As two-and-a-bit-year-old Lara runs to the vegetable garden to pick humbug-sized tomatoes and sweet, juicy plums, you can’t help thinking that, especially on a sunny autumn day, this must be the perfect place to spend a childhood.

The home Lara shares with her parents, designer Rosie Simmons and Leigh Cresswell, who works in IT for a publishing company, is on a plot of land that was once part of allotments for the village of Amberley in West Sussex. The wood and corrugated iron single-storey house was erected in 1926 at the end of a footpath and can’t be accessed by cars, so is blissfully quiet and safe from traffic. The remaining acre of fertile ground provides the family with the bulk of their fruit and vegetables, while pots of herbs are arranged in tiers by the back door, a walnut tree flourishes in the garden and well-fed rabbits hop along the hedgerow.

The place is imbued with family history and decades of heritage and home-making. The couple bought the house from Simmons’s cousins, who had lived here for 20 years, and before that the house had four owners, two of whom were artists.

“I remember coming here as a child and the wind whistling down the corridor,” says Simmons. “Originally, there were 17 minute rooms reached through endless doors.” Her cousin Sarah, who is a jeweller, and her husband, Christian, a carpenter, collaborated with London-based architect Ekkehard Weisner to renovate and redesign the house so that there were fewer, bigger rooms and a more open aspect. The house now has a central corridor with rooms on one side allotted to “living and sleeping” and on the other to “utility”, which includes washing and work.

Born-and-bred Londoner Cresswell has been pleasantly surprised by the move to the country. “In the two years we’ve been here, I have got to know more people than I did among my neighbours in London. It’s a very friendly and community-orientated place.

“In the early days when we were trying to get to grips with the garden, neighbours would drop in and say, ‘Do you know you’ve got such and such a tree?’ and tell us how to care for it. Others would take away baskets of soft fruits and return with pots of jam. It’s been a real voyage of discovery – from finding the carpet of primroses and daffodils that appear from nowhere in spring to investing in a large wheelbarrow, because it proved to be the only way of bringing in a big weekly shop from the car in one journey,” he says.

Cresswell also took over Christian’s workshop at the far side of the vegetable garden, near the beehives. One of his first projects was to construct the table that now sits in the centre of the kitchen. “It’s made from pippy oak, which has small knots that give it a subtle pattern,” he says. The kitchen floor, which had been a darker wood stain, was sanded back and clear-varnished to enhance the natural light.

The paint colours throughout the house are subtle blues and yellows. “We’ve kept as closely as we can to the original colours,” says Simmons. “They were chosen by my cousin Sarah, inspired by a Bloomsbury-style painting that used to be in the living room, and we felt these colours had become an integral part of the place.”

The blue shade is seen in the sitting room, on the bookcases built around the doorway and on the frames of the two bay windows. Off the sitting room, on the “utility” side of the house, Simmons has her studio, where she fits her design work around Lara’s timetable.

Simmons’s brother is Paul Simmons of the Glasgow-based design company Timorous Beasties, and she has developed a ceramics range for its homeware collection. “For a number of years I worked in Stoke-on-Trent for companies such as Wedgwood, so I have a thorough knowledge of the industry,” she says. She is also working with H&E Smith to produce her own designs on tiles, and on a new collection for Topps Tiles.

When Lara’s bedtime approaches, Simmons puts down her inks and artwork and takes up her role as mum and storyteller. In her room with its built-in bed, bookshelves and wood-panelled walls, Lara selects her current favourite book and settles down. When the sound of an owl signals time for sleep, it is well and truly confirmed that this is an idyllic place to spend a childhood.

To see Rosie’s work, visit 3cubed.org

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers