The kitchen at Dulford House in Devon is festooned with colourful rosettes strung on a ribbon above the Aga, with paintings on an old pine dresser. It’s a quintessential country-house scene, but not the one that is conjured when the owner is the former guitarist of rock band The Cure.

Perry Bamonte joined the band in 1990, first as a gofer running odd jobs before briefly playing the keyboards and then moving to the bass guitar; he remained with the band until he left in 2005. “I wasn’t fired as is reported on the internet, and we’re still good friends,” he’s keen to underline.

In 1998, after the band had released their album Wild Mood Swings (1996) and while they were working on their next, Bloodflowers (2000), Bamonte spotted Dulford House, which was built in the Thirties, in Country Life magazine.

Somewhat improbably, given the band’s goth rock image – baggy black clothes, backcombed hair and heavily kohled eyes – it was the sight of a peacock appearing from behind a hedge in the garden, displaying its tail feathers, that sealed the deal. “I just thought, ‘I know where I’m living’. I didn’t wait for the survey and paid the full asking price,” he says.