LAST week, Jane Keisner was up a ladder on a building site wearing a mink coat, hard hat and wellies. She and her business partner, Joanna Lindsay, are known to their clients as the Trinny and Susannah of the decorating world: bossy, vibrant, formidably energetic, fixers of all things domestic and blessed with a strong sense of style.

The duo can unpack a kitchen, find, mend, build or unbuild, design, project manage, make a bed or scrub a floor – they can even hire you a good nanny.

They are also peacemakers, often being called in by desperate clients on the point of murdering a builder or demanding a divorce over disputed curtain swatches. The pair bring harmony, but not by imposing their own sense of style: they work with a client’s own taste, whether that is for the chintzy or the minimal.

And they claim to save their clients money. Managing a project yourself can prove costly when you don’t know where to go for bargains and have to buy everything retail. The two Js, perhaps uniquely, pass on their trade discounts to their clients.

I called them in myself recently when my home makeover was about 85 per cent finished.

I had spent hours fondling Valli & Valli door furniture and marrying Majestic shower doors with Bette baths, and so many days deciding with whom I should sleep (Bart Halpern bedroom fabrics won me over) that I was in danger of paying council tax at the fabric store.

But I was also overloaded (is life really meaningless without a Gaggenau steam oven?), and could no longer see the designer wood for the (maple, oak or walnut?) trees. I lacked the confidence to finish the project myself and longed for help. The two Js came to my rescue.

The two women arrived at my north London home, Jane, 42, decorated expensively in Prada and Gucci, Joanna, 36, more high-street in Warehouse and Zara: two different approaches, both yielding terrific results.

They started working together in 1998. Before that, Jane was a currency dealer turned door-todoor speciality bread seller; Joanna cut her teeth building a gift business.

The two of them charge though my house passing sentence on each room: that desk would have to be moved; a plain blind would make this room look bigger; Andrew Martin’s mushroom fabric would look divine here; change that armchair; put battery-controlled Velux blinds in that room and a touch of taupe in the other. How about a Saniflo lavatory in this cupboard? Jane downed coffee on the move, Joanna scribbled notes.

And then they turn their attention to me. They had picked up on my taste the moment they walked through the door and were so spot on. I had already on order many of the items they suggested that I buy (except it took me months to track them down).

The pair also had suggestions to achieve the results I wanted in a more economical fashion.

Joanna takes out her phone and it looks as though they might be phoning each other, but Joanna is getting an estimate from the joiner.

Their enthusiasm for my home comes thick and fast. “Oooh, what beautiful carpets, lavender-tinged Wilton,” murmurs Jane, stroking my mousecoloured carpet appreciatively.

“Gorgeous,” concurs Joanna. “And those stunning recessed downlighters must be by Candela.”

Their own style is low-key and neutral, one of understated elegance. But they are adaptable. “We draw the line at cut-off curtains, or orange walls with purple spots,” says Jane, entering my daughter’s bedroom and encountering its blue-and-white spotted Cath Kidston carpet, raspberry walls and azure floral blinds.

Joanna and Jane both attend the initial client meeting. For the first consultation and ensuing estimates they charge £500. Thereafter, they charge a flat fee, calculated on their instinct for the job’s length and “Ikea has a table that would look fantastic in this kitchen,” says Joanna. “Otherwise our joiner could make you one with a walnut top and steel base. Or have you seen … ?” She makes a mobile call. cost. That usually works out at about 10 to 15 per cent of the project. Recently they charged £30,000 for changes to a suspended gym over an indoor pool in Belgravia, but just before that they were able to manage the complete makeover of a Muswell Hill flat for just £2,500.

“We hate to spend people’s money unnecessarily,” says Jane. “If we can find a fabric for £40 that looks the same as one for £150, we’ll always go for the cheaper option.”

For one job they were given carte blanche at a St John’s Wood Victorian villa – even down to commissioning fine art from Cork Street with individual pictures costing up to £50,000. Then there was the Leicester Square flat where they worked at 4.30am because delivery lorries were not allowed into the area after 5am.

The two sometimes have a less happy relationship with builders. One got so exasperated with them he walked off the site and went home, complaining that his wife nagged him less than Joanna did. “But I called him up and nagged him some more and he came back and finished the job,” she giggles.

As the pair leave my home, their promises to send me catalogues, swatches and people are soon being delivered – even before they get to the end of my road, their suppliers and contacts begin calling me to make appointments for quotes.

THEY rode 26 horses in the central London drawing-room of architect Seth Stein and his wife Dorothy, a film producer. That was when their home, a derelict builder’s yard when they bought it two years ago, was used for stables. Now the only evidence of the horses are the original 1880s numbered tiles in their dining-room, denoting where they hung the animals’ tack, and the paddock-sized rooms.

You enter through massive gliding James Bond-type electronic gates opening on to a cobbled yard. Then you go into their awesome house through a door surrounded by frosted glass. Nearly everything there, from every wall to each step of floor, is new – and mostly designed by Seth. Once inside you are immediately greeted by a concrete cylinder containing a cloakroom. Inside, a font-like marble basin floats out of the wall and tepid water, triggered by the light, pours from a steel tube. It’s so minimalist there isn’t any soap.

