As one half of the design duo FrostFrench – her business partner is Sadie Frost, the actress and former wife of Jude Law – Jemima French, 41, is the quintessential Primrose Hill socialite, with the sort of full-on, glamorous London lifestyle that frequently ends in burnout.

So, with the business opening its second store, on the King’s Road in London, this week, Le Maladier – her bolt hole in the Dordogne – is a vital antidote. “I come here as often as I can,” French says. “I don’t wear shoes, I make jam and I live in a completely different way. It’s great for the children, who are a nightmare to entertain in London because of the age differences.”

The house is kitted out with all mod cons, including WiFi by the swimming pool, and has four terraces, a boules pitch, fruit trees and a pool house, where French goes for a daily fix of yoga out of sight of her children – Lily, 17, Dewi, 15, Edie, 10 and Meadow, 5.

“When they’re here, they’re not stuck in front of the television, but reading huge novels and setting traps for frogs or riding bikes. In the evenings, we do things like make pizzas together. It’s proper family time – much more the way I was brought up.”

When French was 11, her father, the advertising executive Richard French, brought his wife, Gay, and their four daughters to live here at the 300-year-old house for a year. “The ground floor was occupied by a herd of cows, there was no water or electricity, and only one tiny room had a proper floor,” she says.

Having spent an average of 16 weeks a year here until the pressures of her design career got in the way, French sees Le Maladier as a family place rather than a party house. “Sadie last came here seven years ago,” she says. “It’s just a hub for our whole family. My parents and sisters are usually here. Last summer, we had eight children here, including my own. I leave them here and fly in and out when I can.”

At Christmas, too, the family congregate at the house for enormous feasts and snowball fights. “I love it just as much in the winter – you see a different side to the place. The flowers get covered with frost, which is amazingly beautiful,” she says.

The decor is a history of French’s family life: pottery and cushion covers made by French and her three sisters (Polly and Olivia, who are graphic designers, and Lucy, a nutritionist), as well as paintings by their grandfather, the artist Gordon French, and mementoes of the seven (not all happy) years that French lived in Bali with the father of Lily and Dewi. “The effect ought to be odd, but it is utterly serene. It’s inspiring to work here. I’m always sketching,” she says.

Indeed, she credits the house and the local landscape with influencing her design career. “When I was a teenager, I used to buy broderie anglaise from the local markets, and I still really like that aesthetic,” she says. “All the prints that I design have a flavour of France about them.”

www.frostfrench.com

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