SHE will fire your cook in Portuguese and arrange for your shoes to be put into boxes with Polaroid shots of them on the outside; help you buy, decorate and let your houses; try to get your daughter into Francis Holland, organise dinner for three or 300, personally scrutinise your Bahamas holiday home or fly masseurs to meet you in Cannes and return in your private jet.

Meet Lady Cosima Somerset – Cozzy to her buddies and clients – director of Concierge London. She has blonde hair (colour by Sejours, cut by Robert Casson) and is wearing natural makeup (“Trish McEvoy, at Harvey Nichols, is the best – I always go there before a party,” says Cosima) and sexy Jimmy Choo boots with Agnes B clothes.

Aged 43, she has a great body, (“Tim Bean, who charges £5,000 for a 12-week programme, changes your shape,”) and may have sought the services of Dr Elizabeth Dancey (“Britain’s leading dermatologist – amazing skin prick nutrition treatments”) and Yannis Alexandrides (“tops for laser treatments for the skin and botox”). She is also sweet, professional and funny.

Her clients range from her aunt, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, to Jemima Khan, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Mark Birley and Tamara Mellon. Let’s have some gossip, then. “No way!” But she knows everybody, doesn’t she? “No,” laughs Cosima, daughter of the Marquess of Londonderry and former wife of Cosmo Fry and Lord John Somerset. “But I certainly intend to.”

Concierge London membership costs £4,000 plus VAT a year. For this, clients get two free requests (up to an hour’s work) a month. “We’ll research a hotel in Barbados or buy something for you.”

Services thereafter cost £30 an hour, charged in quarter-hour slots – so, booking a restaurant costs £7.50.

Relocating people and organising parties is their forte; the most frequent request is for hiring and firing, though catering is high on the list – “We use Organic Express. The food is superb.”

Concierge London was started in 1999.

Clients live mostly in Belgravia, Hampstead, Chelsea and Kensington. “They want help managing their houses,” says Cosima, a former television researcher and mother of two. She likes long-term relationships. “The more we know clients, the better the service works.”

She says the secret of her success is simple. “It’s the scope and quality of our service, attention to detail and absolute discretion. And understanding our discerning members’ needs.” Add to that the ability to deal with bizarre requests.

“I’m always flying facialists to Paris and jetting off across the world to view houses. It no longer seems unusual.” She claims to always succeed. “Even if things sometimes take a while.” She pauses.

“But rich people always want everything done by tomorrow, at the latest.”

Concierge London, Studio D3, The Depot, 2 Michael Road, SW6 (020 7736 2244; www.conciergelondon.co.uk).

INSIDER KNOWLEDGE: COZZY’S CONTACTS

Maria Clancy: Organic Express – Caterers Who Care (020 7277 6147; email maria organic-express.com).
Tim Bean: personal trainer at the Insitute of Physique Management (07947 329696).
Dr Elizabeth Dancey: dermatological treatments (020 7821 8257).
Yannis Alexandrides: for skin treatments (020 7486 8055).
Hairdressers Karl and Luke: the former for colour and the latter for styling, at Sejours, 3 Bray Place, SW3 (020 7589 1100).
Robert Casson: hairdresser who makes house calls (07956 810265).

WHEN Vanessa Higgins first saw the mill house from a nearby public path, she ran back to her waiting husband, David, excitedly proclaiming: “Wow.”

The mill, in a tiny Wiltshire hamlet, is an 18th century building with waterside gardens and paddocks, but a mill was recorded on the site in the Doomsday Book.

“It took months to purchase,” recalls Vanessa, 39.

“We had pulled out of buying a property in Devon at the last minute, then found the mill. It was just so pretty – the perfect family home.” But it wasn’t cheap. It was on the market for £1.3 million, but the drawn-out negotiations – which took not much short of a year – worked in the couple’s favour. By the time it came to agree money, the market had dropped.

“We paid a little over £900,000,” says Vanessa.

“Which was considerably less than we had offered initially.”

So, how many bedrooms does it have? Vanessa is not so sure with these numbers: “I don’t know … one, two, three … six – no, seven.” But the layout is, admittedly, rather complicated; the living areas are in the old mill and the bedrooms are spread among two attached cottages. But, all in all, there is ample space for David and Vanessa, David’s three children from his first marriage, two children with Vanessa, their dalmatian and highland terrier – and the energy consultancy business the couple run from home.

The family moved into the mill in 2001; the previous owners had been there for 20 years but their children were now grownup. “It was quite dilapidated,” says Vanessa. “Water was running down the walls and it was a bit smelly and damp, having been left empty for a while. It also needed major plumbing work.” Other problems were more instantly obvious: “It hadn’t been touched for years. The walls were covered in buttoned green fabric and psychedelic herringbone wallpapers.”

It was stripping these off the walls that revealed the “cracks, bits falling off and treacherous wiring”. Vanessa laughs: “We felt glad we had survived.”

The house is listed, of course, so there were constraints on the refurbishment.

“We weren’t allowed to alter anything at all on the outside, but we won approval to make changes on the inside, mainly because these preserved and improved the house,” says Vanessa, who is particularly taken with the approved dampproofing material – “like mega-giant bubble wrap”.

Some walls were removed to open up internal spaces, and a conservatory was built to provide a dining area. The kitchen windows were enlarged (“it was so closed up and dark”). Finally, another conservatory was built to provide a link to a barn, which is now a double garage and an office.

A local joiner built the home’s three new staircases, but a crew of builders had to travel down every day from Birmingham to turn the Seventies kidney-shaped swimming pool into a state-of-the-art 12-metre model.

“We lived in a building site for a year. We thought it would all take six months, but after two years we are only just finishing.” And then there was the bill.

“We spent about £500,000,” she says.

The results are an interesting fusion of traditional and modern: a large and original buttress in the new open-plan kitchen area has a bespoke modern cabinet hanging from it, for example. A glass panel in the kitchen floor looks onto the mill stream, while a cool, flat TV is suspended from an antique timber eave in the couple’s bedroom.

In the bathroom, a freestanding roll-top bath, Thirties-style polished chrome fittings and Art Deco-style walnut and bird’s-eye maple furniture are juxtaposed with contemporary sandblasted doors and panels for the walk-in shower.

