Pure Pigments — The Colour Makers House, Britain's only medieval pigment alchemist
The Colour Makers House - Home of Magical Colour
A 17th-century sanctum where ancient knowledge never left the walls
Some buildings hold their history on the surface — a date stone, a listed plaque, a heritage sign. The Colour Makers House holds its history in the fabric itself: in the shallow stone treads worn smooth by three and a half centuries of footfall, in the low-beamed ceilings blackened by generations of fire, in the thick walls that have absorbed the smoke and scent of pigment-making since before England had a parliament.
Built in 1677 on the foundations of a medieval hall house, the building stands on High Wiend — a narrow side street that formed part of Appleby's original medieval town defences. It sits just a few steps from the centre of what was once the county town of Westmorland, in the shadow of a Norman castle, in a market town that has changed less than almost anywhere else in northern England.
For most of the last three centuries, it was known as the Black Boy — a hostelry named, as was common, for Charles II, whose dark complexion earned him the nickname. Travellers rested here. Drovers came through. The town moved around it. And through all of it, the building endured — its walls accruing layer upon layer of history, its bones remaining those of a medieval structure that predates even the 17th-century rebuild.
Today,it is something it may always, in some form, have been: a place where the materials of the landscape are transmuted into colour.
Plan Your Visit Today
The Colour Makers House is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 9am to 4pm.
Pigment-making demonstrations are given at 11am and 1pm on these days — a 45-minute introduction to the art of transforming the landscape into colour. No booking required; simply arrive.
For those seeking a deeper encounter, the Alchemist Experiences offer full-day initiations into the complete tradition, with the Master Alchemist working alongside you in the workshop itself. Spaces are limited to four participants and fill quickly.
2 High Wiend, Appleby-in-Westmorland, Cumbria CA16 6RD
Discover The Colour MAKERS' House - Features
The Workshop
Grand Staircase
Grand Staircase
The ground floor workshop is where the alchemy happens. Low beams cross the ceiling. An old Victorian range occupies the far wall — the same kind of heat source that pigment-makers and dye-workers used for centuries, its iron presence a reminder that colour was always made by fire. Around the walls, shelves carry glass vessels of pigment in every hue imaginable — ochres from the North Pennines, blues and greens from copper minerals, whites and reds and earths drawn from the geology of the surrounding fells.
This is not a reconstruction or a heritage display. It is a working alchemist's workshop, and everything in it is in active use.
When we took possession of this Grade II-listed building, it had stood empty for twenty years, its extraordinary features buried under decades of unsympathetic use — first as a steak house, later as a restaurant. The process of restoration has been one of uncovering what was always there: lifting the coverings from ancient stone floors, stripping layers of paint from finely carved woodwork, coaxing the fireplaces back into life.
The building has rewarded every effort. It appears to have been waiting.
Grand Staircase
Grand Staircase
Grand Staircase
One of the most remarkable features of the house is the staircase — a grand, shallow-treaded structure of finely crafted wood that rises through the centre of the building with an elegance entirely unexpected in a Cumbrian market town. Its proportions suggest a builder of considerable ambition, and the quality of the carved handrail — now restored to its natural wood after being buried under generations of paint — speaks of a house that was always intended to impress.
Visitors often pause on it. The treads are shallow enough that elderly guests climb without difficulty, which was itself almost certainly intentional — this was a building designed to receive people, to welcome them into something.
The staircase leads to the first-floor artist's studio, where architectural portraits of the great period houses of northern England line the walls — the work of thirty years spent understanding how buildings express the character of the landscapes that made them.
Fireplaces
Grand Staircase
Fireplaces
Three fireplaces survive in the house, each one a different chapter of its history. The oldest are the open hearths of the ground floor, their stone surrounds worn by centuries of use. Above them, the Victorian range on the workshop floor represents the 19th century's attempt to bring industrial efficiency to the ancient business of heat — the same impulse that drove Victorian chemists to replace natural pigments with synthetic ones, with consequences for painting that are still debated today.
All three are working fireplaces. In winter, the workshop is lit by fire as well as by the colours on the walls — which, as any visitor who has stood in it will confirm, is an experience unlike anything a photograph can prepare you for.