A 100ft corridor containing just one picture, and called The Gallery, leads to the drawing-room. Like most of the house, The Gallery has a heated concrete floor and ivory walls. Embedded in the floor are amethysts from a hippie shop in Soho. ‘It’s feng shui to purify the negative energy created by the drains,’ explains Seth, in architect’s uniform of black jacket and white polo neck. ‘But it also tells you where the drains are if you have to dig them up.’ On one side of The Gallery a skin of glass runs from floor to ceiling, flanking the courtyard which was formerly full of building materials. On its other side is the erstwhile workshop, now the kitchen. ‘Instead of net curtains, we’ve planted a wispy strip of bamboo to screen the view,’ says Seth.

The courtyard, paved with Spanish limestone, is Japanese-looking and has two huge Tuscan olive pots, eucalyptus tree, stone block bench and steps to a roof deck. This is where Caleb Joe, their one year-old son, plays. ‘I prefer the urban idea of playing on the roof of an apartment building among chimneys and slates to boring old hills and trees,’ says Seth. Into the drawing-room. Here we stand in natural light under a precisely engineered glazed canopy on a refined-steel truss which replaced the collapsed Victorian glass roof. The cantilevered stairs with American oak steps curve through the room, sculptural and fluid, wrapping round the edge of the wall.

On one wall is a Mark Francis oil of mushroom spores. On another is a fire designed by Seth with a Portland stone square opening and a grate of raised steel studs supporting ‘coals’, in the shapes of spheres, cubes and cones. At night there are dramatic floodlights from the ceiling and a French 1950s black metal Anglepoise light.

The room, like everything in their house, is simple. ‘It’s my antidote to sitting in traffic in the Marylebone Road.’ The furniture, too, is sparse: there’s only a tapering red square steel table designed by Seth, a yellow curvy Bonetti and Garouste sofa, and a green Jasper Morrison chair. They’re waiting for some hip Marc Newson chairs. ‘The idea is that the furniture is sculptural as well as functional. Marc’s chairs are probably not even very comfortable.’

Next door is the dining-room with its Jean Prouve reconditioned 1950s school chairs on early hi-tech frames, a table of old oak floorboards on a stainless steel base and a chandelier made of Christmas lights and crystal – both designed by Seth.

There is also a Christian Boltanski photograph of Memories. But where are their family memories? ‘There are clutter zones in the kitchen and study.’ Certainly the study is plush, nocturnal and cosy – despite having grey waxed plaster walls and warehouse decking shelves – and houses their photographs and books.

The kitchen is 45ft long. Seth might call this ‘the dumping ground’, but the space is pure and functional. There are two long counters, one with a screen to hide the toaster and Squeezy bottle. ‘We sat 60 people here for a friend’s celebration lunch which coincidentally christened the house,’ says Seth.

UPSTAIRS are the original Victorian stable bedrooms with sash windows, now updated with oatmeal sisal carpet and calico canvas blinds. One bedroom has original timber pine trusses. Instead of a bedside table, it has a low stone shelf. A ceremonial garment from Zaire decorates the bed and nearby is Eileen Grey’s Bibendum chair. The cupboards are behind flush panels of varying shapes and sizes ‘to reflect their contents’, punctuated by a deeply recessed modern fireplace.

The bathroom is entered through a dramatic 16ft-high gap without a door. ‘This is a semi-recreational space. Bathing is not necessarily something you have to do behind closed doors.’ There is a stone trough basin and bath which is very simple (you cannot see the plug or taps unless you’re lying in it), all surrounded by Tuscan limestone.

The lavatory is hidden behind a panel and the separate shower is a curved form finished simply in cement render.

He wanted his home to be elegant. On all counts he has succeeded.

How to get the look BARBARA CHANDLER LESS is more in a minimalist household. However, the less you have, the better it must be. Proportion, space, light and materials are of the essence. If possible, use an architect.

The Clients Advisory Service at the Royal Institute of British Architects (0171 580 5533) will listen to your needs (including budget restrictions), and recommend architects. A leaflet gives details. Seth Stein Architects is on 0171 376 0005.

Underfloor heating is back in fashion with problems of 20 years ago sorted out. Plastic (polybutylene) pipes carry hot water through a concrete screed, which can be left as is, or given a variety of finishes, even wood or carpet. Expert system designer/supplier is Kampmann (0181 783 0033), who assesses and supply kits of pipes, pump, mixing valve and controls. Floor temperature must not exceed 27C. They’ll recommend installers. The system is only suitable for newly-built properties, or major conversions if you are raising the floor’s surface.

Floor paint is a cheap and effective minimalist finish. The International range has 10 colours including Granite Grey, Jet Black and White. It costs around £7.30 a litre from DIY Superstores (including B&Q, Homebase); a litre covers around 10 sq m.

