The cult of the extortionate ‘English’ kitchen

A house around the corner is on its fourth kitchen in a decade. Every two or three years, the house changes hands, the pristine kitchen comes out and a newer, pristiner kitchen goes in. They are always white, they are always shiny, and when I peer through the basement windows there is nothing in the way of signs of life. I reckon I can predict the next kitchen.

Think homespun, think rustic, think scullery maid in mobcap and pinny. What the rich want now is a plain old Plain English kitchen. Hand-crafted cabinets, antiqued brass, Delft tiles with authentic craquelure. Starting at £34,000 and going up to… well, how much have you got?

Don’t you dare put Dulux on your artisan doors. Plain English has its own bespoke paint chart. Farrow & Ball’s colours – ‘String’, ‘Brassica’, ‘Dead Salmon’, ‘Mole’s Breath’ – have long amused the paint-swatching classes, but Plain English’s colours take the oaten biscuit.