Bridge Magazine - Part 1

When retired lawyer Sandra Rosignoli first walked into
18 Draycott Avenue, it had been untouched by the hand of
builders and decorators since the 1950s. “It was kind of
extraordinary”, she recalls. “There were cartoons all over
the walls, and little scribbled height charts as a relic of the
growing children who had once lived here. The cartoons were
of things like the Chelsea pensioners. It was rather charming,
though in huge need of modernisation.”
Remnants of familial life aside, the walls of this house – a
former Victorian cottage bombed and rebuilt in the 1940s – had
also been privy to much political badinage; having once been the
hangout of the founders of Private Eye, scribbled murals of
a more political persuasion joined those more childish daubs.
That was until 18 months ago, when Rosignoli snapped
up the property which, though characterful, had been sadly
neglected (the carpets were 60 years old) and was in dire
need of an interior vision and some long-lost love.
“I spent a year doing it up,” explains Rosignoli, whose
unerring eye is evident throughout the property’s four levels,
all of which are laid with über-smart walnut flooring. There
are, certainly, no half-measures here. “We dug into the garden
to get an extra bedroom and also raised the ceiling of the
basement by about a metre, so you don’t get the sense that
you are underground.”
Indeed, the expansive basement is home to a huge
television room – gadget aficionados eat your hearts out –
and constitutes Rosignoli’s favourite part of the renovated
house (“it is a bit of a stunner”).
But then there’s plenty to choose from in the showstopping
stakes. First there’s the light-filled and generously
WALLS
“It’s a
peaceful
place, whIch Is
somethIng
that I really
cherIsh”
BRIdGE MAGAZINE 49