Wax walls have a sensuous smooth finish in various colours, including pinks and grey, which you can leave as is. Before waxing let the plaster dry out for around six weeks – it contains a lot of water. The colour will lighten. Then seal with a coat shellac sanding sealer. Apply wax with very fine wire wool – grade 0000. Buff up later to a sheen with a soft lint-free cloth.

The Black Bison range by Liberon (leaflet from 017973 67555) is made from carnauba, which dries hard, unlike soft beeswax. The 13 shades include a neutral bleach finish, into which you could mix earth pigments. London stockist is Foxell and James, 57 Farringdon Road, EC1 (0171 405 2487). Wax to cover around 10 sq m costs around £10, plus £7 for sealer. Pleated Roman blinds are made by Three Mice Blinds in unbleached cotton duck. You can order similar through Bellhouse and Co, 33 Kensington Park Road, W11 (0171 221 0187).

Taps are the classic Arne Jacobsen Vola range, designed in Denmark 30 years ago. Buy them in chrome or colours from Aston-Matthews, Essex Road, N1 (0171 226 7220). To see minimalist baths and basins visit C P Hart, Newnham Terrace, SE1 (0171 902 1000). They’ll send a free catalogue (normally £3) of baths by Jasper Morrison and basins by Philippe Starck.

Aram Designs of Covent Graden (0171 240 3933), famous for furniture classics, hold exclusive world rights on 25 designs by Eileen Gray (1879-1976). The Bibendum, upholstered in leather is £1873.

Fireplaces can be installed by Real Flame, 80 New King’s Road, SW6 (0171 731 5025), using a new system of stainless-steel powered flues, with electric fans on the roof. The spiky grate, nicknamed The Hedgehog, was made specially.

Flues, which can be exposed or hidden, can run vertically or horizontally to any outside wall with no need for a chimney.

LADY Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, eldest daughter of the Duke of Marlborough whose family seat is Blenheim, divides her time between Fulham and the Oxfordshire estate. But not for her the windy west wing of the grand palace. Lady Henrietta has a snug farmhouse which was used by Blenheim’s deputy farm manager on her father’s 11,500 acre estate.

She’s been there for eight months, which is a long time for someone who has moved house four times in as many years. She house-hops because just as she begins to settle down in one her father sells it. ‘Basically, I go where I’m told, which is wherever my father wants me to go,’ laughs Lady Henrietta. ‘That’s why I never got around to doing anything much to the other houses. But this one is different. It’s in the middle of the estate and dad will not be selling me off. This time it’s roots – I hope.’ She’s the divorced mother of two boys and militarily organised, which is why, when she was given three weeks to move from her last house into this one – a ‘Georgian one with bits added on’ – she coped.

Lady Henrietta, 36, is a hands-on interior decorator, who does the books, runs the company and counts among her clients society figure Paddy McNally. Her second book on decor is called Classic Decorative Details. She is slim and elegant with pre-Raphaelite hair and wears a Marks and Spencer waistcoat and “what has been described as a car rug” wrap-around wool skirt. She speaks with upper-class plumminess and has two black Labradors by her side like ancestral sentinels.

The house overlooks a valley. It hasn’t been a working farm for years, but retains its outbuildings. ‘The garden has gone mad because I haven’t had the time to attack it, but this spring I’m going to get the contractors in.’ On the opposite side of the valley is the house of her brother, one-time aristocratic junkie James Blandford. ‘James and I have always been very close.’ She visited him often in prison. ‘The Scrubs was grim, but Pentonville was worse. I didn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed about him being there. I just wanted to be supportive.’

She went into group therapy with her brother and the rest of their family. ‘We had to get to the root of the problem. That was probably very beneficial for me, too. You learn to cope with things.’ She is reluctant to talk more. ‘It has sometimes been ghastly and gone on for a very long time. But, hopefully, we are through all that now.’

James and Henrietta were brought up in Lee Place, a 17th century manor. Their parents divorced when she was one year old and they were raised by her father. She didn’t live in Blenheim until she was 12, when the 10th duke, her grandfather, died. ‘We used to serve in the gift shop at Blenheim and hide on the long balcony overlooking the great hall and make ghoulish noises to scare the visitors.’

It was at Blenheim that she designed her first room, when she was a teenager. On being given their stepmother’s permission to choose their own rooms, James settled on a tiny one stuck between two floors, facing north and with porthole windows. Lady Henrietta, whose style is altogether more airy, decided on one overlooking the lawns and decorated it in blues, pinks and creams. It is this gut feeling for colour and space that she eventually capitalised on in her straightforward and single-minded way. She went on to gain one A-level from St Mary’s, Wantage, followed by history of art in Florence and a course at the Inchbald Interior Design School. ‘I would have loved to have studied law and become a barrister. And I’ve always had a desire to become a detective or criminal investigator.’ In 1980 she married German-born banker Nathan “Booby” Gelber. They had two children – David, aged 13, and Maximillian, nine. ‘David is more like me in character. I’m quite introverted. I like people, but they’re not a priority in my life.’

THEY divorced in 1989 after Lady Henrietta became friendly with financier Richard “Groper” Andrew, who had separated from his second wife, Lady Serena – and they were named in each others’ divorce cases. ‘Everybody gets divorced these days. It’s not a big issue,’ she says frostily. Richard ‘is still a good friend. But I see lots of people. I lead a very independent life.’

