‘We wanted to have that feel of exceptional drama in the home, but in a beautiful place,’ says John Pagani of his stunning home at Kirtlebridge, dubbed the ‘River Ranch Party Palace’, by Scotland’s Home of the Year judge Banjo Beale when it was featured on the popular TV show earlier this year. Carol Hogarth reports
PHOTOGRAPHY KIRSTY ANDERSON | ICW, COURTESY OF BBC SCOTLAND
Dubbed the ‘River Ranch Party Palace’, by Scotland’s Home of the Year judge Banjo Beale, John and Dan Pagani’s house at Kirtlebridge, near Annan, is a feast for the senses.
Filled with “weird and wonderful objects” reflecting the couple’s passions and personalities, the house sits in secluded, peaceful riverside grounds, alive with birdsong and wildlife.
John says: “We wanted to have that feel of exceptional drama in the home, but in a beautiful place, close to where I have been brought up and love so much.”
Showing off his corner of Dumfries & Galloway was one of the main motivations for John applying to be featured in Scotland’s Home of the Year. “Our area is stunningly beautiful and often overlooked,” he says.
John was living in north Cumbria when he heard about the building plot in Kirtlebridge coming up for sale, from the landowner, who was a Café Royal regular. He worked on the design himself, with the builder, insisting on the unusual double height living room with mezzanine floor and balcony.
After two years, the house – named Kirtle Water Grange for Scotland’s Home of the Year, but really called Bonshaw Grange - was completed in 2004 and John fulfilled his vision of art-gallery-like minimalism, choosing an uncluttered, white interior.
“It was alright, but it never really felt like home,” he says.
Eight years later, Dan moved in, and the couple set about remodelling and redecorating the house in 2014.
“We had got to know each other as a couple and started to bring our joint personalities into the house,” he says.
The kitchen was knocked through to form the open-plan living space, and opened up onto the garden with floor-to-ceiling glass doors.
Like many of the furniture and fixtures in the home, the kitchen units were a second-hand buy, previously belonging to a Manchester United footballer.
Colour was brought in – pink for the kitchen walls, dark blue for feature walls in the living area - and a long, covered terrace built on to the outside of the open plan space.
Although keen on high-end furniture and homeware - one of their favourite designers is Timothy Oulton - John and Dan revel in finding second hand bargains to upcycle and remodel. Scouring online auction sites, they will travel far and wide to pick up items they love.
They have also taken inspiration from luxury hotels and airport lounges and find their own ways to re-create the looks. Feather lampshades on birds’ leg pedestals, for example, are made by Dan but inspired by similar lamps in an airport lounge at Heathrow.
The gold-winged, wall mounted tea cups and “flying saucers” featured on SHOTY were made by John, based on an idea he took from Fortnum & Mason in London.
Striking monkey wallpaper in the main bathroom was first seen by the couple in a hotel lift in Barcelona. It had been made for a drinks company, but John and Dan successfully begged them to sell some rolls to them.
The couple’s travels – especially to Los Angeles and India, where they support the Light of Literacy charity, which cares for street children – have been the source and inspiration for many of the items in the house, including the living area’s LAX wall lights. The couple had them specially made as a mini copy of the giant sign greeting passengers outside Los Angeles’ main airport.
John’s trips to the LA began when he was visiting his lifelong friend, actress Ashley Jensen who lived there for many years. He and Dan have both run the LA Marathon and married there five years ago.
Dan sums up the couple’s approach to interior design: “No single room has been finished to a plan. It’s all evolved. The house will never be finished, we’re always on the look out for the next thing.”
During judging for Scotland’s Home of the Year South of Scotland heat, Banjo said, of the interior, “I feel like I’m in Ozzy Osbourne’s house.”
And fellow judge Anna Campbell-Jones said: “This home is absolutely jam-packed with personality and originality in such an unpretentious way.”
The programme’s third judge, architect Danny Campbell, summed up the contrast between Bonshaw Grange’s indoor and outdoor spaces: “The space inside is so high energy with everything going on, but out here [in the garden] it feels so much calmer, just the sound of the birds and the river.”
The Kirtle Water curves around the bottom of the house’s extensive private grounds and John and Dan have made the most of the setting, with a gazebo and hot tub overlooking the river at one side and a barbecue shack complete with outdoor table made from old railway sleepers at the other.
There are ponds, a variety of seating areas, pathways, sculptures, hedges and several old pillars and columns giving the feel of the house having been built on the site of something older, rather than just a field.
Making Bonshaw Grange more environmentally friendly, with solar panels and a biomass heating system, has been important to John and Dan, and everything from the heating and electricity to the security gates, cameras and lighting can be controlled from a mobile phone.
Having only started watching Scotland’s Home of the Year last year, Dan and John said they felt they “could have a shot at it”. Shortly after applying they were visited by the programme’s scouts and filming took place two weeks later, last July.
“We have put so much work into it, I was interested to hear what professionals would have to say about it,” says Dan.
Bonshaw Grange was awarded 26 out of 30 by the judges. “We were open to constructive criticism, and it went really well. Watching the show when it aired [in May] was the first time we could really sit back and reflect on what we have created.”
John says: “It was an all-round, really positive experience.”
Overall, with its peaceful natural setting mixed with eclectic, quirky interiors, Bonshaw Grange is all about fun for John, Dan and their many friends and family members who visit, something that was clearly felt by in Scotland’s Home of the Year judges, as Banjo concluded: “They have absolutely gone for it with some weird and wonderful objects. They have done this house with a whole lot of joy.”
*All episodes of this year’s Scotland’s Home of the Year are available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
