this house straightaway,” Lizzie recalls. “Its age and rambling gardens are what sold it to us—we knew it would make a perfect family home.” For the past ten years, Lizzie and her husband, Tim, had lived and worked in London and would retreat to their cottage in Oxfordshire on weekends. But when the couple were ready for a dramatic change, they decided to pack up the kids, leave city life behind, and live in their country cottage full-time while looking for a larger property. After stumbling upon a diamond in the rough, Lizzie—one of the creative forces behind Cox & Cox, the go-to online British brand of inspired but practical home accessories—quickly envisioned the possibilities of a renovation. Not surprisingly, the couple dove in without hesitation, confident the outcome would be well worth the effort.

Once the sale was complete, they immediately installed new plumbing and opened up the original rooms to accommodate both a new bathroom and a large, updated kitchen. Lizzie’s signature techniques—sandblasting blackened ceiling beams down to their original wood finishes, painting walls in neutral colors, and placing key furniture pieces sparingly—instantly create a feeling of spaciousness and generate a fresh and bright feel-good factor throughout the entire house.