by JULIETTE SMITH on OCTOBER 3, 2007 - 0 Comments in MOBILE
So many tents, so little time
The real thing is often exotic – a native American tepee, for example, or Mongolian yurt – and borrowed from nomadic cultures. The top-notch version is usually hand-made from traditional materials to provide room-sized spaces, big enough for beds, or even bathrooms. Some have windows and doors, decorative poles and printed linings (the tent equivalent of wallpaper); a decent tent is dry, waterproof and tough enough to withstand a semi-permanent outdoor life.
The versatility, the magic, of the posh tent, is encouraging campers to swap the standard-issue, two-man dome for a spacious tepee or an Indian Maharaja’s shikar (the latter forms the basis of Camp Kerala, Glastonbury’s 72-tent canvas hotel, offering a weekend of swanky camping for £6,000 a go).
For about £2,500 you can buy your own bespoke shikar and tent-makers Raj Tent Club say most of their customers prefer to do their luxury camping at home.
Party tents can be used as summer houses and work spaces. Yurt-maker Jonathan Morriss, of Bruton Yurts, has sold tents for use as treatment rooms, and even alternative living spaces. An author bought one as a writer’s retreat.
According to Cornwall-based Belle Tents, their round pavilions and mini marquees sell as playrooms, dining rooms and garden rooms, and not to festival-going types but to stockbroker-belt chief executives.
Party tents can be wired, plumbed, heated, and because they are temporary structures, and don’t have foundations, they don’t need planning consent.
You can fill them full of kids, furnish them, light them, and when, you get fed up with the view, you can take them down put them up somewhere else.That’s the magic of party tents.
Little Big Tops
Mini Big Tops, pavilions and jousting tents in striped heavy-duty canvas from 10ft upwards cost from £1,080. (01840 261556; www.belletents.co.uk)
Top tepees
Otherwise known as a wigwam (or native American tent), traditional tepees are made in Devon, by Albion Canvas, and cost from £2,012 for a 16-footer. (01803 762230; www.albioncanvas.co.uk )
Time for Bedouin
The traditional Morroccan tent (known as the maghzen or caidale) made in south-west London by Moussem Tents. Made to measure from £1,500. (020 8947 2281;
www.moussemtents.co.uk )
Past mastery
Medieval, Napoleonic, Civil War and other repro tents made in the Sherwood Forest by Past Tents. Small, 15th-century pavilions from £630. (01623 862480; www.past-tents.demon.co.uk )
Nic Fiddian-Green’s canvas bhurj (right) was a birthday present from his wife, Henrietta. “Originally, she bought me a pretty little pavilion tent,” he says. “But it wasn’t man enough, so I exchanged it for a bhurj, which is more heavy-duty, more wild-style.”
A sculptor (best known for his bronze-cast horses’ heads), Nic has used his tent as a mobile studio, working literally under cover, while his equine models wandered around the field wherever the tent was pitched, But more often it is used as a multi-purpose summer space.
“The kids play in the tent, we often eat in it, and we’ve had countless parties in it,” says Henrietta, who has also used it as a spare room. “So many people have slept in that tent.”
The bhurj was made in India for London tent company, Raj Tent Club. In plain, cream canvas, lined with hand-printed cotton and decorated with “bobbly bits”, it has a central pole. “The sides roll up so you can use it like a giant parasol,” says Nic.
Until recently, the Fiddian-Greens (they have three children) lived in a small cottage, where the tent made a useful garden extension.
“It was particularly useful when we were doing work on the house, giving extra living space to get away from the builders’ mess,” says Henrietta.
In the summer, the tent is sometimes moved from the garden to a sunken wood on the Fiddian-Greens’ land, where it is transformed from dining room or playroom to rustic retreat.
“If the mood takes us, we just migrate to the tent and camp for the night, or the week,” says Nic. “We also take it to Norfolk for summer holidays. It is a very
practical tent.”
* Raj Tent Club: 020 7820 0010; www.rajtentclub.com
Caroline Hawkins’s large, decorative tent was originally bought as “an overspill space for summer visitors”. Her house, Sheldon Manor in Wiltshire, is Grade I-listed (so there was no chance of getting planning consent for an extension) and since the gardens are occasionally open to the public under the National Garden Scheme, she wanted an attractive outdoor “room” that would provide shelter from the sun or, indeed, the rain.
The tent’s first outing, however, was as a disco for her daughters, 16-year-old Amelia and Cordelia, 14. And it has since proved a versatile family space for everything from dormitory to dining room. “It’s like having a summerhouse or lovely conservatory,” says Caroline. “But more glamorous, and much more fun.” Made in India for tent designers White Canvas, Caroline’s rectangular tent is tough, waterproof Scottish canvas, lined with hand-blocked cotton, and supported by traditional poles, guy ropes and pegs.
“It looks right in its setting,” says Caroline, who moves the tent around from orchard to formal garden. “You couldn’t have a nasty cheap tent in the grounds of a historic property.” Not the least bit cheap, Caroline’s tent cost the best part of £4,000.
For teenage discos she installs wooden floors, flashing lights and a sound system; for dinner parties, she puts down Persian rugs, under tent-friendly tables and chairs.
Her daughters’ overnight guests usually get camp beds, but Caroline is looking for a portable four-poster for grown-ups. “We have a lot of visitors and I’d like to make the tent a really comfortable place to stay,” she says.
* White Canvas: 0870 321 3007; www.whitecanvastents.com .
When Emily Edgell’s mother, Jane, moved into a one-bedroom cottage in Dorset, she had a problem: where was she going to put her daughter? Emily, a school boarder, needed a room to come home to. So Jane bought her daughter a yurt.
At about pounds 3,500, the yurt was not only cheaper than a loft conversion but, says Jane, it provided an independent space for a growing teenager. Emily, now 18 and studying for A-levels, has been living in her yurt more than two years.
“I like the fact that it’s out of the ordinary,” she says. “My friends at school think I’m mad, but they’re all very intrigued and they love it when they see it.” She has managed to squeeze 10 overnight guests into her 14ft home.
It was custom-made by the Dorset-based Bruton Yurt Company. A circular construction with a little pitched roof, it is self-supporting (no poles or pegs), and consists of a latticed timber frame
covered in foil insulation, sandwiched between two layers of canvas.
The yurt sits on a wooden deck in the garden about 30 metres from home, and has two windows, a wood-burning stove, a little “pixie-ish” chimney, wooden doors and a canvas porch. In other respects, it is just like any other teenage bedroom: a double bed, sheepskin rugs on fitted carpet, a wide-screen TV, feathers, fairy lights, clothes everywhere. “It’s very girly,” says Emily.
“I think I could easily be seduced into swapping my yurt for four walls and central heating,” she admits. “But if it was bigger, better insulated, and had running water, I could probably live in it for ever.”
* Bruton Yurts Company: 01963 31955; www.brutonyurts.com
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