“We put chandeliers up and everything, it was beautiful,” says Charlie Braidwood as she shows kbbreview the barn at the back of the Church Farm Kitchens showroom.

She is nonchalantly describing her and her husband Alex’s wedding day, a ceremony in the chapel that gives the farm its name, followed by a reception in the barn, decorated especially for the occasion.

Their kids, of course, were christened in the church, which you reach up a winding path and through a kissing gate… Opposite the barn is the building where the nearly due lambs will live, and we are introduced to her daughter’s horse, Prinny, in the adjacent field.

The family house, on the other side of the barn, is where Charlie grew up, and on the walk through to the workshop, converted stables of course, their son’s toy diggers and trucks sit on top of a large pile of stones. The tour of Church Farm on a beautifully sunny spring day is nothing short of idyllic to a city dweller. It’s the kind of place where one can easily imagine the vicar also being an amateur sleuth who solves quaint local murders.

Even the name of the village sounds like it’s been made up for a children’s book, Little Piddle.

Family

The family history is clearly entwined with this place, and Charlie’s nonchalance gives away an endearing blindness to its appeal. She is so used to these surroundings that she doesn’t really realise how much they should, and will, shape the story of Church Farm Kitchens.

“I hadn’t ever really thought of it that way,” she says, eyebrows raised. “But yes, I suppose this is something we could talk about more. We’ve really been concentrating on the nuts and bolts of the business itself and telling the story of what we do in terms of making kitchens, so it’s actually really interesting to see the wider picture through someone else’s eyes.”

That’s not to say those nuts and bolts aren’t shaping up nicely too. Local word is spreading and more jobs are coming in from the surrounding villages as people seek out the craftsmanship that Charlie’s husband Alex and his team in the workshop can provide.

“We’re really starting to realise that we need to concentrate on what we do best,” Alex says. “When we first set the showroom up, we thought we needed some more contemporary furniture too, just in case, but we now know that’s not what people are looking for from us. Our confidence in our own stuff is really growing as a result.”

Alex is clearly someone who just loves making things. The narrow stairs up to the showroom feature a banister made from a long stripped oak branch, cleverly embedded with LEDs. A similar feature runs as a footrest under the island in the centre of the showroom.

“It’s funny,” he says. “Everyone who comes here mentions that.”

Do they sell them?

“I suppose we could,” he replies with that same innocent nonchalance shown by Charlie. “If someone asked, we could do it.”

He also makes small gifts for customers like bottle openers or candle holders, to them a nice gesture, but to observers a clear opportunity for selling accessories that expand the Church Farm brand and image.

“There’s no doubt that our marketing is something that we can do much more with,” Charlie says. “There is loads of potential but, like so many small businesses, it’s all about finding the time. We hadn’t really thought, though, that the entire farm could be part of the story, and that’s something to think about much more.

“Perhaps we should be including more than just kitchens in our social media, for example. Maybe we could widen it to be about the farm in general and promote a fuller story about the whole environment. The truth is I just hadn’t thought of it that way.”

This kind of approach isn’t unprecedented and the masters of this full narrative approach are, obviously, deVOL.

They are based in a former water mill on the outskirts of Loughborough, nestled in 12 acres of meadow and riverbanks. The main five-storey building is often described as ‘rambling’, and there are outhouses that are home to foundries and workshops. It is a beautiful place, but it is also a beautiful, and very carefully crafted, image of an English country aesthetic.

It is a destination in itself, and it’s no surprise that the ‘deVOL’ look is a desirable design choice, particularly in the US.

Destination

Church Farm is a long way off that, but it’s a clear path that it could place itself on if it chooses. Alex jokingly suggests they should have a ‘come and meet the lambs’ open day, but that’s exactly the kind of thing that could make Church Farm a real destination.

In the meantime, there are still kitchens to design and make, and as reputation spreads, so do recommendations.

“We’ve got some really interesting jobs in the pipeline,” Charlie says. “And most of them are through word of mouth, which is great. I’m working on a design now for a client who is disabled, and that’s a fascinating thing to go and research and find out what the best solutions are. He’s got some very specific needs and requests, so that just makes it a great challenge to tackle.”

Church Farm is still a new business, but it has so much potential, and it’s refreshing to see that Charlie and Alex Braidwood are taking their time to find what feels right in terms of their story.