There’s barely a scrap of frivolity in the Rutherford home. The seat of a Tyneside manufacturing family in the 1910s, it’s imposing, substantial, stuffed to the gunwales with heavy furniture – yet you struggle to spot anything that isn’t grimly functional or solid enough to break your toe should you drop it. Whatever else it is, the house of Rutherford is not a house of fun. – David Jays