Nowadays she lives alone. This is reflected in her home. Her decorating style is one of restraint and economy. The sitting room has sea grass, a gilt sofa and a wicker coffee table with coffee-table books. There are two oils of Cherwell and Palm Beach – ‘nothing very special, but sentimental’ – by her grandfather’s cousin, Sir Winston Churchill. She doesn’t keep ‘anything of value’ in her house. On the contrary, she is more likely to have an old armchair from a junk shop in Oxford. She delights in revamping a “good buy” in some exotic velvet. She gives old prints the same treatment, really believing in the value of impressive frames rather than the content. There are family photos, one of her mother Susan (whose family owns W H Smith) on a Bahamas beach in a billowing canary dress, and many of her children. On a table is a leather-bound order of service from her parents’ wedding. The next-door drawing room is currently being decorated. To make the dining hall she tore down a wall and ripped out a lavatory and woodburner. Now it’s painted National Trust green with Zoffany fabric curtains with puff-ball headings and a dining table piled with showcase books. In the corner is a blackamoor statue. ‘He belongs to an uncle, but has been in the family for a long time. They live abroad and I’ve ended up looking after him.’

The decor upstairs is untouched although she has just put in an upstairs bathroom. Her bedroom is lilac, which she’ll change to blue, and has watercolours by her ‘great, great, great-grandfather or one of my ancestors.’

She smiles. ‘I’m proud to be a member of this family. But it doesn’t influence my life. I’m perfectly normal.

SIR Richard Rogers, architect of Lloyd’s headquarters and the new Channel 4 building, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, has been an international force for more than two decades. Right now, I feel as though I’ve been waiting almost that long to see him.

I turn up at the appointed second because he can spare exactly an hour. Then I spend most of that hour in reception while Richard phones intermittently to say he’ll be ‘just another five minutes’. ‘You weren’t on time,’ says a former employee, incredulously. ‘He’s never on time.’ The Richard Rogers partnership is run on egalitarian principles. The receptionist apologises that she thought I was an Evening Standard motorcycle courier. She says to help myself to coffee, muffins and Mother’s Pride from the kitchen. Everybody does. A nice touch, but not quite the River Cafe, which is across the yard and owned by Richard’s wife, Ruthie. Architects in black polo necks and close-cropped hair moonwalk through reception, where architectural models in Perspex cases hang from the ceiling on stylish metal refrigerator-style shelves.

Richard appears, finally, boyishly pulling a contrite face and wearing bright pink Nehru shirt over Indian patriarch’s tummy, with yellow socks. He’s suntanned, has the eyes and beak of a convivial eagle, grins with perfect teeth and winks a lot.

‘What,’ I snap, ‘were you doing that was so important?’ He was dictating a speech. Didn’t want to make his secretary wait – we can still speak for an hour, he’ll just be an hour late for his next appointment. He laughs. It’s impossible to remain cross. He’s charming, good-humoured, warm and sexually charismatic.

But when we talk, he sits as far from me as he can without necessitating radio contact and leaves the door open. It’s difficult to decipher what he says sometimes, because he gobbles the ends of his sentences, a legacy of his dyslexia. ‘Often I blank out words,’ he explains. ‘I used to be self-conscious. Now I have lots of nice people who cover up my inabilities.’

His practice has been selected to transform the South Bank. Some entrants suggested planting a few trees or tinkering with the existing signposts. But Richard proposed covering the complex in a steel and glass umbrella, linking the present structures and providing a temperate climate. One critic called it the cultural equivalent of a Center Parc with a Bognor Regis atmosphere. What does he plan for the homeless? ‘Maybe we can build them floating hostels.’

He is a pioneer with a vision for London. In 1986, at the Royal Academy, he envisaged rebuilding most of the metropolis – demolishing Hungerford Bridge and Charing Cross Station, putting a monorail across the Thames to link Waterloo with Trafalgar Square and building a series of floating museums.

Now he sees a London throttled by traffic, blighted by decay and robbed of vitality in commercial ghettos, and has a blueprint for a linear park from Parliament Square to Blackfriars Bridge with traffic in a Thames‘Chunnel”, more public places and more mass transport. Richard is a vintage Krug socialist. He believes strongly in the importance of social programmes, chairs the National Tenants’ Resource Centre (leadership training for the‘forgotten people, the one-in-four in Britain who live in state housing’), rides a bicycle, drives a BMW and lives in a grand house. Is he bothered about being a champagne socialist? ‘Only in that I have to do more work to make more champagne for everybody.’ ‘But aren’t you a republican? Shouldn’t you have turned down your knighthood?’ ‘Yes. I can’t even use the excuse that my mother wanted me to take it because I called her and she said, ‘What the hell do you want to be knighted for?” He laughs uproariously.