There are cream carpets, Travertine and oak floors and white walls. (“I might introduce colour later. But I wanted to make it light.” ) Authentic Art Deco furniture sits alongside Simon Bray’s modern bespoke GK Design furniture and contemporary John Lewis pieces. Boys toys include a fancy Bang & Olufsen sound system that can be turned on by remote control anywhere in the house.

“We spent more than £30,000 on B&O; one of the TVs was £11,000 alone,” says Vanessa. She is looking at the specially built and studded sitting room wall that was recessed to take the Odeon-sized beast.

“You can even turn the telephones down by remote control,” she chirrups.

The kitchen is by Bray, too, and is something of a focal point, with black granite surfaces, lacquered cupboards, glass-fronted cabinets and Miele appliances. A large and bright open space has been divided with furniture by Bray. A glass-topped curved oak bar with chrome and leather stools connects the cooking area to the conservatory and the family room. “Even when I’m cooking, I’m still in touch with everyone,” she says.

NICHOLAS Logsdail, owner of the Lisson Gallery, is one of the art world’s most powerful figures. So it’s strange to discover that his first home was up a tree. “My parents had a big Arts & Crafts house in Buckinghamshire,” says Logsdail. When he was 14, he moved to the bottom of the garden.

“I’d built a treehouse. It had a first-floor bedroom, a room below, another bedroom and a balcony.” It was more like an apartment, really. “I lived there during the school holidays,” he smiles. “It had a paraffin stove, electricity and I hotwired it to install a telephone.”

Logsdail’s first home purchase was in 1967 in Bell Street, Marylebone. “I was a country boy. I came out of Marylebone Station, didn’t know London, turned into Bell Street….” Since then Logsdail, 59, has owned endless buildings in the street. He bought number 68 when he first married, number 54 in 1991, which he turned into his gallery, the Lisson, and 27, where he lives. Oh, and 31-37 where he lived with his second wife. “I don’t have a passion for property,” he claims. “I just love interesting buildings.”

He designed the first gallery, working with the builders. “I’m an amateur architect,” explains Logsdail, who represents artists Julian Opie, Douglas Gordon and Anish Kapoor. “We made it from two early-19th century tumbledown buildings I bought in 1966 and 1972.” The current Bell Street premises were a collaboration with Modernist architect Tony Fretton.

“We worked together on the design for two years.” The exterior of the new build has metal-clad panels and large glazed picture windows, while the interior gallery space was originally three back yards. “It has a feelgood factor, doesn’t it?”

In 1981, Logsdail found another derelict property – a 40,000sq ft brownstone block of 22 flats on New York’s Lower East Side.

Now the Notting Hill of New York, at the time the area was rough. “It had been a drug dealers’ squat and was boarded up.

The price was $1,000 an apartment – $22,000 in total. Lots of people were after it. I had to find the 10 per cent deposit within two hours.”

Logsdail acted instantly and acquired the building. Then the problems started.

“There was a $45,000 bill to pay, because the city taxes hadn’t been paid for 15 years. Things had to be done urgently to stop squatters moving in,” he says.

“Suddenly I owed $150,000 for upkeep plus $150,000 legal costs. I’d bitten off more than I could chew.” A year later he sold the building. “I recouped my costs and kept three large apartments.” Now he owns only one flat.

The experience did not discourage him from tackling another derelict building that needed his artistic touch – a 14th century farmhouse in a charming village in the Maltese island of Gozo. He bought it in 1984 for £8,000 and took 18 years to restore it. “I spent nearly two decades mixing cement and carrying around building blocks.” It now has a private courtyard, large mill room, kitchen, five double bedrooms and a tower with bedrooms offering island views. “It’s beautiful. I was sad to give it away when I divorced.”

In 2003, Logsdail visited friends in Kenya. “I thought I’d get some dreaded disease, be robbed and murdered.”

Instead he discovered Lamu – “an idyllic, safe island on the Indian Ocean” – and an 18th century, 6,000sq ft Swahili house with exquisite carvings and stacks of antique furniture. An elderly English couple were selling the house and contents.

“It has an exotic Arabian Nights feel and the original harem quarters,” he divulges.

“I took a no-money down lease for five years with an option to buy at a fixed price – on the condition that I restored the building. It wasn’t difficult to organise, just slow.”

To rent the Lamu house for £1,000 to £2,000 a week, email Nicholas@lisson.

co.uk. To rent the Gozo house, email Caroline Logsdail at stellamaris safeserve.com.

Artistic touches: Nicholas Logsdail (above) restored this 14th century farmhouse in Gozo, with its spacious mill room (below) and (above, right) terrace for entertaining, and hammock for relaxing (above, far left).

THERE’S a doggie spa and a pooch bakery in Telluride, Colorado. The former offers custom-made towelling robes and a grooming package (from $210, or £157) for four-legged guests; while the latter sells icing-topped cookies baked specially for the canine market. Visitors can also savour another unusual experience in Telluride: iceskating with Zimmer frames – a unique approach that is perfect for the elderly and skating virgins.

It doesn’t stop there. How about dining in the village on elk, venison, bison or buffalo?

Drinking in a Victorian pub that comes straight out of a cowboy movie? Shopping for antiques, cashmere throws and snowboards?

Or attending a jazz festival where every dog wears a bandanna?

It’s all possible in Telluride, in the middle of the majestic 14,000ft peaks of the San Juan Mountains. Located on the far western slopes of the Colorado Rockies, it can be difficult to get there – my banker husband, Robert Stein, and I fly from London to Denver first – because Telluride is the highest and most dangerous airport in America. This is fantastic, because it keeps the riffraff away. But in winter, we don’t risk the hazardous conditions and fly to Montrose instead.

Yes, Telluride is exclusive. Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey and Sylvester Stallone have homes here. They are drawn to Telluride Mountain Village, where the big wealth and our property, Bobcat Lodge, is. Houses on sale there range from $8.95 million (£6.4 million) to $14.5 million (£10.35 million). It’s just a scenic gondola ride from the historic town of Telluride, with its charming Victorian cottages and Old West atmosphere.

