A Shared Way of Seeing
Long before today’s Burtown began to take shape, travel played an important part in both our lives.
Joanna studied interior design before setting up her own jewellery business, travelling to places such as Taxco in Mexico for silver and Jaipur in India for stones and inspiration.
James’s work as a photographer increasingly took him around Ireland and across the world, photographing houses, interiors, gardens and the people who created them.
After meeting, Joanna began accompanying James on many of these assignments, working alongside him on styling and production.
Those journeys became an education in themselves.
We discovered places together, collected ideas and objects, and realised that we often responded to the same things — the same light, the same room, the same combination of colours, an extraordinary garden, a beautifully laid table or somewhere that simply had atmosphere.
Travelling as a Family
Then the children came along, but the travelling didn’t entirely stop.
Whenever possible, they travelled with us.
Work and family life became intertwined as James continued photographing houses and interiors and producing books, while together we were constantly exposed to different approaches to architecture, gardens, food, hospitality and the way people lived.
James’s work eventually included an extensive series of books on houses, gardens and interiors, alongside the bestselling Vanishing Ireland series.
But perhaps more important than any individual project was what those years taught us.
We were looking all the time.
And gradually, many of the things we had absorbed elsewhere began finding their way back to Burtown.
Coming Home to Burtown
Our first home together at Burtown was the Stable Yard House.
At that stage, there was no grand plan to turn the estate into what it is today. Burtown was our home, surrounded by old buildings, gardens, farmland and generations of family history. We simply began doing things.
Buildings were repaired and given new purposes. Gardens were reclaimed and developed. Rooms changed. Objects collected on our travels found homes. Ideas that had been sitting quietly in the back of our minds suddenly had somewhere to go.
One project led naturally to another.
That gradual evolution remains very much how Burtown works today.