“They redrew our ground floor three times until the light was right. Nobody else would have bothered — and it is the reason the house works.”
Helena WardHomeowner
PrivateClient
LondonLocation
310 m²Floor Area
2025Completed
The Brief
A Victorian townhouse that had stopped making sense
Four owners and three extensions had left the ground floor as a chain of small dark rooms with a kitchen at the wrong end. The family wanted light, one long social space, and somewhere to put four bicycles.
We removed two later partitions, reinstated the original room proportions where they still read, and pushed the kitchen back into the return so the garden became the view from every seat. A new oak stair replaces a boxed-in flight and now carries daylight from the roof light down through three storeys.
- Full ground-floor replan with structural openings
- Bespoke oak stair, kitchen and utility joinery
- Lime plaster, reclaimed boards, unlacquered brass
- Fourteen months, design through handover
Gallery
Room by room
Approach
Three decisions that shaped it
Every project comes down to a handful of moves. On Ashgrove there were three, and everything else followed from them.
01
Move the kitchen
Relocating it into the return freed the full width of the house for one continuous living space.
02
Open the stair
Removing the boxing let a new roof light wash three floors with daylight at no running cost.
03
Keep one dark room
The snug stays deliberately deep green and low-lit — the contrast makes the rest feel brighter.
04
Spend on the floor
Reclaimed boards throughout, at the cost of a fitted wardrobe we happily dropped from the scope.
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