Redroofs, the prestigious theatre school in Berkshire and the alma mater of Kate Winslet, was the former home of the legendary composer and playwright Ivor Novello. As this storied house goes on the market for the first time since the 1960’s, Samantha Keston-Bloom, who lived at Redroofs until adulthood, shares her memories with Katrina Harper-Lewis.
THE WOOD PANELLED DRAWING ROOM IS VIRTUALLY UNCHANGED FROM WHEN IVOR NOVELLO LIVED AT REDROOFS. IMAGE: THE COUNTRY HOUSE DEPARTMENT
The bucolic Berkshire village of Littlewick Green, near Maidenhead feels like it’s been frozen in time. With its Victorian parish church, charming redbrick cottages encircling a traditional village green, and local pub overlooking the cricket pitch, it is unsurprising it is often used as a filming location.
It is also home to Redroofs, the handsome house on the edge of the village green which caught the eye of the composer and playwright Ivor Novello. He fell in love with Munro Lodge, as it was then called, and bought it in 1927 with his earnings from a lucrative contract with Gainsborough Pictures. He lived there with his partner, Bobby Andrews (although, for the purposes of deflecting the glaring public eye, Bobby lived with his sister, the actress Maidie Andrews, who owned the cottage next door).
“Redroofs was his love affair,” explains Samantha (Sam) Keston-Bloom, “it was a party house, where he spent his weekends away from London.” Novello hosted a glittering guest list of contemporaries, which included Laurence Olivier and Noel Coward – “Vivienne Leigh slept in my bedroom,” Sam says – and he probably wrote many of his famous works there. Even wartime petrol rationing couldn’t keep him away, and Novello served time in prison for misusing his coupons to drive there. “That’s how much he loved it,” says Sam. You can just imagine the furore he and his friends must have brought to this unassuming rural village.
As the original house had been added to over the years, Novello changed its name to Redroofs to better reflect its size and component parts. Indeed, the house has over 7,500 sq ft of living space. After his death in 1951, he left Redroofs to the Actor’s Benevolent Trust. A few years later, Sam’s mother, June Rose, was running a theatre school in London when she discovered Redroofs by chance. “One day, she and my dad went for a drive to see the boats in Maidenhead, and they stumbled across the house in Littlewick Green,” Sam says. “My mum said ‘I’ve got to have that house’ and after some negotiation they bought it.” That was in 1964, the year before Sam – the youngest of four siblings – was born. From then on the house became known as Redroofs Theatre School, but it was also the family’s home.
“We had a charmed existence,” Sam says. “We would ride around the green on our bikes, climb trees and play fairies and wizards in the woods. It was a magical place to grow up.” Over the years countless more children experienced a snapshot of that idyllic life via the school. “Our garden was always filled with kids from the village and students. On hot summer days everyone would come round to swim in the pool,” Sam recalls.
Work and home life were inextricably linked at Redroofs. “My mother had no separation and created an extended family. Some of my greatest childhood friends came from the school.” Sam continues, “there was no table in the kitchen – we just ate wherever we were, as mum often worked in the evenings. We did occasionally sit around the dining room table when the wider family would descend and all the kids and grandchildren would run feral, coming in dripping wet from the pool.”
WROUGHT IRON DOUBLE DOORS LEAD THROUGH TO THE DINING ROOM, WHICH WAS RARELY USED DURING SAM KESTON-BLOOM’S CHILDHOOD. IMAGE: THE COUNTRY HOUSE DEPARTMENT
It was only when Sam’s friends (from the local comprehensive school that she attended) visited that she realised not everyone lived like that. “We had no sense of being particularly affluent, but my friends’ jaws would drop when they came round,” she recalls. “It was all just very normal for us.”
Redroofs Theatre School has been, and continues to be, a huge success story, with a sparkling alumni, including Kris Marshall [My Family; Love Actually; Death in Paradise], Simone Ashley [Bridgerton], Joanne Froggatt [Downton Abbey, Holby City] and, Kate Winslet, who attended the school for seven years. “There was no way Kate was going to let the industry pass her by,” Sam says. “She came from a theatrical family, understood the industry, was unassuming and hard working. She was actually our Head Girl.”
