I fell from a first-floor window and smashed my skull

Telegraph

10-05-2025

Stepping into fabric designer Vanessa Arbuthnott's Cotswolds house feels like a sun-drenched saunter through a very English meadow. Colours flit from soft sky blue to warm buttercup yellow… fresh air, fresh earth, fresh life. It's a tonic for the eyes and the soul, and a true testament to Arbuthnott's eye for delicate shapes and harmonious tones. She has mastered them all. But on New Year's Day in 2017, her world came crashing down when a simple accident in the barn next to the house could have killed her. Such is her positive outlook on life and her passion for work that it is a subject she rarely talks about.
We sit down on a late-spring day, looking through french windows onto a central courtyard, where long lazy grasses and dainty wildflowers are beginning to wake. Through the centre runs a lavender-lined path, new shoots eagerly bursting into life. 'The inspiration for my work is right there,' she says with a contented smile.
Arbuthnott's parents were both amateur artists, but her own early career took a totally different path, starting with a five-year degree in nursing at London's South Bank Polytechnic. She was working at St Thomas's Hospital when she met her husband, Nicholas, an architect who had always dreamt of creating a big family home in the country. Shortly after marrying, they moved to Amberley in the Cotswolds, where their eldest son, George, soon arrived. By the time they finally found the home they were looking for, it had to accommodate four children under the age of six.
'From the start, Nicholas knew it would be difficult to get planning permission to build a new house in open countryside,' she says. 'So, in 1993, we bought a derelict cow byre. Traditionally, this was a U-shaped, single-storey structure used as a fold to keep cows during winter. This one had originally been part of an estate owned by a banker and was made of Cotswold stone, with a proper tiled roof and a courtyard in the middle. It also came with a barn and four acres.'
Arbuthnott continues, 'For the first six months, Nicholas dealt with the foundations, roof and drainage. Although there was no central heating or electricity, it was wind and water-tight, so we moved in. We had run out of money, but we had hurricane lamps and candles. It was also late spring, so the worst of the cold weather was over.'
With a growing family, Arbuthnott realised it would be difficult to return to nursing, but she still needed an income, so she embarked on a weekly art class in Stroud, Gloucestershire, where she learnt about printmaking, and started to design her own fabrics. She then began to use the fabrics to furnish rooms in the house, which led to word-of-mouth commissions. In the space of a few years, her kitchen-table hobby had turned into a flourishing business with a store in Cirencester.
Just 15 years after her first collection, Arbuthnott had established herself as one of the country's leading fabric designers – something she had never dreamt of. There was also the added excitement of her first grandchild, courtesy of George and his wife, Clio. Then, on the first day of 2017, everything ground to a gruesome halt.
'We had a wonderful time welcoming in the new year, and the following day I was walking across the courtyard, when I heard a bird flapping its wings in the barn,' Arbuthnott recalls. 'Nicholas had converted it into a two-storey artist's studio, so I went upstairs, and as I got closer to the bird, it flew out of the french windows. Somehow, I lost my footing and fell through them head first, hitting the concrete path below.'
Arbuthnott lay there for several agonising minutes before slowly and painfully crawling to where Nicholas or her daughter Flora might see her. It was Flora who came rushing out, shocked by the blood pouring from her mother's face and hands. While Nicholas called 999, Flora wrapped her in blankets. Despite the freezing temperature, they were afraid to move her inside in case she had broken her back or neck. An hour later, an ambulance arrived.
Arbuthnott downplays what happened that day, but such a fall could have left her paralysed, or dead.
'To be honest, I was OK as soon as I was in the ambulance,' she recalls matter-of-factly. 'I think the shock and worry was harder for the family, who came rushing to the hospital. Multiple scans showed that I'd smashed my skull and jaw, smashed my hands and had a spleen bleed. My eyes were so swollen I couldn't open them and I had a haemorrhage above one of my eyebrows. Nicholas was scared I might have a larger bleed on the brain.'
For a few moments, this quiet corner of the Cotswolds suddenly felt like the opening of an Agatha Christie novel. 'One of the doctors asked me if I meant to jump out,' she says, raising her eyebrows, 'or if I thought I'd been pushed. I guess they have to rule these things out.
'Another doctor had to deal with my jaw, which was no longer connected to my skull. Maxillofacial surgeons had to wire it up by making slits under each eye and sliding metal plates down on each side. I'd also damaged quite a lot of nerve endings on my face, permanently losing my sense of smell. My wrists, too, had to be wired up with metal plates. I felt quite robotic.'
After several weeks in hospital, and with both arms in plaster for two months, Arbuthnott returned home, unable to do anything; she couldn't even eat without someone there to feed her. When the plaster finally came off her arms, she had another three months of physio, relearning to do the most basic of things.
Understandably, the family reflected on the accident, and how it had happened. The french windows on the upper floor had always been a welcome feature to the barn, because they brought in so much light; but as no one had considered that something so awful could happen, there was no safety bar or balcony. As soon as Nicholas got home, he screwed them shut.
'We weren't going to leave it to chance again,' says Arbuthnott. 'Luckily, there was no inquiry; no one got arrested.'
At that point, she also realised she would not be able to work for some time, but with a deadline looming for the next catalogue, the whole family sat down to see how they could help. Fortunately, her two daughters, Flora and Rose, are both artists.
'Nicholas can draw pretty much anything. Flora did product design at Glasgow School of Art and was already teaching screen-printing with me, while Rose had studied fine art and was a professional artist. They had also worked on previous catalogues, so I knew they'd come up with beautiful sketches. We then translated those into workable patterns and chose colour palettes together. I called it The Artists' Collection and it came out on time that autumn.'
Arbuthnott's optimism was back in charge. 'Whichever door or window I looked out of, there was always something to catch my eye. Something to lift my spirits, to make me feel better… a flower about to bud, trees blowing in the wind, a falling leaf.'
Reflecting on the fall, she says now: 'I had to go back to the studio, when the doors had been screwed closed, and work through everything to try to understand how it could have possibly happened. But I now believe in the true meaning of an accident: where you can't predict events. I don't have flashbacks, and I'm not traumatised by it, but for a while afterwards I did lose my confidence in any judgement, particularly in my ability to cross a road. I think it was much worse for the family when they saw me in such a state.'
Not only did the natural world aid her recovery; it continues to inspire her work, from 2020's Botanical Collection and 2022's Forest Collection to last year's Wild Garden Collection. This year, she celebrates 25 years in the business. On that, she says: 'I didn't set out to be ambitious, you know. I just found something I loved doing and followed my heart.'