Richard runs his office on semi co-operative lines. (He likes to make his home and work life seamless,’ says one employee, ‘We celebrate about 80 birthdays a year in the office. Doesn’t everybody?’) The highest-earning partners draw salaries only six times that of the lowest-paid architect, and nearly half the profits are donated to charity. Family visits are encouraged, workaholism discouraged. ‘This is a community,’ says Richard. ‘The restaurant and my partner’s house are over there. The point is to get an intensity of communication.’

‘Why don’t you live in a commune?’ He laughs. ‘I already have a piazza in my house. My five boys bring back their girlfriends and we live in a pretty public way. Most people buy barns and turn them into houses, I bought a house and turned it into a barn!’

Richard was born in Florence of an Anglo-Italian family – ‘soft, loving, undisciplined’. When he was six the family fled Fascism and came to England. Richard was an outsider. ‘It wasn’t good to be an Italian then … maybe that’s the reason I’m so anti-institutional.’

He didn’t learn to read or write until he was 12. ‘In those days dyslexia didn’t exist. No one could understand how, having said the Lord’s Prayer hundreds of times, I still couldn’t remember it. I was so psychologically mixed up – I didn’t know whether I was happy or unhappy.’ He was bullied and left school without any qualifications.

Aged 29, he married Su. They were together 14 years. What went wrong? ‘I fell in love with Ruthie.’ How did he break it to Su? ‘With all the usual difficulties of saying, ‘I’m having an affair with somebody else’.’ His voice tails off, losing its usual buoyancy. This is difficult to fathom because he says he had a close, rewarding relationship with Su. ‘That’s like saying, ‘How can you, when you’ve had a really good meal, come home and have another piece of chocolate?’

‘So you’re not monogamous?’ ‘I didn’t say that.’

Richard is now very ‘locked into Ruthie. We’re very much in love’. After their first child, Ruthie was unable to have more. They decided to adopt. ‘We thought the baby was a girl. But when the call comes, it’s like giving birth – Ruthie says – and you want the baby desperately. The second he was in our arms we bonded.’ Thus they gained their fifth boy. ‘We never met the parents, but I don’t mind if he wants to seek them out.’

Ruthie and Richard proposed once to write a book together called Sex, Food and Architecture, which he considers to be the crucial things in life. Which is the most important? ‘That order sounds pretty good to me.’ He hoots hilariously again.

DESMOND GUINNESS – scion of the brewery clan, friend of Mick Jagger and Paul Getty, author of Dublin, A Grand Tour and founder of the Irish Georgian Society – really wanted a Palladian house with rococo plasterwork in England. He scoured the countryside, was gazumped on a haunted house which is now the home of Prince Michael of Kent, and ended up with Leixlip, one of the first castles built by the Normans in Ireland.

In 1958, Desmond and his first wife, the late Princess Marie-Gabrielle of Urach-Wurtemberg, moved into Leixlip with 540 books, a mattress and a gun. The couple were known as part of the jeunesse dore. ‘Absolute rubbish,’ says Desmond, a gentle charmer in a Fair Isle waistcoat, who has the bluest blue eyes, wispy white hair and a seductive voice. ‘We were interested in architecture, engravers and silversmiths.’ But he loves beautiful women, doesn’t he? ‘Mmm, I certainly do.’ (Reflective pause.) ‘Well, that’s a conversation stopper.’

The castle had mod cons like windows with stone mullions (added in the 17th century) and 19th century battlements. When the couple moved in, it had baths, but they were in the fields being used as water troughs, and wiring so unsafe the electricity board refused to reconnect the power. But the interior had been elegantly remodelled in Georgian times.

They set about decorating it and buying at country sales. Desmond bid 10 shillings for an unremarkable kitchen table in one crowded auction. ‘It turned out to be the most amazing carved Irish mahogany with a black marble top and has since appeared in several publications.’

Desmond now lives in Leixlip with Penny, his wife of 10 years and a former lover of Lucian Freud; Eileen, his cook of 31 years, who is ever ready for impromptu dinners for 40; and the ghost of a multi-headed hound whose heads appear at the windows. ‘I’ve often undone the shutters thinking I’m going to meet him. I will one day, I’m sure.’ Desmond’s son Patrick and daughter Marina, who has three children by different fathers, live nearby. The day of our interview the castle has been taken over by Michael York, Jacqueline Bisset, Edward Fox and a film crew working on September. ‘The house is pretending to be a dour Scottish castle.’ Workers are busy repainting the ‘set’. And a coach of Americans are coming for a slide show on Irish architecture. ‘They wanted to know what to wear … can you imagine?’

We’re talking in Desmond’s favourite room, the sitting room, in the castellated 14th century tower with its 4ft-thick walls. There are invitations from the Ambassador of Italy and Marianne Faithfull and samples of Pierre Frey material scattered on the table.

It’s the only room light enough to read in without electric lights and the wooden stove burns in here all winter. Like all castles it’s draughty. One guest who called for more blankets in the night was given a pile that included a flag. He woke up frozen, draped in the flag, and thought he’d died. The radiators in this room are hidden in whiskey barrels. Charmingly tatty and unmatching curtains at the windows do their best to keep out the cold.

