St Marks Stays

Our Namaste welcome to you

As we open up our newly renovated rooms, here is the transformation of bedroom one and our Namaste welcome to you. We had always called the bedrooms by numbers for our reference when we moved in to St Marks, but talking to lots of people, it became apparent that...

A Creative Studio

One of the draws of St Marks for us, was the studio as we immediately saw it as a creative meeting room that would be perfect for residential retreats. It has been used in the past as a classroom for Bolton School and a creative base for the previous owner’s company,...

Is it a Drawing Room, or a Parlour?

Having the luxury of two living rooms here at St Marks Stays, we were wondering what to call the second living room and had conversations about if we were frightfully posh, would it be called a drawing room or a parlour? The word Parlour comes from the French word...

Renovating to commercial constraints

It has been amazing that lots of followers online have felt encouraged to advise us on our renovations and what they would like to do with the house and unfortunately our answer has always been, ‘Arh but yes we are renovating to commercial constraints’. We love the...

Why we are putting the social back in to the dining room

Our main vision for a change in lifestyle was to create a place for people to be more social in and for our latest before and after renovation, here is how and why we went about putting the social back in to the dining room. Every memorable holiday for us has involved...

Doing your own reupholstering

When we told people we were renovating the dining room, we were asked a lot, as though it was the norm, the question of, ‘Are you doing your own reupholstering?’ Well despite having a degree in Textiles and Knitwear, I (Joanne) am not skilled at all with a sewing...