Wealden Times | WT172 | June 2016 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside

Above: The entrance hall still contains an impressive timber-topped bar
– perfect for when the couple are entertaining Right: a larger-than-life
Champagne label makes a classy and appropriate picture in the bar area
alongside an original, illuminated aftershave advert from the 1970s
I
once met a very affable and, in the circumstances,
sane apartment in London Docklands and we
spent a very pleasant few hours together in the
company of its owners. My surprise at its state of
mind stemmed from the fact that it had been through
so many changes of use in its 200-year life, it seemed
inconceivable that it was not suffering from, at
very least, the severest of personality disorders.
It had begun life as part of a cloth warehouse at the
height of the Empire and gone on to serve variously as store
rooms, a scurrilous pamphleteer’s printworks, an importexport
office, a soft porn photographic studio, an advertising
agency, a dubious premium-line telephone operation, a
bookie’s and a refuge for unemployable IT geeks. With
each careless owner, a wall was knocked down or put up, a
ceiling lowered or raised, woodwork stripped or painted.
Finally, the whole building was gutted and redeveloped
as very swish flats and it was now the London home
of a Californian couple who sustained a considerable
lifestyle by doing something very clever and largely
incomprehensible with their MacBooks.
59 www.wealdentimes.co.uk