By Jeanne Wolf

Homestore.com

Homey is not the first word you might think of to describe a 16th-century English country mansion with eight bedrooms, six-and-a-half baths, a half-dozen reception rooms—not to mention an enormous ballroom.

But actress Jane Seymour, whose career ranges from James Bond beauty to her own series, "Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman," has managed to make the imposing estate near Bath a cheery and comfortable second home for her six children and husband, director James Keach.

"Everyone calls it a castle," Seymour says with a wry smile, "but it's really just a big manor house and I wanted it to be cozy. It's very child friendly. When we fill it up with a bunch of people, everyone finds a place to call their own and do their own thing."

Ironically, when Seymour plunked down a considerable sum for St. Catherine's Court in 1983, it was in woeful disrepair.

Fell in Love With the House

"Buying it was one of the dumbest, spur-of-the-moment, lunatic things I've ever done," she sighs, "but I fell in love with St. Catherine's. To even own a house like that is daunting, then you have to restore it, because it came with what seemed like a thousand years of deferred maintenance. There was just an enormous amount of really important architectural work that had to be done. But I had fallen in love with it."

Seymour plunged into a major renovation with the same determination and preparation that she brings to her film and television roles.

"We consulted architects about what had been there before and how we should go about restoring it," she remembers. "England has fairly strict laws about what you can do with the a Grade I-listed country manor house, so you can't just arbitrarily decide that you're going to change things.

"It was a huge undertaking," she continues. "The house was such a mess when we got it that everything had to be redone from the plumbing to the electricity. On the interior walls, there were endless rows of pipes that didn't seem to go anywhere and tangles of electrical wires—so the first challenge was to make it safe. After that it was really a question of realizing that the house had evolved from 950 AD, when it was a Benedictine monastery, to the most recent addition which was in 1910. Each room really was calling for the look of a different era. We tried to decorate them in the style of the particular century in which they'd been built."

When it came to making those design decisions, Seymour once again took charge.

One of Seymour's favorite rooms is the bedroom, which she considers "tranquil."

Jane Seymour, Interior Decorator

"I picked everything," she says. "The first fabric I ever chose is the one in my bedroom with a wonderful impressionistic look. That was 18 or 19 years ago, and it's really time to redo it. But I haven't found a fabric I like better yet, so I'm constantly looking. I must admit that over the years I've done some serious damage at antique sales. The terrible part is you go and you buy tons of stuff, bring it back and it sort of disappears in the house. It just sort of evaporates somehow.

"I love to collect antique silver pieces, like the mirror in my bathroom," she adds. "I've also picked up some very practical things like the pewter plates we use in our Elizabeth dining room."

The imposing dining room, dominated by an enormous table, looks as if it could easily accommodate a Tudor banquet. For Seymour it's the perfect place to entertain her mother, sister and the host of nieces, nephews, friends and acquaintances who love to visit.

"What's fun is there's no electricity in the room," she says. "It's completely lit by candles and a huge fire."

Dining Tables Seats Nearly 20

How many actually gather around the table for dinner? "At any given time we have up to 18 people around our dining room table," she replies with a grin. "It's solid oak and dates from Elizabethan times. Every dealer keeps trying to buy it from us, because Elizabethan dining tables are usually quite narrow. Ours happens to be a lot wider than normal and it's in incredible condition."

For snacks, a light meal or just relaxing, Seymour has the Orangery.

"It's actually a sort of hothouse where you could supposedly grow oranges in spite of the English climate," she says. "Ours is a beautiful Edwardian room which was actually built in 1910. It looks out at the whole landscape of the grounds. It's a lovely place to sit and enjoy the sunshine surrounded by beautiful flowers that are growing all over the place. It's kind of like a live-in greenhouse."

Her own favorite room? Seymour pauses to consider. "I guess the library, which is really the hub of the house," she says finally. "The ceiling is spectacular. The books on shelves are important to me because my father picked most of them. He was a great reader, and lover of antique books, so I said, 'Create a library for us.'"

A personal addition to that library will be Jane's new book, "Two at a Time," about her experience with her twin boys. Another favorite room is her bedroom. "There's something very tranquil about it, especially the views over the whole valley. It's a very peaceful place to be," she says.

Her Art Adorns the Walls

An accomplished artist, Seymour has adorned her bedroom walls with paintings. "Most I've collected over the years in art galleries in Bath," she says. "There's one painting I did myself of my twins. It's a watercolor hanging over the fireplace."

While Seymour has devoted her attention to the interiors of St. Catherine's Court, her husband has been busy outside.

"James decided to take over the landscaping because he is a great gardener, that's his passion," she says. "The original gardens were designed by Gertrude Jekyll, who is very famous. So James did research to find out historically and traditionally what was right and how it should look. For the last four or five years he's really been working on the grounds and has done an enormous amount." Then she adds with a hearty chuckle, "His latest folly is that he wants to put in a huge lake for trout fishing."

Some might consider it folly to live in Malibu while spending a fortune to keep up an English estate as a vacation home but Seymour has solved that problem too. "We rent it by the week when we're not there," she says, "and people love it because it's such a unique experience. All the money we take in goes to maintain it."

Looking back over the almost 20 years of hard work she's put into St. Catherine's Court, Seymour has few regrets.

"It's very, very satisfying when you think that we'll be just another little speck in this house's history hundreds and hundreds of years from now," she muses. "There's a sense of timelessness about it. The Romans were here, and the Druids and Cromwell. You are walking around a place that's been here for a thousand years and it has endured—which gives you a sense of the continuity of life."

For More Information
St. Catherine's can be yours, if only for a vacation, for the weekly price of $16,500. That price includes a cook, maid and gardener and use of the grounds and all eight bedrooms. Contact Overseas Villas for more information.

©Pentacom Productions, 2000