Our property is a traditional log cabin – 7,000sq ft and five bedrooms – with Ralph Lauren furnishings and antiques. Think rich chocolate Chesterfield sofas, paisley cushions and log fires. The bedrooms boast king-size beds – from a leather one to a four-poster – and the bathrooms have sunken baths. It also has a media room with a 16sq ft plasma screen, underfloor heating and broadband connections. We let it for $2,000 (about £1,430) a night.

One night I took eight friends on skidoos (ski motorbikes) to dine at 11,300ft at Alta Lakes Observatory. It’s a beautiful mountain lodge 13 miles from Telluride that, in winter, can only be accessed on cross-country skis, snow shoes or a snowmobile. Wearing headlamps, we spent a fun hour getting there through the forest and were rewarded with a delicious dinner, charades and a return trip on a Snowcat.

I love skiing and luckily the lodge is right on the slopes. Telluride has some of the most difficult skiing in America – it’s where the US team do their training – and the United States’ best iceclimbing park, in Ouray.

In the summer we ride, fish, river raft, go rock climbing, mountain biking, running, play golf and climb mountains. One week we did four 14,000ft climbs – leaving at 2am and climbing for 12 hours. You can’t beat sitting under the stars afterwards, roasting marshmallows, putting them in a cracker and dipping it in chocolate. Just grab a tent, rucksack, sleeping bag, sandwiches and crampons and go.

If the exertions get too much, you can always relax alongside the rich and famous in one of the world’s best spas: Wyndham Peaks Resort & Golden Door Spa in Telluride. Once I saw Jerry Seinfeld there – he kept winking at me!

It’s very upmarket and serene, with huge towels and everyone whispering. Its treatments use fresh natural ingredients found only in Rocky Mountain country.

Is there anything wrong with Telluride? Yes, people who aren’t used to high altitudes will initially get headaches and experience breathlessness. Just drink lots of water and stay still – but not for too long as there are 355 days of sunshine a year to enjoy. We have a house in Belgravia, a castle in Scotland and a villa in Phuket, but if I could change the world to be like Telluride, I would.

To rent Bobcat Lodge, contact Katharine Pooley at 19 Wilton Row, London, SW1X 7NS (852 9430 2000; email: pooleyk@netvigator.com).

Katharine Pooley was talking to Caroline Phillips

INSIDER KNOWLEDGE

BUYING Get comfortable: the following properties in Telluride Mountain Village are similar to Bobcat Lodge: the ski-in, ski-out Sundance Lookout has seven bedrooms, a lift, and even its own bowling alley for $14,499,000 (£10.35 million). Aspene Pointe has five bedrooms and direct ski access for $8.95 million (£6.4 million). Both through Telluride Real Estate (001 970 728 1611).

Canine comforts: pamper your pooch at the doggie spa at Wyndham Peaks with a doggie massage for $60 (£43). Room rates start at $165 (£118) a night and vary by season. Wyndham Peaks Resort & Golden Door Spa, 136 Country Club Drive, Telluride, Colorado (001 970 728 6800; www.wyndham.com).

For gourmet pet food and fab accessories, visit Mountain Tails, 224 East Colorado Avenue, Telluride (001 970 369 4240).

Posh nosh: for bison and other exotic meat dishes, dine at Harmons, 300 South Townsend, Telluride (001 970 728 3773).

LUCY Judd appeared to have it all – a great husband, Dominic, a wonderful baby and an 18th century cottage home with roses round the door and sheep in the neighbouring field in exquisite Bodiam in East Sussex.

But Lucy, 31, was itching for something more. Most days she would jump in the car and drive 90 minutes just to be with friends. “There was no one likeminded nearby,” she recalls. “Most of them had never even been out of the area.”

There were no decent shops close by, either, and certainly no health club or amenities for mothers with young babies.

Lucy missed her past life as a property consultant for Ernst & Young, when she and Dominic had been one of Clapham’s Dinky couples – duel income, no kids yet.

All that changed overnight when their baby, Henrietta, came along in 2001.

They decided to move to the country, not realising it would mean a three-hour commute for Dominic, who recruits surveyors, nor how much their lifestyle would change. Says Lucy: “I morphed out of all recognition; I was miserable.”

A year ago, they moved again, but not back to London. They now live in another 18th century house – complete with Aga, beams and rambling outbuildings – also in East Sussex. But this time they chose a location near Fletching, close to busy Uckfield and easy for trains at Haywards Heath. Everything they need is now on their doorstep.

The move has prompted Lucy to turn her unhappy experience to good use. She has started a home-search company, Simply Sussex, which shows people how to avoid emotional and expensive mistakes when they move house – and to get it right first time. She charges a registration fee of £600 for a 26-week period, plus 1 per cent of the purchase price.

People’s first problem, she says, is a lack of time: “What should you do when you don’t have enough time to look, or when you are fed up with wasted journeys to see unsuitable properties, or when you don’t know the area terribly well and are frustrated by continually chasing agents?

Obviously, you should use a search company.” She is bouncing another new arrival, baby Freddie, on her knee.

Her questioning of clients goes beyond what type of house they want, to cover their transport, amenity, leisure, school and childcare needs.

“This is the crux,” says Lucy, who runs her company in between looking after the two children. “People make the mistake of concentrating on the ideal property – that chocolate-box cottage, say – instead of things like the commute, schooling and their children’s future needs.”

Some clients recently came to her with a specific property in mind.

“What they didn’t know was it had been on the market for a year and the price had been cut dramatically. They just thought it was great. It is only later that they discovered the plans for new houses opposite. But I already knew about them and could have saved them loads of time.

“In one case, I also knew about a busy road junction nearby that gets really noisy at rush hour. But whenever the clients came down it was evening and quiet. All they saw was a peaceful place.

“Also, in London, people often live in Victorian houses with big windows. In a cottage you may get low beams and a dark room, and in 17th and 18th century houses there is also a lot to go wrong.”

FOR her lifestyle, Lucy now has the perfect home. She has friends and a great primary school nearby, and a 10-minute drive to a good gym.

CLOSE your eyes and imagine you are on a long-haul flight; now open them. This contemporary steel, glass and timber house might be in Malibu or overlooking the harbour in Sydney, but actually, it is in south London. It belongs to Eric Lanlard, 36, a pastry chef from Brittany – supplier of gateaux to Fortnum & Mason and owner of Savoir Design, which produces extravagant celebration cakes – and his partner, Paul Newrick, who runs an aviation leasing company.

