The Cotswold family home of sisters Hannah Kennedy and Kate Blaney was their late mother’s dream. They talk to Jessica Jonzen about how the house is continuing to tell her story – and is inspiring their own homes
A HAND-PAINTED STAIRCASE AT HOME FARM IN THE COTSWOLDS. IMAGE: INSTAGRAM / @SISTERHOUSES
A home is so much more than the sum of its parts. At its best, it is the constant, comforting backdrop to the triumphs, disasters and humdrum routine of everyday life. Over time a home will evolve, filling with memories and telling the stories of the people who live within its walls. As well as revealing their tastes, a home can also represent their hopes, dreams and aspirations, and be a powerful influence on future homes.
This is precisely the case for Home Farm, a charming Cotswold farmhouse near Chipping Norton, and the inspiration for the Instagram account @sisterhouses. Set up by sisters Hannah Kennedy and Kate Blaney, the account is a beautiful and moving tribute to both their mother, Jean, who passed away in August 2019, and the stylish and loving home she created for her family.
The sisters spent lockdown at Home Farm, and the experience of living there without their mother inspired them to start their account. “I think that lockdown forced us all to stop and re-evaluate everything in our lives,” says Hannah, who works in marketing for Thomasina Miers’ restaurant chain, Wahaca. “We were in the midst of grief, and being at Home Farm really forced us to confront it head on. If we’d been at our own homes in London, we could have busied ourselves and ignored the grief but we had to face it. I think that was actually a very positive thing.”
(LEFT) HANNAH AND KATE’S LATE MOTHER, JEAN, AT HOME FARM; (MIDDLE) THE GARDEN AT HOME FARM; (RIGHT) HANNAH AND KATE. IMAGES: INSTAGRAM / @SISTERHOUSES
The account shares beautiful photographs of stylish vignettes from around the house created by their mother, and tells the stories behind them. Hannah and Kate also occasionally share pictures from their own homes, which show the influence Home Farm has had on their choices. “We had lived together in London but just after our mum died we had to part ways as Kate was pregnant and starting a family,” says Hannah. “We started creating our own homes and decorating them, and not having our mum there for that experience has been hard. We’d have run everything past her, and she’d have been there to help us and looked on the internet for things for us. The account and the community that has grown around it has filled a bit of a void in a way.”
The account is a testament to Jean’s fabulous taste. From the hand-painted stair runner to styling vintage signs and textiles to add character and texture, Home Farm shows her creative flare. After a long career in nursing, she moved into interiors and ran a vintage shop called Fade Interiors in Woodstock. Hannah and Kate, who followed her mother into nursing after her textiles degree, often worked at the shop and were very involved in her redecoration of Home Farm. “Mum would go on these big buying trips and fall in love with all the stuff she found and most of it would end up in Home Farm – it wasn’t hugely profitable!” says Kate. “She was always helping people with their homes, virtually consulting for them, but never charged a penny. She was just an incredibly kind and lovely person.”
IMAGES: INSTAGRAM / @SISTERHOUSES
The family bought Home Farm – a former working farm dating back to the 17th century – in 2009 when Hannah and Kate were respectively at university and had just left but still based at home, and their two older siblings had homes of their own. “Amazingly, they bought the house from two sisters,” remembers Kate. “They were quite elderly and were artists and had painted a lot of quite garish murals on the walls and floors,” says Hannah. “The house was unrecognisable to how it is now, but Mum saw its potential – an Aga and dogs in the kitchen, vegetables growing in the garden. We grew up in central Oxford but Mum lived in the countryside as a child and was always desperate to get back. This house was her dream.”
As with all the best houses, Home Farm doesn’t just look gorgeous, it feels wonderful too. “It was a home from home for anyone who came here, and always felt so welcoming,” says Kate. “When mum was really quite unwell, I remember one of the community nurses saying this was one of her favourite places to come because she could just feel the love in this house,” says Hannah. “Whether we were all here as a family, you were here by yourself, or someone came in who didn’t know the family, it really was and continues to be a warm, loving environment and that was her – her personality, in everything she created, and that’s what we want to take forward into our own homes.”
IMAGES: INSTAGRAM / @SISTERHOUSES
Hannah and Kate admit to being superstitious and share some of the signs they’ve found of their mother on their account. In one post, Hannah shared a picture of a striped stair runner and described how she had been driving her father’s old car and was thinking of her Mum and wishing she had asked her more questions about Home Farm, and in particular where she had got the stair runner 10 years earlier. “When I got back from unloading the shopping, I found an old sample from Roger Oates in the car. I looked online, found the runner (Sudbury Brick) and have been smiling ever since.”
“We are quite superstitious and our mum was too. I think when you lose someone you are always looking for signs of them,” says Kate. “I had been looking for a cupboard for my daughter’s bedroom for ages. One day I was going through my emails when I found an email from Mum from 2011 where she had sent me a link to a website called The Hoarde because at the time I was looking for some vintage lockers. I didn’t remember ever going on the website but I went on and within five seconds I found the exact cupboard I had been looking for. It was like she was leading me to it.”
IMAGES: INSTAGRAM / @SISTERHOUSES
While Hannah and Kate feel incredibly close to their mother at Home Farm, they’re determined that it should not become a museum, stuck in time. “We didn’t want it to be like that because it was always evolving – Mum would be buying new things or moving bits of furniture around,” says Hannah. The sisters enjoy rearranging and styling corners of the house when they visit and borrowing ideas for their own homes. “Mum loved the garden and looking after it was very therapeutic for me this summer. I potted up some plants which had self-seeded and brought them home to my own garden in London so I feel Mum surrounding me there, too.”
As Hannah and Kate honour their mother’s memory in the homes they are creating, so her own story will continue. In the words of Philip Larkin, “What will survive of us is love.”
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