Desmond affects, amusingly, not to know how many rooms there are. ‘I’m not really sure. But there are 11 bathrooms,’ he says. The hall, paved with terracotta tiles and white flagstones, is being painted yellow by the film people. The dining room is navy with a jolly chinoiserie tapestry and jasmine growing up the 1765 Gothic revival windows. ‘We used to light the candles in here and Marianne Faithfull, a great, great friend who lives next door (five miles away), used to sing in front of the fireplace. She was such a dazzling beauty. You couldn’t possibly resist her.’

The library has an 18th century gilded plaster frieze and French engravings pasted on the walls. Nearby is the drawing room with its Irish mahogany table carved with shells, Savonnerie carpet and Newbridge dolls’ house. William Acton’s drawings of the Mitford sisters adorn the walls. But today it’s full of packing cases and film people.

Upstairs is the chapel. ‘We’ve never prayed in it. It’s never been anything but a passageway for us.’ It has a little pony cart in it in which Marina used to drive as a child. ‘One day I went to an antiques shop and saw it. I thought it looked familiar. It used to live in the stables and had been stolen.’

Under the window in the room known as King John’s bedroom, there’s a copper Victorian bath tub in which Mick Jagger photographed Jerry Hall. The pictures were stolen and later appeared in a British newspaper. ‘My idea,’ says Desmond, ‘had been to hide the tub in the armoire, so people could take a bath in the cupboard.’ The room has a four-poster state bed from Stowe and white lines chalked on the floor from when it was used as a squash court. The Guinnesses’ bedroom is cosy, with a portrait of his mother. ‘By John.’ (Augustus, that is.) His mother is, of course, Diana Mitford who was once married to Sir Oswald Mosley. Beyond this, there’s yet another guest bedroom, hidden away, with French scenic wallpaper of 1822 with views of Italy. ‘They used to sell this wallpaper by saying, ‘Teach your children geography without leaving the home.” There appears to be a different book by a Mitford or Guinness by every bed.

It is at Leixlip that they have an annual Georgian cricket match. And where, as a girl, when Marina wanted to join a travelling circus, Desmond invited a circus to pitch its tents on his land. Whereupon a dromedary embarked on an intimate relationship with their cow.

TOMORROW Romaine Hart, the woman behind London’s most successful independent cinemas, goes to the palace to collect her OBE for services to the British film industry. For the past two decades she has enticed discerning cinemagoers to her picture houses all over London and the Home Counties, from the hip Screen on the Green, Islington, to the modish Screen on the Hill, Hampstead.

Romaine lives part-time in a Georgian house in north London with the through-traffi soon sniffed oc of distant relations, and decamps for much of the week to work in ‘London with fresh air’ her Fifties-style American home, a bungalow overlooking the Sussex Downs.

The Hart family boasts cinema owners dating back to the turn of the century. Romaine, the third generation to earn a living from the cinema, and her daughter Nicky, a film producer, take computers and fax machines to their metropolitan-style country retreat to do their London film deals overlooking fields.

The house was built in 1958 by a Scottish farmer who had a hut on the site, which is a protected area. In 1970 he rushed out to chase a cow, had a heart attack and never came home. Romaine bought the house even before the particulars were typed up.

‘They said it was a bungalow and I said ‘ugh’.’ She had been looking for a period cottage with dovecot and picture-postcard thatch. But the agent insisted she saw it. She made an offer on the spot. ‘The position was so fantastic.’ The Harts soon put the house through its urban-awareness training.

One visiting granny, then a gentle lady in her seventies, insisted on trying her first joint there; since the house is of open-ish plan, her grandchildren soon sniffied out her secret.

Another time John, her then husband, thought he heard burglars and rushed out with a loaded rifle. He fired his gun, barely missed his foot and caught the tail end of a cow. Nicky and her sister Sarah were taught to drive in the field, using the cows as roundabouts.

The neighbours have always considered it a house of nudity. It is a local joke that the Scouts who have an open invitation to use the pool are frequently greeted by people in birthday suits. The word spread, and aircraft from nearby Shoreham airport now fly low in summer. There have also been lots of wild parties in this outpost of liberal Hampstead. John held the reception there for his marriage to his second wife. As 150 people trooped through, Romaine sat greeting the guests of wife number two, then realised that most of them had been at her wedding too.

The house was pretty rough when they bought it. It had sheep in the sitting room and a naff Fifties wooden beam. The Harts took over and turned it into a Seventies pad with brown hessian everywhere. In the sitting room they had a Le Corbusier arc light and Le Corbusier chair with pony skin. It was like a trendy bachelor pad with groovy Oscar Woollens furniture. (When they divorced, John removed the LCs but left a Seventies brown corduroy chair.) They were determined to take London into the country. The hessian came down in the Eighties and they went minimalist in the Nineties, with a new kitchen, new bathroom and Swedish windows. The kitchen is designed by London architect Seth Stein. A modern room with clean lines, it has a beech plank floor, curved marble bar, Danish double cooker and large industrial sink.