Their detached house, built by architect HM2 in 2001, sits away from the road, behind video-controlled gates: a modern cube approached by a Big Brother-style timber-decked path.

“A change from our last home,” admits Lanlard, in his strong French accent. “We lived for seven years in a tall, Victorian terrace house in Putney. We modernised it totally – but with old houses you always have to start again. When more cracks began appearing, we just got bored.”

Prior to that, the couple had experienced loft living in the penthouse of a converted match factory in Bow. They rather fancied living like that again.

“We decided to look for a plot on which to build,” says Lanlard, sitting on one of the simple Habitat dining chairs, which they covered in brightly coloured velvets. “The week after we put our home on the market, we saw this house in a magazine. We knew we wanted it, just from what we could see of the outside. We would probably have built something very similar to this anyway.”

The 2,097sq ft property cost £1 million a year ago. “We spent two nights unable to sleep, because we couldn’t afford it,” Lanlard admits. Then they discovered that the owner, a developer, was in a rush to move. So they persuaded him to let them pay a deposit, with another six months to complete. It was not until the week before they moved in that they finally managed to raise the money, thanks to the sale of their Putney home.

TO THE front and rear of the cube house are walls of full-height glass doors, which slide back completely, creating a continuous living space between the house and two garden areas. The steel frame of the building is exposed in an atrium, which has a glass roof. Upstairs there are huge windows everywhere, including internal ones – so ubiquitous are these, you have to remember to pull down a blind when you visit the bathroom.

The open-plan living/kitchen area is white, with more white – white on the wall, white kitchen units and even a white grand piano (this extravagant object can be programmed via a CD-rom to play all by itself). A feeling of space is created by the use of limestone tiles that are laid throughout the ground floor and then out to the garden areas. The space-boosting tricks don’t stop there: holes are punched through the steel in the treads of the glass-sided staircase, the glass coffee table and the windows in every direction all help to cast light around the double-height gallery area.

“The perfect place for summer entertaining, weather permitting,” says Lanlard, of the open-plan area running out to the gardens. “We can fit 100 people in here and the gardens, and our dining table, which normally seats 10, can be extended to 18.”

The house has exposed pipework for air-conditioning, underfloor heating, elaborate lighting and a sound system from Bose that provides wraparound music everywhere from tiny speakers. It’s all very hi-tech, but it still feels cosy.

“We wanted it to be warm. It took ages to find contemporary furniture that was comfy, stuff you could sink into without hurting your back,” says Lanlard. Two swivel leather armchairs and a matching plum leather sofa with a curved back did the business, but cost £15,000. “The sofa seats eight people happily, though,” he reveals.

The developer’s style is seen in the bathrooms, with their taupe anthracite tiles, sleek frameless glass shower enclosures, double-ended Bette baths, modern fittings and large cabinets to hide the clutter.

Similar taste is exhibited in the guest suite, which has a contemporary white B&B Italia bed in the middle of the room, floating shelves and jute curtains – “Yes, they’re sackcloth,” laughs Lanlard.

Did they do any work on the house? “We just knocked down a wall between two bedrooms to make a large master bedroom and extended a few walls for our furniture.” One wall was lengthened to fit their big, glass-fronted cabinet. Constructed of nine glass-and-steel boxes, it has remote-controlled lights that change colour inside and help to set the mood on the outside. “It’s our most expensive piece,” sighs Lanlard. “About £20,000.”

Upstairs they laid a violet carpet in the master bedroom and painted the walls mauve. A faux leopard-bedspread adds to the drama. The walk-in dressing rooms are piled with Louis Vuitton luggage.

“I’m the freak who collects Louis Vuitton,” laughs Lanlard, who has lived in Britain for 15 years. Outside, on the gallery, he has hung a horizontal painting vertically. The artist painted one of the panels using a baguette instead of a brush.

Ah, the French influence …

‘Our £20,000 light show’

The dining table may seat 18 and the grand piano play all by itself, but the most astonishing object in the house is the £20,000 wall of illuminated storage cabinets – made up of nine glass boxes. Eric Lanlard (above) says the unit is the pair’s most expensive purchase, but its remote-controlled coloured lighting (below) can be set to suit any mood …

WHERE TO GET THE LOOK

Limestone floor tiles from Stone Age (020 7384 9090; www.estone.co.uk)
Kitchen and bathroom from Alternative Plans (020 7228 6460; www.alternative-plans.co.uk)
Lutron for the lighting system (0800 282107; www.lutron.com)
Candela for recessed lighting (020 7720 4480; www.candela.ltd.uk)
Habitat for dining chairs (0845 601 0740; www.habitat.net)
Velvet for dining chairs from Today Interiors (01476 574401; www.today-interiors.co.uk)
Dining table is from The Collection (01962 771773; www.the collection.uk.com)
Sound system from Bose (0800 085 9021)
Self-playing piano from Markson Pianos (0800 074 8980)

WHEN Juan Corbella first saw the Clerkenwell space in 1998, it was a shell. The 1900s building had latterly been a print works. There was ink on the floor and Page 3 girls on the walls. Corbella, who moved to England in 1994, was smitten.

Standing amid the dirt, he envisaged a massive open-plan living space and two bedrooms. The 41-year-old City trader knew he wanted to do the work himself. “I need to be creative,” says the Mexican, who was raised in Spain.

The vendor, a developer, planned to turn the 2,600sq ft space into two luxury apartments.

“For the shell, I had to pay the price intended for the finished property,” explains Corbella, with equanimity. He forked out £600,000 and spent a further £300,000 on everything from renovations to the stereo. A stereo which, incidentally, is a state-of-the-art Lynn affair with Dalek-sized speakers.

The transformation from rubble to sophisticated bachelor pad was not easy. He hired architects Andrew Hanson and Richard Webb, who worked closely to his specifications. And Corbella, who lived nearby, went onsite most days.

First, they had to move a staircase that separated the two spaces. Then the builders went bankrupt and downed tools. “I was meant to move in in June 1999,” says Corbella. “Instead, it took until February 2000.”

