Natalie Massenet’s stylish and dramatic renovation of Donhead House
Natalie Massenet and Erik Torstensson have transformed a crumbling Wiltshire rectory into a sanctuary for friends and family. By Katrina Burroughs
As house rules go, it’s a curveball. “You can dance on the table,” says theinternet entrepreneur and investor Dame Natalie Massenet. Welcome to Donhead House, Wiltshire, the 300-year-old English country house that Massenet, 57, the founder of Net-a-Porter who now funds new brands via Imaginary Ventures, shares with her creative-director partner, Erik Torstensson, 43, the co-founder of fashion brand Frame. Over six years, the couple have pulled off a truly remarkable metamorphosis, transforming a dilapidated and damp-riddled Donhead into an enchanting retreat for family and friends.
Built as a rectory in the 18th century, the house was extended in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by previous incumbents such as Anthony Eden, who lived there after the Suez Crisis. Since then, Massenet says, “each owner had left their mark on the building but only doing odds and ends – everything had been patched up and there was no cohesion”.
Massenet and Torstensson comprehensively restored and reconfigured the 12-bedroom, grade II listed building, landscaped the surrounding gardens and enlarged the grounds to 70 acres, which form a backdrop for epic family holidays.
It couldn’t sound more romantic, but this is not a story of love at first sight. “It was a little bit like When Harry Met Sally,” Massenet says. “The first time we saw it we didn’t like it at all. Erik and I first went to visit on a gloomy, rainy day. It needed so much work, and so many of the rooms hadn’t been opened in years, that we walked away saying we would never take on such a project.”
What changed their view? “Some sunshine,” she says. “We had been having dinner with [the fashion designer] Erdem, a dear friend of ours, who had just started going out with Philip Joseph. Philip had worked with Ilse Crawford on Ett Hem, our favourite hotel in Sweden. We said if we ever find a country house we would love you to do it with us.” Having discussed Donhead’s potential, in May 2014, two years after their first viewing, the couples decided to take a road trip there together. Torstensson remembers the day clearly. “We barrelled down the A303 from London one weekend, on maybe the best, most beautiful day there has ever been.” “Erdem imagined me in romantic hostess dresses tending to guests in the garden,” Massenet adds. “We did one quick walk through with Philip and he was saying, ‘Hmm, hmm, hmm, we can open up walls and put in French doors here and here… ’ We hadn’t fully digested the amount of work it would take. We just fell in love with the location.”
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Joseph, who oversaw the interiors, started with the cottage in the grounds by creating a bay window in one of the bedrooms to house a stone soaking tub. “You look out over a kind of floral tableau Miranda has composed,” he says, “and you feel like you are in a bath in the garden.” Donhead’s landscaper, Miranda Brooks, is the celebrated designer who worked on Gwyneth Paltrow’s house in Long Island and another close friend of the couple. “We were introduced by Anna Wintour who said, ‘Miranda must do your gardens. The best way to work with her is to let her do whatever she wants,’” Massenet says. “So that’s what we did.”
Brooks framed the main part of the house using hedges with topiary shapes and meadow grass, which is kept long and wild with paths mown through. She introduced a lunar theme and worked with the idea that because the couple’s lives were so frantic, with constant travel, the garden “could be somewhere you could always ground yourself. Donhead would be their grounding base.” As Massenet says: “Miranda was a co-conspirator in how we live in the house. She said to us, ‘There must be an exciting route to the picnic!’ So a lake was dredged, and a jetty built, so that guests can take a little Riva-style boat across the water to a picnic spot on the hill.”
For an English country house, the style of the interiors is rather continental. Massenet lived in Paris until she was 11 and has a romantic attachment to “enfilades, hardwood floors, fireplaces and windows”. Her opinion on what makes good decor is “maximise light, make the room as inviting and comfortable as you can, and unexpected if you can”. Massenet was also keen to bring the outside in, to fill the interiors with greenery. “The team from Jam Jar, who did all the plants for Chiltern Firehouse, walked the house with us before it was completed and we planned trees and plants in every room.” Foliage seems most at home in the Green Room – the sitting room with the oak table strong enough to support 20 dancers should a party break out – where two large trees flank the window, echoing the green of the garden.
Massenet credits her partner, along with Joseph, for furnishing the interiors. “This is a synopsis of who we are,” she says. “I am big picture, and he is detail.” It’s a division of labour that pleases both. Torstensson, who co-founded Saturday, a creative agency that oversaw branding and advertising for, among others, Louis Vuitton, Moncler and Calvin Klein, enjoys collecting furniture at auctions and galleries. “It’s my passion and my pastime” he says. Naming a few of his favourite things, he mentions a black brutalist stool by Max Lamb, an Imi Knoebel art piece and a stone table by Axel Vervoordt. Growing up in Sweden, he has a great fondness for Svenskt Tenn, and many of the sofas and lamps in the house are from that Stockholm design institution.
The Yellow Room is where guests gather for cocktails, and sit on yellow satin upholstered sofas designed by Charles Pfister for Knoll. Torstensson says, even in this formal drawing room, his interiors tip is to mix high and low. “We have an amazing day bed by Charlotte Perriand and next to the fireplace we have two chairs without provenance that I sourced from an online antique dealer in Stockholm.”
The couple have a spectacular dressing room that forms a lobby leading to their bedroom and bathroom, with a 1950s looking glass and a round table by Alvar Aalto. “There was an expectation of running through the gardens in Erdem dresses, so we turned a room that was originally a large bathroom into the dressing room,” Massenet says. “Erik and I share that dressing room – and I would like to formally say that he has more clothes in it than I have. It should be noted!” What does the fashion impresario have on her side? “Hunters, Uggs, furry Gucci slippers and fancy dresses that are perfect for dressing for dinner at Donhead.”
Massenet – who became a mistress of the art of tablescaping during Covid – delights in decorating tables with finds from Mrs Alice and Talmaris, the by-appointment-only tableware store in Paris. And the house is alive with the sound of music. Massenet’s daughters are talented performers: Ava, 16, is a singer-songwriter who made her Glastonbury debut this year, and Isabella, 22, a student at NYU and DJ who goes by Bella Bella, recently played for a Louis Vuitton dinner in London.
Massenet recalls: “One night when we had had a beautiful black-tie dinner, it started pouring and we started playing the Singin’ in the Rain soundtrack, and everyone went out in the rain and danced to Gene Kelly.”
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As she says, the country home “really is a dream. It’s everything we always wanted.”