‘I love his style and wanted to do something interesting and modern,’ says Romaine, a keen cook. On the wall is a frontal nude by their friend John Swarbroke: to turn on the lights, you press the nipples. The sitting room has white walls, sea-grass floor matting and massive creamy sofas. There’s an Adirondak, a beechwood Californian seaside chair which looks like a combination of UFO and flying deck chair. Like much of the art in the house, a friend made it in their garage.

On a side table is a book by Betty Balcombe, psychic healer, counsellor and close family friend. ‘She’s been a wonderful help and influence on my life and career,’ says Romaine, smiling. ‘When I first introduced Betty to Sarah, my daughter was living in a squat in Hackney with black walls. Betty changed her life and she came home and stopped rebelling.’ The bathroom is also a Stein affair with pebbledash ‘liquid stone’ on the floor, power shower, beech slat blinds and limestone surfaces that Romaine saw in a smart restaurant during the Santa Monica film market last year. They have two bedrooms, but have slept up to 12, utilising the sitting-room floor. They have further Stein plans for a minimal-style bedroom and a bathroom with glass all round, ‘so that you feel as if you’re in the garden’.

So back to films. Romaine is known to buck the film establishment, take risks and back outsiders. She sees 90 per cent of the films they screen and goes to all the film markets. How does she view the role she has played in the British film industry?

‘I started the Screens because I wanted the sort of cinemas that showed the kind of films I was interested in seeing,’ she says, curling her feet feet up on the sofa. ‘We try not to show films that aren’t of quality. We’re like a book club which vets the books first.’

Until 18 months ago, Dorothy Berwin and Seth Stein lived in his little-larger-than-a-doormat bachelor flat. Very high-tech, it had aluminium floors, aircraft chairs from a jumbo jet and the most minimal minimalism. Dorothy kept most of her clothes in a mobile wardrobe unit-her car. ‘It was like being on a constant camping holiday.’

Now Dorothy and Seth have made a few changes. They have got married. They have moved into what was a former Notting Hill Gate nurses’ hostel-and they have developed agoraphobia. Their old flat would fit into their current kitchen, and you could land a microlight in the new sitting-room. ‘We used to lie in bed, stare at the ceiling and wonder how long it would take to walk there,’ says Dorothy, 30, grilled-vegetable enthusiast, red Comme des Garcons skirt lady and head of business affairs for Zenith Productions, a leading independent film and TV production company. Seth, 31, in Ralph Lauren shirt and Levis, laughs.

She’s impish and clever; and he-with a dry wit and gentle disposition-is New York gone Barcelona: the former by birth, the latter in looks. When they first saw the conversion, Dorothy’s mother-a lady of some taste-said: ‘Isn’t it wonderful? You can move straight in.’ And then Seth ripped it apart and demolished it.

Built in 1850, the building-of which they bought the ground floor-had previously been full of nurses’ bedsits in decline. Their current 50-foot sitting-room was four bedsits. This hostel had been connected by a passageway to the block behind, a hospital.

But the flat on which they exchanged was a luxurious new development. ‘It had serious gold handles and lots of twiddly bits everywhere,’ explains Dorothy. For ‘twiddly bits’ read chair rails, decorative tiles, frilly knicker Osborne and Little curtains and trellis-work motif on the best quality handmade Colefax and Fowler carpet.

And so they set about tearing down the brand new curtains, stripping the flat, ripping up carpets untouched by human foot, bartering a marble fireplace for a generous Thirties sink from the Dorchester, getting rid of all ornamentation and knocking down walls. All achieved with some pocket money and what they dub low-budget expensive taste.

The thing you need to know about Seth is that he’s a talented architect who worked for Richard Rogers and then Norman Foster, whom he left 15 months ago to set up on his own-in other words a baby of the high-tech generation who has discarded his aluminium nappies for modern clothes sewn with much care and attention to detail.

His work-relished from Islington to Italy-is about modernism that is not alienating, stark or cold.

Take their sitting-room. You burst into it through a Tutankhamen passage. Asymmetrical, with tapering walls of natural pigmented plaster, it gives a feeling of length and perspective.

Inside, there are soft white walls, motorways of white silk curtains, a chandelier of white Christmas fairy lights with clothes hanger wire, a fire with a concrete hearth set with Seth’s collection of pebbles picked up on beaches, a Sarah Charlesworth diptych-half of which is all black-called Fear of Nothing, and an acre of vegetarian carpet (Seth’s name for seagrass). ‘When it’s damp, you can throw alfalfa seeds on it and they sprout. Come the siege, we’ll be able to live on it for a month.’

Then there’s the furniture-or rather, there isn’t. ‘The typical situation is to go either to Conran or IKEA.’ Seen It Before, in other words. The little but great furniture there is was designed by Seth, apart from the Bonnetti and Garouse-they did the Christian Lacroix showroom in Paris-rope-coloured curvy-backed sofa and an Eileen Gray chair. There’s a dining table made of salvaged yet still distressed Victorian floorboards on a modern steel frame. A fire-engine-red table, a graphic solid square which tapers to a rectangular base off-centre, irregular and appearing to float. And not much more.