But being surrounded by these young hopefuls, many of whom have gone on to become household names in television, film and stage, was all just part and parcel of growing up at Redroofs. “I’d often hear my friends arriving in the waiting room so I’d go in and have a chat with them,” she remembers. “One of my earliest memories is of lying on a green carpet under a table watching mum teach elocution and deportment lessons.
“I suppose that growing up in that environment laid the foundations for what we went on to do when we opened the day school in 1981,” Sam continues. June Rose spotted an opportunity to expand the business in a former ballroom dance school in Maidenhead, and opened a full-time stage school with 41 pupils. Today 500 pupils come through the doors on a daily basis.
Sam lived at Redroofs until she was 24, then returned a few years later to work as Co-Director of the theatre school with her sister, Carolyn. “The house has given us some amazing experiences and I’ve been in and out of it for my entire life,” she says. As the Maidenhead school grew, the Littlewick Green site continued to be used for break out classes and summer schools, right up until last year.
“The house just has that essence of creativity,” Sam muses. “My mother’s friends, Roger Webb and Norman Newell – a very well-known duo at the time – would come over and compose together at the grand piano. They wrote for a musical of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory amongst many others. That Broadwood piano still sits there in the house today.”
THE BROADWOOD GRAND PIANO, ON WHICH MANY COMPOSITIONS WERE WRITTEN. IMAGE: THE COUNTRY HOUSE DEPARTMENT
Whilst she only made modest changes to the property, June Rose did put in a miniature theatre, where the students would perform. “On a Friday night they would put on shows and our weekend entertainment would be to do the interval refreshments,” Sam recalls.
And what of the decorative style? Sam’s father was an antiques dealer who worked in the Courtauld Gallery during the war, and went on to run his own shops in Knightsbridge and Windsor. “His loves were bronzes and clocks,” Sam says. “Mum had a great eye for art. There were paintings of cherubs, Shakespearean plays and children, all over the walls.” Although the main parts of the house are wood panelled, June Rose had a passion for wallpaper. “I distinctly remember a Kate Greenaway wallpaper in the downstairs loo and a picture of the Pears soap girl hung over it,” says Sam. “And our kitchen was tartan at one time, not just the walls, but the ceiling, too!”
And there was not one, but four, costume rooms. “Technically they were out of bounds, but my sister and I would go in and grab a load of hats and make up our own little plays,” shares Sam. “Friends would come over to borrow outfits for fancy dress parties and we still have Kate Winslet’s playing card from when she was in Alice in Wonderland.” Bit by bit Sam and her family have been sorting through it, retaining what they have space for at the Maidenhead site and rehoming the rest.
“To this day I think mum was destined to have the house,” Sam says. “In fact, I was there yesterday and happened to take a book off the shelf about Drury Lane Theatre. It was inscribed with a message from Mum’s aunt for her 18th birthday, and when I turned the page there was a quote from Ivor Novello. It was so odd as she had no connection with him or the house at that time of her life.”
It’s been a difficult decision for Sam and her family to put the house on the market, but a considered one, out of choice to move on and change with the times. “It’s 7,500sq ft of house and too big for any of us now, but there are literally memories in the walls,” Sam reflects.
So, what does she hope for the future of Redroofs? “Personally, I would love to see it continue to be a happy home, where children will always play and make more magical memories. I have always carried the spirit of the house with me and I am very honest about the opportunities that it has opened up in my life. It is a house of possibilities and now it’s someone else’s turn to fall in love with it.”
THE FAMILY’S COLLECTION OF ANTIQUES, CURATED BY SAM’S ANTIQUES DEALER FATHER. IMAGE: THE COUNTRY HOUSE DEPARTMENT
THE MINIATURE THEATRE INSTALLED BY SAM’S MOTHER, JUNE ROSE. IMAGE: THE COUNTRY HOUSE DEPARTMENT
REDROOFS, SO NAMED BY PREVIOUS CUSTODIAN IVOR NOVELLO. IMAGE: THE COUNTRY HOUSE DEPARTMENT
Redroofs is currently on the market for £2.5millon with The Country House Department.
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