About

When an upholstery craftsman merges with a textile designer it’s a safe bet the result will be something special – which was exactly the case with Stuart Henderson and his wife Carla, who together run Castle Cottage Interiors in North Berwick.

Having trained in Furniture Craft and Management at High Wycombe, in 1989 Stuart opened his first business, Castle Cottage Upholstery, in East Linton. He later moved the business to North Berwick where he specialised in both modern and traditional bespoke and re-upholstered furniture, curtains and blinds.

Carla meanwhile, graduated with a BA in Textile Design at the Scottish College of Textiles in Galashiels and initially had her own hand screen-printed textiles business in Tweedbank. After moving to North Berwick in 1989, she worked as an exhibition co-ordinator/buyer at The Westgate Gallery. The pair met through mutual friends, married a few years later and now have three children.

Carla joined Stuart in the business in 2002 at which time they acquired the upper part of the building and created two specialist areas, a ground floor workshop accessed from Abbey Road and a soft furnishings/interiors shop upstairs entered from Station Road.

The business name was changed to Castle Cottage Interiors to reflect the couple’s individual but complementary skills and the range of services they offer which could literally be anything to do with interiors for a castle to a cottage and all things in between. Carla and Stuart’s main focus is making bespoke furniture and footstools, using beech, oak, ash and traditional hardwoods, and creating unique and beautiful room schemes as part of a design service that caters for all tastes and budgets to ensure customers achieve exactly the look they want.

Inspiration for their designs comes from living on the coast and from fabrics – the latter range in price from £10 per metre to £300 per metre and include the most famous names in the business, such as Zoffany, Jane Churchill, Romo, Mulberry, Osborne and Little, Colfax and Fowler, and Silent Gliss rails. Wallpaper source books ensure a similarly vast choice of paper designs from top manufacturers as well as a fabulous range of paints.

Fabrics are Carla’s speciality and the company provides a free consultancy service, after which Carla puts together a mood board, which could incorporate paint colours, fabric and wallpaper swatches, wood stains and more to demonstrate an interior theme that’s frequently inspired by a personal item, which could be anything from a painting to a piece of furniture. Curtains and blinds are complemented by a wide range of rails, finials and tie backs.

Another member of the team is, Billy Gibson, an experienced upholsterer who has worked for Stuart and Carla for 15 years. Furniture upholstery is a specialist area therefore the techniques and methods employed at Castle Cottage includes the best of traditional and modern materials.

The company have undertaken several high profile commissions, including boardroom chairs for the Bank of Scotland, a throne for Holyrood Palacecommissions, , for which they were sub contractors, as well as working with many stately homes throughout the UK.

Castle Cottage Interiors also stock Pilgrim jewellery, Jersey pottery, lighting, interior giftware and cards. As the company also has a presence at major annual events such as the Scone Game Fair, it gives people who live outwith the North Berwick area a taste of Carla and Stuart’s skills and creative talents.