It was here that they recently held a party for 200 friends: a flat-warming-cum-engagement do, with Sixties moving blob oil projections on the walls, dry ice and funky music-all because Seth always wanted to be on Top of the Pops.

Next door is the study, nocturnal and introspective with its big white door with a single steel handle, grey varnished plaster and high-tech bookshelves that aren’t bookshelves-they’re floor decking for warehouses-clutter and Fornasetti classical motif Fifties-shaped chairs. The kitchen-with natural materials, handmade terracotta tiles, timber cabinets, stainless steel with linen finish, fig trees and Dorothy’s mother’s 30-year-old cooker-is not just modern, it’s ergonomic. The inspiration for the flat came from a Manhattan loft space. ‘As London gets more like New York City in terms of pace and grottiness,’ says Seth, ‘you need your home to be more of a simple haven away from the stress. We fantasised about having a large, white, simple space.’ Simplicity. Ah, simplicity.

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Somebody has just died. The straw strewn on the pavement and the cobbled lane outside the house signify as much. Meanwhile the gas lamp flickers above the door, and a wooden handstick indicates that this is a weaver’s house. The house is dark inside, except for a few candles, and a Cockney expresses his concern for my safety – before driving his taxi on to Liverpool Street Station.

At 7.30pm, the door opens to reveal a Californian in jeans. This is Dennis Severs in his unique Georgian home in Folgate Street, Spitalfields. It is not open to the public, unless your manner appeals to him when you phone to book, and he also has a reputation for throwing people out if their attitude displeases him – even though they are paying Pounds 20 a head for the evening.

On arrival, Severs tells us that he gave up years ago trying to explain the purpose of the visit; but that does not deter this madcap American from talking about his house and its elusive inhabitants as if he had to make up for centuries of silence.

‘We’re not here to see a house or its pictures, furniture or porcelain. And we’re certainly not here to learn anything,’ he lectures the eight people now huddled in his candlelit kitchen – a kitchen, like the rest of the house, that is decorated and lived in as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries.

‘We’re hear to dream and get the 20th century out of our heads,’ he informs the assembled company, before locking us in his dark and dank 18th-century cellar to facilitate the process. Thus starts a three-hour tour. ‘Weird,’ exhales the American woman spilling out of the chair next to mine.

Severs lives in his 1723 home in proxy for a mythical 18th-century Huguenot family of his own extraordinary creation, called the Jervises.

The walk round his authentically detailed home is accompanied by entertaining chat by Severs and cleverly hidden cassette recordings. Entirely believable comments about the illusory family, their lifestyle and relationships are interspersed with intentionally incorrect historical detail and endless trivia.

Severs’s technique is to put his visitors into an atmosphere and bombard them with things that filled the hearts and minds of the Jervises, ‘so in the end you haven’t just had a glimpse of the past, you have been there’.

We stand in the kitchen in front of an open fire, a chicken turning on the spit; and it does not seem self-conscious because that is how Severs cooks every day. While he enthuses about the quirky life beneath the stairs, regaling us with stories of the cheeky maid Rebecca, one begins to feel as if his 18th-century servants have just left the room. The house retains its original atmosphere not just because of the material objects, but because of the magical environment he creates and its authentic temperatures and smells.

We go upstairs to the dining room, hushed and in mock excitement, like children looking for fairies they only half believe in. It is like walking on to a stage set for 1724: the pomegranate and half-empty wine glasses scattered on the table, and Mr Jervis’s wig left behind on a chair.

From there we move forward to 1760 and the smoking room where Mr Jervis holds his assemblies and organizes his business. He burns market palletts in the fire, and dust fills the room. We follow into the drawing room, where on dark evenings they listen to stories, just as we are doing. The smell of orange oil hangs in the air, mingling with the lavender flowers that are swept to the edge of the room. Then Mrs Jervis’s fan falls off the chair to the floor, and we hear her riotous party leaving downstairs.

Next is the bedroom, an intimate room containing Mrs Jervis’s messy make-up and sentimental knick-knacks. Here the carpet is cleaned every day with damp tea leaves, to restore the colour and pile. Just as everything in the house is faithfully dusted with rags steamed in cedar oil.

In the dressing room, the fire is burning and tea is steaming in cups on the table.

Upstairs the Dickensian attic represents 1835 and the Industrial Society. An entire family called the Laceaux live there. (William Jervis got Mrs Laceaux pregnant, so it was his Christian duty to bring the family into the house, one understands. ) The room shocks, for it is stark, with peeling paint and dripping water. It is freezing and one of our company complains. ‘They lived through it and so will you,’ retorts Severs curtly.

It is pleasurable then to move on to the second drawing room – and 1840. The room is the antithesis of those upstairs and represents the cosy bourgeois reaction to them with its gas lamps, well-dressed furniture, swathes of material and acres of ornaments.

The trip is not for those without imagination and a sense of irony. ‘Pernickity intellectuals who come always end up looking like char-women wearing tiaras,’ explains Severs.

Dennis Severs, 18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields, London E1 (01-247 4013), by appointment only. Eight people at a time, three evenings a week at 7.30pm, £20 a head. (c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 1987