The finished result was worth the wait.

Two curved, frosted-glass structures provide the hall walls and screen the living area from view. They are actually shower enclosures.

Do arriving visitors see the occupants bathing? “Of course,” laughs Corbella.

A 2,000sq ft sitting room leads off the hall, flanked on one side by a wall of windows, on another by a bank of 14 white cupboards and on the remaining sides by sliding, glass partitions, used to hide the kitchen and create a corridor.

The overall feeling is sensual: there are pillars, curved walls, curved furniture, curved false ceilings to hide pipes, even curved edges to the steps leading to floors on slightly different levels. The floor is oak and the walls are white, alongside splashes of Mexican primal colours. And it is all lit by seductive, atmospheric lighting created by a Lutron system.

The windows define the sitting, dining and television areas. Recently, they were fitted with 3M Night Vision, a film that reduces UV rays, heat and glare. “Until then, it was boiling in here,” explains Corbella. “And the furniture was getting ruined.”

A brass Mexican monkey is suspended from the sitting-room ceiling. This area also boasts electric-blue sofas and orange chairs by Moroso, a bright yellow wall, exposed brickwork and a blue Lucy Wassell rug with geometrical shapes that Corbella helped to design. There is also a bulky, Islamic-style, hexagonal coffee table created by David Linley, again to Corbella’s specifications.

“Look …” he says, and suddenly disassembles it to create six occasional tables.

Nearby is the television “room”, with a red leather aquiline couch and a large flatscreen television, which (a Corbella invention, this) swivels on an aluminium pole.

A cupboard with curved edges (Corbella-designed, natch) conceals floor-to-ceiling opera CDs … and we’re talking a high ceiling here. “I’m passionate about opera,” reveals Corbella, needlessly. The “study corner” houses a bespoke Linley bureau (which cost £16,000 in 1995), with its terrace of architectural model veneer houses and tower hiding his stationery. “Linley was sceptical of my idea that this asymmetrical design would work.” But work it does.

AT THE other end of the apartment is the dining area, with a B&B Italia glass table and silver leather chairs from Catalan Italia.

A metal-and-glass display table – again designed by You Know Who – contains a large decorative egg collection.

“I didn’t buy one egg. They’re mostly gifts from my parents. Once you have 10 eggs, everyone assumes you collect them.”

This area leads onto the compact kitchen.

Eye-arresting, pillar-box-red lacquer units are opened via sculptural geometrical cutouts (from boomerang to bone shapes.) “I didn’t want handles,” he explains. There is a breakfast island and black granite work surfaces. “I took cordon bleu and Le Manoir cookery courses. I like doing dinner parties.”

The master bedroom has exposed-brick and light-blue and yellow walls, one with wooden columns on it. And a four-poster frame around a £10,000 Auping bed. “The frame was made by Nicky Stephens. When he ran out of English walnut, he had to wait for another English tree to fall down.” It took seven months to finish.

Pull back the glass panels and the bathroom (Philippe Starck bath, blue mosaic-glass shower) becomes part of the bedroom. Next door is a guest bedroom and bathroom.

It is all extremely comfortable and everything is made with great precision – no expense spared. It is also a City whizz kid’s remote-control heaven, where almost everything operates by touch.

This man of many talents is now looking for a new loft. He wants better views and outside space. “But mostly I want to do up something again,” says Corbella, restlessly.

“It was fun.”

With that, he presses a control on his bed, and the mattress starts moving into different positions.

HOW TO GET THE LOOK

Architects

Web Architects Ltd: Richard Web and Andrew Hanson (020 7328 0310)

Furniture and fittings

David Linley Furniture Ltd (020 7730 7300, www.davidlinley.com)

Sofas and chairs by Moroso, dining table by B&B Italia, dining chairs by Catalan Italia available at Atrium (020 7379 7288, www.atrium.ltd.co.uk)

Bed by Royal Auping (020 7935 3774, www.auping.co.uk). Frame by Nicky Stephens, carpenter, at Raleigh Workshop (020 7733 8110)

Rug by Lucy Wassell at WaWa (020 7729 6768, www.wawa.co.uk)

3M Night Vision film for heat and UV ray reduction by Durable (0870 240 2480, www.durable.co.uk)

Motorised blinds with remote control by Luxaflex (0800 652 7799, www.luxaflex.com)

Lutron lighting system (0800 282 107, www.lutron.com)

Radiators by Bisque (020 7328 2225, www.bisque.co.uk)

THERE are not many people who own a former synagogue.

But that is what artist Maya Brisley has in her back garden. Built by refugees from the Warsaw ghetto, it is the smallest synagogue in Britain. Access has always been through Brisley’s east London home. “When I moved in, the synagogue was falling down, and everything had to be done to it,” she explains. Now it houses Brisley’s studio and has a spectacular glass floor – which doubles as a glass ceiling for the ground floor.

She also throws parties in it.

The house is Georgian, built by Huguenots. “It was a weaver’s home, so it’s not ornate,” explains Brisley, who who owns Canal, a shop that sells antiques, textiles and jewellery bought during her world travels. The floors (mostly original pine) still slope from having supported the looms; the dining room used to be the material shop. And most of the property’s original panelling, fireplaces and shutters remain.

The house is a typical town house: tall, with lots of rooms, opened up only where the hallway and drawing room dividing walls had fallen down. “There were such constraints when I did it up,” says Brisley, who is wearing a long Indian robe. “It’s Grade II* listed, and I wasn’t allowed to touch anything – although there’s not much you can do with a panelled kitchen.” Untouchable panels do not permit much bedroom cupboard space, either.

She paid £250,000 for the 5,000sq ft property when she bought it in 1994, from a lady who was a friend of an Admiral. “It looked like a ship,” laughs Brisley. “It was painted navy and white, and decorated with nautical maps.”

She pared the house back to its original form. “It was tumbling down. I had to reinstate things [the restorations are sympathetic] and do everything, from the wiring onwards.” Brisley did not begin work until she had lived there for two years. “That way I didn’t make mistakes,” she says. “If you do things too quickly, it’s expensive, because you have to redo them.”

She did not start decorating the property for five years.

