Sutton’s checklist for a country house was comprehensive: Georgian architecture, symmetry, shutters, an Aga, a vegetable patch, acres of land… “I thought, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it once,” she says. “In the end, our garden is actually just an acre, but that’s a lot. I’d never gardened before, so we were totally saved from ourselves because this is a handful anyway.”

Hill House was the first property they looked around, and on leaving, they put in an offer, but were trumped by another buyer. When they lost out in the rollercoaster of bidding wars for several more dream Georgian set-ups, Sutton wondered if it was a sign that they were not meant to leave London. “And then for some reason I just remembered Hill House, and I said to my husband: ‘Let’s just call them up and make sure that the sale has gone through,’ and it had just fallen through, so it was complete fate.”

For the first six months, the “adrenaline and excitement” of a new life in the country took hold, as well as making sure that her three children were fitting in at school. “But at the end of the first year, I started thinking: ‘Ok, now what’s next for me,’” admits Sutton, whose quest for a quiet life had begun to be reflected in her style. “I started trying not to stand out – I mean I stand out, I’m a black woman in a very rural area that is very Caucasian – but what started off as just wanting to have a bit of peace and quiet starts to be that you’re actually hiding. I used to wear my husband’s old wax jacket and massive hoods, shoving a hat down as far as possible and waiting for those moments when the children came back from school." As a sense of loneliness descended, blogging and social media became the perfect outlet as Sutton began documenting her life in the country and how she was furnishing Hill House with her vintage finds. “It’s such a cliché, but social media shrinks the world,” she says. When she was eventually persuaded to emerge from behind her keyboard and show her face on the account (“my first image of me was hanging out the washing, hidden behind a sheet with a hat on my head”), her personal style became as coveted as her timeless interiors. “I suddenly became more and more comfortable and was becoming a little bit more eccentric and flamboyant,” she says. A photo with her late Labrador-Doberman cross on the beach at Holkham in a striped Brora jumper prompted a collaboration with the brand last year, with a collection that captures the merging of her two lives. “I’d started to establish this look which was a hybrid between my old life and the new life I had. I was getting into that lovely, time-worn [look of] cashmere with old tweeds.”

Trips to London give her the chance to dip her toe back into her life of yesteryear, but as the train pulls out of King’s Cross and that broad, flat Norfolk horizon looms, Sutton breathes a little deeper again. Even the long walks alone that once unnerved her are now a source of creativity. “I’m a born and bred Londoner, and so you’re taught to be street smart from a very early age, with your keys in your hand ready to pounce. I remember when we came here, and I’d walk for half an hour and not see anybody, it totally freaked me out,” she says. “But, my goodness, once I got used to it, I loved the solitude. That’s how I get my creative ideas – those are my golden moments." Weekends are now spent exploring the north Norfolk coast, whiling away afternoons in The Victoria Inn at Holkham, picking up supplies at Thornham Deli and scouring the shops in Burnham Market. Or, of course, tending the garden at Hill House. Now enviably green-fingered, Sutton finds herself wondering “if I’m now ready for my six acres…”. And judging by the size of those dahlias, you’d be hard pushed to disagree.