Look inside a London home where Irish art shines

Friends of the owners of this fine period house, in Twickenham’s celebrated Montpelier Row, describe it as “an Irish home in a London street”. One half of the couple was born in Belfast, the other grew up in an Irish community in Harrow, in northwest London, and has Mayo-born grandparents.

But perhaps the family’s real connection with Ireland was cemented on annual holidays with their now grown children to west Cork, and ongoing and regular visits to friends and family North and South. One of their three daughters studied at Trinity.

In the grand airy living room alone, there are pictures by James Humbert Craig, contemporary work by Ray Murphy, a small Maurice Canning Wilks, and work by George Gillespie and Anthony Klitz

It’s the art on the walls though that give the end-of-terrace, listed Georgian, a distinctly Irish feel. In the grand airy living room alone, there are pictures by James Humbert Craig (a pair, never parted, from Sotheby’s in London); contemporary work by Ray Murphy (Crawford School of Art graduate) and a small Maurice Canning Wilks (from Dolan’s Auctioneers in Galway). There is work by George Gillespie and Anthony Klitz on the opposite walls, also sourced at auction in Ireland, while four antique maps of the country are to the rear of the same room — closely grouped together in the panelled wall, a fine example of how these simply framed monochrome maps can look smart.

The couple are, they say, finally at the end of a renovation project that took 12 years. A lesson perhaps to buyers — who are also meticulous about restoration — that even though a house appears done, there is still work to do. The couple bought the three-storey house after some neighbourly negotiations.

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Its owner, a longtime friend, had made it known he wanted to downsize; they had restored a smaller house five doors down — “we have a penchant for projects” — and around the same time another neighbour from across the road had knocked on their door saying she’d like to buy their house, downsizing from her considerably larger property. No estate agents were needed — just “a trusted valuer” the three parties could agree on — and when the three removal vans crowd the streets on the same day, it required considerably traffic choreography.

The property: An end-of-terrace, listed Georgian, in Twickenham, London

Biggest mistake: “Appointing an architect with whom we had worked on a previous renovation project — on a Regency house that wasn’t listed. This house is listed and needed expert understanding and engagement with the planning department; it made life more complicated and stressful than it needed to be.”

Biggest win: “Being patient and finding terrific suppliers who also loved the house: Sam Shaw and his team at Sustainable Kitchens in Bristol and — closer to home — Chris Horne and family at CJH Brick Restoration. Refurbishing the roof terrace. It’s totally private.”

The previous owner of the Twickenham home had done “all the heavy lifting”, bringing back the house, then in poor condition, from five flats into a single home with a basement flat. But as buyers of houses in Ireland that have had a Celtic Tiger makeover will know, not every intervention, particularly in a period house, during those high-spending years stands the test of time.

The 1990s kitchen needed to go, ditto the sauna in one of the bathrooms, some original flooring and panelling had been covered up, while the grand main bedroom had been divided with a mirrored wall to create a dressing room. Details such as window shutters, the brass pulls in the sash windows, and the original ironmongery, also need attention with the owner — with great satisfaction — taking on the painstaking task himself of working on the railings.

“What we have tried to do is to back to the bones of the house,” says the owner, who has had a successful career in advertising and who, together with his wife, had already renovated three homes and felt they had “one more renovation project in them”.

Taking so long to complete the renovation worked in many ways — “we got to know every inch of the house” — but timing wasn’t always on their side. The work on the new, bespoke timber kitchen began towards the end of February 2020 and ground to a halt with the announcement of the Covid lockdown a few weeks later, just as the workers had ripped out the old kitchen and disconnected the water, gas and electricity. The couple, and one of their daughters, who had come home when the pandemic hit, used the tiny kitchen in the basement flat and barbecued.

To make the house work for them as a family, there were some changes to the layout, including bringing the basement flat back into the house as a second living room and second kitchen, removing a superfluous (recent) staircase and establishing a dressing room above, adding a window (and garden view) to a room previously used as a small bedroom, now used as a study, removing a small laundry room (and superfluous door to garden) to create a bigger ground floor guest bathroom. More recent works include repointing the house and landscaping the rear garden. Decoration included choosing calm, heritage paint colours for the walls.

This is an expensive part of London, “bucolic” says the owner, being near Richmond Park and the Thames and when they bought in that off-market deal, they paid about £4 million, or just under €4.5 million. They haven’t totted up the renovation costs over the dozen years they have been working on the property, though suspect it is in the £500,000-£1 million range.