Having spent much of her redoubtable professional life working for and with others, Priscilla Carluccio is now “doing her own thing”. At the Bothy, the Hampshire cottage she and her husband, the chef Antonio Carluccio, have had for 17 years, she asks with a wry smile why she must always be referred to as Antonio’s wife, Terence Conran’s sister or Jasper’s aunt.

Although her career has been inextricably linked with both her husband and her brother, her work in the fields of style and design is widely respected in its own right. She was instrumental as a stylist to Habitat International and director of Conran Design Group, working with Heal’s, Bhs and the Conran Shop. More recently, she oversaw the concept of the highly successful chain of Carluccio restaurants and products. But now she is focusing her extensive experience on her own business, Few and Far.

Priscilla describes the recently opened shop on London’s fashionable Brompton Road as “much more than a stitched label; it is about the feeling of the place”. In the same way that her Hampshire cottage evokes a sense of history and rural life without being twee, the shop has a distilled and select collection of furniture, fashion and accessories that have a distinctive style without being too precise or precious.

There is also something special about “the feeling of the place” in the country. “In the city we live in a modern flat, whereas here there are low ceilings and a thatched roof,” she says, wandering through the cottage garden of waist-high marguerites and lupins to the gate of the “nuttery”, a plantation of hazel trees that leads to the vegetable patch and the fruit garden beyond.

“We began by looking for a nice big house somewhere within an hour’s drive of London. We lost one in this area and the agent suggested we look here. It wasn’t what we had in mind but, when we drew up at the gate, there was a black rabbit sitting there, which I took to be some sort of an omen.

“Parts of the house date from the 16th century and it was originally two small cottages. We took the walls back to the wattle and daub and a local plasterer repaired and patched them, but we left many of the beams and supports exposed because they look strong. I also love the functionality of the place. It’s built using hazel from a nearby wood, clay from the local pond and the walls are of flint found in the fields.”

What was the back wall of the cottages is now enclosed by a corridor that runs across the width of the house. The unfitted kitchen was once an outside shed, which has been incorporated into the main building, and the fireplaces in the kitchen and sitting room were added some time after the cottages were built.

“We come here to relax,” says Priscilla. “It is a family home, where our three children and five grandchildren have come since childhood. We have our own traditions and silly customs that we enjoy; it’s a place where everyone has fun and joins in.”

The family presence is very much in evidence. In the sitting room, furnished with two large comfortable armchairs and a sofa, there is a long bench that doubles as a shelf. The bench supports a collection of wooden toys including an ark full of animals and two small carts pulled by oxen, made by a French craftsman who also made the animal heads that are fixed to the beam above the kitchen fire. On the windowsill are a number of animals on wheels, and, by the door to the corridor, a clump of wooden mushroom stools.

Next door to the sitting room is a bunk room with three beds and floor coverings of deep-pile Flokati rugs, which Priscilla says are to provide padding for the overflow of grandchildren who settle down there in sleeping bags. A wall of shelves is filled with games, doll-sized pots and pans, a toy cake shop, books and photographs.

Upstairs, in each of the three bedrooms, there are chests of drawers burdened with piles of books and toys, and it is at this level that the wooden floorboards give an inkling of the ancient legacy of the building. Even in the bathroom, with its roll-top, cast-iron bath, the whinges of age are audible as the boards give underfoot.

This much-loved family home is also furnished with things for which the owners have a passion. On the landing, a Shaker-style peg rail is weighed down under a prolific collection of baskets and, in the entrance hall and kitchen, there are bundles of Antonio’s thumb sticks with intricate geometric designs whittled into the bark.

The kitchen cupboards and shelves are full of ceramic bowls and copper pans. On one of the dressers are a couple of Greek trays filled with Moroccan tea glasses, and on another a collection of blue-and-white china serving plates. Even the chairs around the round oak dining table, which was designed by Priscilla and made by Benchmark, are a mix-and-match collection. “It isn’t in any way designed,” she says of the house. “I’ve come across things and brought them here. It’s a look that has just happened.”

Few and Far, 242 Brompton Road, London SW3 (020-7225 7070; www.fewandfar.net)

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