The paintwork in the house is very distinctive. From the ochre walls in the dining room and hall and the black banisters and shutters, to a Cork green kitchen; a traditional 18th century kitchen colour. “It stopped insects. Originally it had arsenic in it,” says Brisley. “Lick the paint and you die.”

The sitting room is mahogany, the bedroom fleshy.

“Rather pompously, I call them Titian colours,” she says. “I mixed the colours using artists’ acrylics.

It lasts much longer. It’s like painting a canvas, which lasts hundreds of years.” And it is true that the paintwork looks fresh, even after several years.

When Brisley arrived in England, she had no possessions. Her father was an Armenian Jew, but she was raised in Istanbul by a nomadic mother who had travelled across Asia, living in a tent. Now she is an obsessive collector. Every available surface is covered.

Bread shelves display multidenominational religious icons in the drawing room. There is also a large French fruitwood table spread with a superb collection of antique Himalayan and African tribal masks, a white lacquer Charles Eames oval coffee table, an Edwardian ship’s day bed, a circular Coptic table fashioned from one piece of wood, and Asian textiles and cushions are everywhere.

The dining room sports a chandelier (“chucked out by a neighbour”), a green-painted French farmer’s table, a Welsh lambing stool and an Irish fool’s chair. “I’m not a great entertainer,” says Brisley. “I take friends to St John restaurant.”

In the hallway are Greek Orthodox tamata – images punched in tin seeking divine cures and protection.

In the bathroom, a Chinese lacquer table and antique Indian juggernaut ( chariot) wheel have been modified to serve as bathroom cabinets-The window blind is an Asian shawl. Every object has a story – this one came from American trading ships, that one from a Punjabi tribesperson, while the other was Brisley’s grandmother’s marriage rug.

OUTSIDE, the original Victorian street lights glow dimly. Inside, the lights are low.

Brisley lives with two Bengal cats. Until recently she also shared her home with ghosts.

“I used to hear buckets being moved and floors being scrubbed upstairs,” says Brisley, who is also a Tarot reader and comes from a tradition of mystics. Once, I saw two women wearing 18th century clothes. But they’ve gone now.”

IF YOU haven’t yet heard of Katharine Pooley, you soon will. Pooley, erstwhile banker, adventurer and author of an unusual cookbook-cum-travelogue, A Taste of My World, is launching her eponymous Knightsbridge shop.

Dedicated to luxurious living and interiors, it will sell furnishings from Vietnamese tableware to Japanese antique kimono cushions and offers an upmarket interior design service.

“You’ll be able to buy everything you see here,” says thirtysomething Pooley, sitting in her stylish home with its fusion of East and West, contemporary and traditional. “I’m opening the shop because people keep asking where I get these beautiful things.”

So where does she get them? A mixture of everywhere, from the Parisian Marche aux Puces (for Louis XIV) to Bangkok market (gilt Buddhas and suchlike) and Burmese shops (good for Cambodian nick-nacks).

Not to mention the other places she comes across when dog-sledding in Alaska, horseback trekking in Ecuador or visiting Cambodian orphans: this is a woman who flies helicopters, shoots, cooks professionally and intends to climb Mount Everest.

In a cream Ralph Lauren wool skirt, matching sleeveless cashmere jumper, large solitaire diamond and strappy snakeskin shoes, Pooley’s sartorial style matches the décor in her Belgravia home. It is tranquil, fresh, clean and sophisticated, with buttermilk paint, taupe suede curtains, atmospheric John Cullen Design lighting, old limestone and wood floors and almond carpet throughout. Plus lots of Eastern artefacts.

When Pooley and her investment banker husband, Rob, saw the Belgravia house, they instantly fell for it. It was made up of three early-Victorian mews houses that had been knocked into one and entered through a secluded courtyard. “We loved it because it was on two floors,” explains Pooley. “We only saw one other house before buying it.” That was three years ago, when the couple – who also own a Colorado ski lodge, Phuket villa and a Scottish castle – were living in their house in Singapore.

When they bought the property, two men had lived there. “It had just two bedrooms and one bathroom.

Their bedrooms ran the length of the (4,200sq ft) house.”

Pooley’s business partner, Kerry Stone, helped to transform the house into a five-bedroom home with ample entertaining space. “We rewired, knocked through three rooms to make a family room, put three French windows in the drawing room, extended to build a study, made two more bathrooms and a laundry room and drying room.”

THE renovation work took 18 months and the couple moved in, with their four dogs, only two months ago.

No children? “We’re practising making them,” laughs Pooley, who married in 2002.

The drawing room reveals an eclectic mix of first-edition books, 17th-century hats, comfy sofas, zebraskin coffee table, Eastern antiquities, modern Asian sculptures, a massive, contemporary Chinese painting of Communist Party members by Yin Xin and a grand piano. “Mozart played on it. I took piano lessons so that I could surprise my husband on his 40th birthday,” giggles Pooley. “But everyone begged me to stop playing.”

There are silver-framed photos on top of the piano: “That’s the lady who introduced me to my husband on a blind date,” she says, pointing.

“That’s my grandfather. He invented the epidural.”

The drawing room is big enough to incorporate most of the members of the Royal Geographic Society. “I’m hoping to host a party for them,” she says, excitedly. “There’ll be a chocolate fountain, lectures and lots of explorers.” And a £25,000 homecinema installed by then.

Next door, the £75,000 Smallbone family room has a central island and work surfaces covered in unfinished, textured granite, a bespoke Ralph Lauren chest as a coffee table, Sub-Zero and Gaggenau appliances and limitededition photographs of Edmund Hillary’s Everest expedition. It leads onto a formal dining room containing a mixture of Asian antiquities and English 18th century furniture: a Chippendale dining table sits alongside a Burmese chest and six Burmese Mantra statues and English antique dining chairs are stacked with Eastern cushions.

The eclectic mix is repeated upstairs. In their bedroom are antique Asian bedside tables and bench, Vietnamese art, their wedding music framed on the wall, a Louis Vuitton trunk and an antique Scottish voting box.

The D C Dot Company bathroom has black slate walls, walnut cabinets and a limestone floor fringed with beach stones. “Rob wanted dark surfaces for masculinity. I wanted light for femininity.” It boasts a wet-room with overhead shower and vertical water jets, and a Victorian roll-top bath. “Another compromise,” laughs Pooley, who hails from Scotland. “I wanted a bath. But Rob is American.”

