Pull up a pew? Every millennial home needs one – just don’t ask where it came from

Good luck to the Somerset church that sold off its Victorian benches by mistake and now wants them back. As every millennial homeowner knows, ‘salvaged’ furniture is the ultimate status symbol, says Claire Cohen

Paint by numbers: the classic millennial home contains ‘a Victorian nursing chair, William Morris curtains, a mid-century dining table, and various items made from reclaimed planks’ (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Have you ever played “millennial apartment bingo?” The idea – according to the shopping list of shame that went viral a few years ago – is that, if your home contains items such as an Eames chair, a mid-century sofa or vintage bar cart, it’s a giant interiors cliche… and you were probably born between 1980 and 1996.

I’d add a few items to update that list, because, in the last couple of years, Victoriana has been slowly creeping into the homes of my millennial friends. Think solid brown furniture, from linen cabinets to dressers, William Morris fabrics and wallpapers, antique tablecloths and oak benches, the likes of which sit around tables in open-plan kitchen-diners across the nation.

Whether any have found their way there from St Michael’s in Bath is likely only to be spoken of in hushed tones.