Where the light lands
Lotti Bruce has spent years as marketing director at THE PIG, learning from Robin and Judy Hutson how a building should be lived in before it’s changed. She reads a room by where she’d sit alone, and where she’d sit with friends.
What’s one detail people often overlook in a space?
Where the light actually lands. I love watching what daylight does to a room, how it catches the grain of an old table or makes you notice the colour of a wall. Come evening, a lamp can make you want to cross the room and sit in a corner you barely noticed earlier. Some of our lampshades at THE PIG are made from old sari fabric, and I love that moment when you switch one on and the colours suddenly come through.
A lamp can make you want to cross the room and sit in a corner you barely noticed earlier.
What makes a space work, in your view?
Robin and Judy Hutson taught me to spend time in a building before deciding what to do with it. I think about where the chair might be that I’d choose if I’d come in on my own. Can I sit there with a drink and have a little nose at what’s going on? Then I would think about the table I’d want with a gang of friends. I love a room that feels just as welcoming for one person as it does for six.
What’s a space that felt right the moment you walked in, and why?
The old house at THE PIG at Bridge Place. It’s a red-brick 17th-century manor with dark panelling, enormous fireplaces and little staircases you immediately want to go up. Then someone tells you Led Zeppelin played there and the whole house makes even more sense. It’s grand, but there’s something rather mischievous about it. You can still imagine a very good party there.
What’s a place you think more people should know about?
I live just outside Winchester, and I’d send people to the . I love the change of scale as you go from that vast Gothic nave down to the Norman crypt. It’s so still down there, and when the crypt floods, you see Antony Gormley’s Sound II reflected in the water.
Where’s at the top of your list to visit next?
in Braemar. I’ve wanted to go for years, and after a week in the Highlands recently I completely fell for Scotland. With a surname like Bruce, it was probably about time! I already love Artfarm’s in Somerset, and I’m dying to get into that drawing room at the Fife Arms. Tartan on the walls and a ceiling painted by Zhang Enli. I love the nerve of putting those two things together, and I suspect I’d spend most of my first drink looking up.
I love the nerve of putting those two things together.
What’s your favourite space, and why?
The greenhouse restaurant at the THE PIG in the New Forest, just as lunch is getting going. The light comes right across those old wooden tables, there are pots of herbs everywhere and you can hear the room filling up. I’ve been walking into that room for years and it still gives me a little lift. Then I’ll usually find an excuse to go out to the walled Kitchen Garden and see what’s growing. It’s where it all began for us.
