This dark oak kitchen was designed and made by Tim Wood in 1992 to a brief given by George Spencer Design and Drue Heinz based on our unique solid octagonal framework design which Drue Heinz especially liked and requested. The worktops were made of solid maple, with solid maple upstands with our flush integrated wooden sockets. All the plinths were made with pull out drawers, the gobstopper style wooden knobs were glued and wedge fixed.

At the same time as Tim Wood designed the kitchen, Fyfield Manor was also worked on by interior designer Robert Kime who supplied rugs and antiques for the house, whilst David Hicks extensively designed the garden.

Fyfield Manor was described by Pevsner as ‘a remarkable survival’, the exquisite 14th-century manor house, built for Sir John Golafre in about 1325. The ‘survival’ relates to the substantial part of the original hall that still exists- flanked by the grand gables of the 16th-century wing to the right and the 16th-/17th-century wing to the left. Golafre descendants lived at the manor until 1448, after which it was owned for a time by the De la Poles, Dukes of Suffolk. In 1510, Henry VII gave it to Lady Catherine Gordon, the widow of Perkin Warbeck, who was executed for trying to seize the English throne after the Wars of the Roses.

After her death, the manor was bought by Sir Thomas White, a wealthy London merchant, who donated it to St John’s College, Oxford, which he founded in 1555. From 1978 until 1992, it was used as an antiquarian bookstore by Oxford bookseller Blackwells. Then it was bought in 1992 by our client the American heiress Drue Heinz who sold it in 2002.