Surrey Homes | SH20 | June 2016 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside
The lifestyle magazine for Surrey - Inspiring Interiors, Fabulous Fashion, Delicious Dishes
The lifestyle magazine for Surrey - Inspiring Interiors, Fabulous Fashion, Delicious Dishes
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Above: The entrance hall still contains an impressive timber-topped bar<br />
– perfect for when the couple are entertaining Right: a larger-than-life<br />
Champagne label makes a classy and appropriate picture in the bar area<br />
alongside an original, illuminated aftershave advert from the 1970s<br />
I<br />
once met a very affable and, in the circumstances,<br />
sane apartment in London Docklands and we<br />
spent a very pleasant few hours together in the<br />
company of its owners. My surprise at its state of<br />
mind stemmed from the fact that it had been through<br />
so many changes of use in its 200-year life, it seemed<br />
inconceivable that it was not suffering from, at<br />
very least, the severest of personality disorders.<br />
It had begun life as part of a cloth warehouse at the<br />
height of the Empire and gone on to serve variously as store<br />
rooms, a scurrilous pamphleteer’s printworks, an importexport<br />
office, a soft porn photographic studio, an advertising<br />
agency, a dubious premium-line telephone operation, a<br />
bookie’s and a refuge for unemployable IT geeks. With<br />
each careless owner, a wall was knocked down or put up, a<br />
ceiling lowered or raised, woodwork stripped or painted.<br />
Finally, the whole building was gutted and redeveloped<br />
as very swish flats and it was now the London home<br />
of a Californian couple who sustained a considerable<br />
lifestyle by doing something very clever and largely<br />
incomprehensible with their MacBooks.<br />
<br />
43 www.wealdentimes.co.uk