The meeting of cultures, styles and interests is everywhere. There’s the planned-for children’s bedroom, with a Chinese opium bed and rare Emperor’s crib; a guestroom with antique European sleigh bed and an attic housing mountaineering and golfing equipment.

And in the courtyard? Well, there’s an old French fountain to aid thirsty dogs and for feng shui, an English stone bench and a red Hong Kong rickshaw. “I spent 15 years in the East,” explains Pooley. “I keep thinking I’m just on holiday here.”

Katharine Pooley, 160 Walton Street, SW3 (020 7584 3223; enquiries katharinepooley.com; www.katharinepooley.com)

Where Katharine Pooley shops

FOR MY LONDON HOME Lighting: Sally Storey at John Cullen Lighting (020 7371 5400) English 18th century antiques: Ronald Phillips (020 7493 2341; email ronaldphillipsltd.co.uk) Carpet: Ulster Carpets (0808 100 0979; www.ulstercarpets.com) Floors: Drummond’s Architectural Antiques (020 7376 4499; www.drummonds-arch.co.uk) Beds: Sophisto-Cat Furniture (020 7731 2221) Kitchen: Smallbone of Devizes (020 7581 9989; www.smallbone.co.uk)

EUROPE

In Paris, I love the antiques square Le Louvre des Antiquaires in Place du Palais Royal (0033 142 975 5212), especially Galerie Heritages, which sells the best range of antique clubstyle chairs. In London, I love Soo San, 598a King’s Road (020 7731 2063), which has a superb collection of antique Chinese furniture and art.

WORLDWIDE

Lotus: Singapore and Thailand (www.lotusartsdevivre.com).

Exquisite accessories and gifts.

Soul of Asia: Phuket (0066 7621 1122; email: info@soulofasia.com web; www.soulofasiathailandartgallery.com). Wonderful Asian art and antiques.

Pagoda House: Singapore (0065 732 2177; www.pagodahouse.com). Marvellous collection of art de vivre and antiques focusing on the south of Asia, Indonesia, Burma and Cambodia.

WHEN fashion designers Martin Barrell and his partner, Amanda Sellers, found their north London apartment in 2001, they immediately decided that they wanted it. It was not the fact that, apart from a dribble of paint, it had not been touched for 25 years, nor was it the shoddy conversion that swayed them. It was the 75-foot outdoor space full of supermarket trolleys, knee-high weeds, old sheds and rusty bicycles that clinched it.

“For five years in our Notting Hill flat, we’d looked down at people enjoying barbecues and thought, ‘That’s what we want to do’,” says Barrell. Now he has a beautiful cottage garden, created by Sellers, in which to sizzle sausages.

The couple own Maisonette, the ironically titled suburban-glamour homestore in Kensal Rise.

Think decorative: retro, modern and vintage; it stocks, among other things, cushions made from scarves, 1970s sideboards and paintings. Their home has a strong Sixties and Seventies influence, and is a testing ground for their shop.

“We like to see what things look like in a home environment,” says Barrell, who only sells pieces he likes. “We don’t go for the Austin Powers pop look. We’re into subdued designs.”

When the couple bought their apartment, they had a budget of £35,000 for building works. They started by reconfiguring the property, turning what was a three-bedroom flat into a two bedroom one by putting a bathroom in what was the third bedroom. They also converted two other rooms into a kitchen.

“We put in sash windows and new doors, and took off some other doors to open things up,” explains Barrell, who did the spec drawings for the builders. “We stripped, rewired, replumbed, replastered and, well, re-everything.”

Then the couple painted the wooden floorboards Farrow & Ball black and the walls Dulux white. “We wanted to work off a blank canvas.” A blank canvas in a late-Victorian home with period features.

The couple have been clever at taking low-cost interior pieces and using them in a way that makes them look expensive.

In the kitchen, they have used glossy white Magnet units – including three freezer units, which create a stylish wall of cupboards – with an economical laminate worktop. “It’s £160 on work-surfaces, rather than £4,500 on Corian,” says Barrell.

In the bedroom, he has eight Ikea mirrored wardrobes.

“If you use something en masse, you make a big statement with it.”

Even the hospital-style radiators are from B&Q – juxtaposed with two stylish Bisque ones, which raise the tone.

Against this backdrop are dramatic, vintage accessories.

Throughout the flat are spectacular light fittings: in the bedroom, two 1960s tiered, textured Murano glass wall lights from Les Couilles Du Chien, while in the bathroom, a 1970s Murano glass chandelier from vintage light specialist Ollie’s “that weighs a ton”.

In the sitting room, a pair of vintage glass wall lights glow beautifully, while in the dining room, a sequin-style bronze-tinted glass pendant light hangs from the ceiling. The overall look is simple, but decorative. In the sitting room, Barrell and Sellers have two 1960s chrome-and-leather Pieff sofas, offset by a sequinned Geraldine Larkin cushion.

“She designs embroidery for couture clients and a small range of interiors pieces,” Barrell says. The sitting room also has a Danish rosewood sideboard, vintage chrome-and-rosewood coffee table, and, for warmth, sheepskin rugs and cushions made from silk scarves. On the wall is a large, retro still-life of painting-by-numbers flowers, designed by Barrell and sold as a DIY kit in the couple’s shop for £130.

Vases and a brass cherub candelabra sit on the imposing Victorian Carrara marble mantelpiece, above the fireplace.

“When we moved in, the fireplaces were all 1930s tiled ones,” Barrell says. “We found the originals in bits in the cellar. So we got this [marble one] from Retrouvius reclamation.”

The dining room is open-plan with a 1960s Arkana table and matching swivel chairs. Above the table, a Geraldine Larkin hand-stitched sequin panel echoes the room’s slightly goldenbrown Italian chandelier.

ELSEWHERE, along the exposed-brick hallway (“It was like that when we bought it. We love its textural feel”), in which a 1960s Pieff dining chair is placed, lies the master bedroom. It has a theatrical 1950s Italian gilt-and-white painted chest, French 1930s painted bed and huge black sheepskin rugs.

