Actor James Murray and his actress wife Sarah Parish left the big smoke to set up home in the heart of rural Hampshire. He tells Rebecca Gooch why he loves the countryside and how they have reassessed their priorities
Since he was knee-high to an AK47, James Murray has seemed destined to be an adventure hero. From Jimmy Savile "fixing it" for him as a seven-year old to become his idol James Bond, to saving the planet on a weekly basis in the hit sci-fi TV series Primeval, "action man" has always been his middle name. But after battling deadly prehistoric monsters with all guns blazing, you'll now find the 33-year-old actor dealing with some altogether gentler creatures—his chickens or, as he affectionately calls them, "my girls", who live happily in an enclosure at the bottom of his sprawling garden, deep in the beautiful rolling countryside east of Winchester.
This is the home James shares with his wife, Mistresses actress Sarah Parish. The pair decided to leave the city and now juggle their busy working lives with semi self-sufficiency on their 1½-acre smallholding in Hampshire.
Although James is best known as sharp-shooting scientist Stephen Hart in Primeval, his first significant TV appearance— after a few years travelling the world, and with a degree in scriptwriting and directing under his belt—was 10 years ago as a barman in Coronation Street. He has since appeared in such series as Clocking Off and the legal drama North Square, and has the lead in the new remake of the horror classic It's Alive!
His looks have won him innumerable female fans, many of whom remember how he wooed Keeley Hawes in Under the Greenwood Tree in 2005, complete with a Mr Darcy-style wet shirt scene. That same year he met his wife-to-be on the set of the hairdressing drama series Cutting It. Sarah's character was leaving the series as James' was arriving, so their paths only crossed briefly. "We got on as mates, but we went our own way afterwards. Then invariably you get thrown back together for launches and things and it all blossomed from there," he says with a grin.
"Since then—well, look what we've created," he adds, gesturing around their white-timbered house. "It's a happy outcome. We were both brought up in the country, Sarah in Somerset and me around Manchester and Herefordshire, and we wanted to get back there and find somewhere to work on and improve. When Sarah found this place in Hampshire while trawling the internet, we fell in love with it."
The site where their house now stands, near Alresford, is mentioned in village records as far back as 1285, and its quirky history captivated the couple. The original property was the mill, then a pub and in the 1960s it became a cattery for 30 years. They have restored the property and James' pride and joy is the vegetable and fruit plot he created with Sarah. "I know it sounds like a cliché, but growing your own food is just the most rewarding thing. It tastes a million times better because you've seen it through from seed to harvest."
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