Sellers’s vintage shoes, clothes and handbags, hanging off handles and placed on boxes, provide a further dramatic touch.

In the corner is a Charles Eames chair. “It’s rare because it’s finished in chrome,” says Barrell.

The bathroom is lined with inexpensive white tiles and featuring a sunken Bette bath, which has towel storage in its side panel. “The bathroom floor was seven inches lower than the rest of the flat,” says Barrell. “So we left the bath at that level.”

Italian mock-slate covers the floor, which, says Barrell, is “more economical and durable than slate, because it’s made of ceramic”. And, “for hiding everything”, there is a a wall of mirror-fronted, bespoke cupboards, lit from beneath.

There is one other thing that is hidden. Secreted behind a door, there is a labyrinthian cellar-cum-studio, from where Barrell creates his floral canvases, and looks up happily at his barbecue.

WHERE TO GET THE LOOK

For 20th century design
Maisonette: 79 Chamberlayne Road, NW10 (020 8964 8444; www.maisonette.uk.com)
www.sit-on-it.uk.com: 07815 841573
Les Couilles Du Chien: 65 Golborne Road, W10 (020 8968 0099)
Repsycho: 85 Gloucester Road, Bristol (0117 983 0007)

For vintage lights
Ollie’s: 69 Golborne Road, W10 (07768 790 725)

For the bathroom
MC Stone: 69a Goldney Road, W9 (020 7289 7102)
The Tile Shop: 4-6 Chamberlayne Road, NW10 (020 8968 9497)

Paints
Farrow & Ball: 01202 876141; www.farrow-ball.com
Dulux: 01753 550555; www.dulux.co.uk

Interior designer Amber Galloway took just 10 days to turn a rodent-infested mill into a dreamy home where she combines ancient and modern with flair, says Caroline Phillips MICE scuttled across the floor and water was pouring down the walls when Amber Galloway first saw her new home. “It was infested with rodents,” she says.

She had been in the process of buying two local Fifties cottages, which she had intended to demolish in order to build a Long Island-style clapboard, eco house. “But when I saw this, it was love at first sight,” she says without irony. It is an idyllic 1 8 0 0 s f orme r working mill with a river running through its garden, near Hook in Hampshire.

Galloway, 37, is an interior decorator and director of Global & Gorgeous – an online, mostly bespoke, shopping business selling homeware with a very individual style.

She is a woman who likes to do things differently.

She works on a * aptop in the house or in the garden, where she grows her own vegetables. She chooses everything from paint and furniture to bed linen and china for her decorating clients.

And she lives with her five-year-old son, Oliver, a male au pair and his girlfriend Inge, as well as two Labradors and Harry Potter, the cat. “I like privacy, but this works astonishingly well,” she says.

Even the move to her new home was unconventional. She had been living in Chelsea in a property she had finished renovating two years previously, having bought it in a dilapidated state. In September 2000, she let out her home and rented the bucolic retreat.

“I had 10 days in which to move out of London and make this house habitable,” Galloway explains. “Oliver was tiny, at mouth-level to the exhaust fumes. It was time to go.”

She hired four Polish labourers to live onsite. “My ex-husband, friends and I worked through each night after work. Ten of us stayed here, ripping it apart, blitzing and filling skips.” In record time, they stripped wooden floors, painted others, replaced light fittings and covered the ceilings, walls and woodwork with Farrow & Ball Toffee paint.

“With such low ceilings, it is better not to differentiate the colours,” she says. ” We didn’t fill or prepare the walls, just slapped on the paint. Unusually, I did the paintwork first and found the fabrics afterwards.”

She fitted neutral carpet (” 100 per cent nylon, £6 a metre,” she laughs) and a stripy Roger Oates runner on the stairs. She even got down on her knees and “squished mosaic tiles that were left over from six different jobs” – to create an artistic wet-room floor.

She used plain fabrics for the curtains: James Brindley’s natural pure silk tussah weave at £21 a metre.

“Good curtains are all about interlining and the way you hang them.”

With only a few hours left before moving in, she had to borrow furniture. “I’d rented out my London house furnished,” she says. Six months later, she sold that home and moved her furniture to Hampshire.

The eclectic character of her home comes from the combination of period features with her catholic collection of furniture, pictures and objets.

Her sitting room boasts an enormous open fireplace, traditional chenille armchairs (from a George Smith job lot), a battered Seventies leather Knoll sofa and leather coffee table juxtaposed with the Power Napper, a massive handmade calves’ leather floor cushion she sells for £1,200, and contemporary art from the Serpentine Gallery.

As a contrast, her dining room borders on the tastefully whacky. It has a large circular glass table with a tree trunk as its base; a William Yeoward string console table; an antique candleonly chandelier; c o n t e m p o r a r y t h r e e – m e t a l sconces made by a blacksmith and two 19th century sunburst gilt mirrors with an antique carriage lantern in the middle.

“I never buy objects for their value, just things I like the look of.” Next door, the kitchen has beams and a 19th century fireplace-cum-oven (“When it rains, it buckets down there”) and a wooden settle and clothes pulley, alongside Habitat steel shelves. “I can have 16 people for dinner; we just move between the kitchen and dining areas,” she says.

Upstairs, there are sensational beds everywhere: a Louis XVI-style day bed for her son; a 19th century mahogany with pediment for the au pair; brass in the guest room and a beautiful Empire bed in the master bedroom, where Galloway also has an Empire mahogany wardrobe, antique chaise-longue, 19th century Moroccan marquetry table and a Sixties Teasmade. Also there are framed panels from a decoupage screen she had as an infant. “As a child,” she says, “I’d ask for junk-shop finds rather than Barbie dolls as birthday presents.”

HER eclectic style is emphasised in her bathroom with its freestanding, clawfooted Victorian bath and Conran whiteenamel cube cabinet. Only the guest room is traditional, with a headboard made from French flea-market linen and crowned with a carved wooden mantelpiece, antique knickknacks and Global & Gorgeous muslin cushions and cotton bedcover.

The overall look is stylish and welcoming. “What you have on the walls and floor are immaterial,” she says. “I prefer to spend money on collecting things.

“Sometimes I go into clients’ houses and just move the furniture around, rehang the pictures – and completely transform their places.”