While the boom in house sales outside the capital shows Londoners have been busy actioning lockdown fantasies about escaping the city, Wendy Osgerby has bucked the trend to become one of London’s newest residents.
The artist, writer and retired arts lecturer made the move to Brockley, south London, to be closer to her son Jay — one half of the design duo Barber Osgerby — and her grandchildren.
After spending the past five years caring for her parents, she was looking for a fresh start and swapped her spacious Oxfordshire home and garden for an inner-city mews with a courtyard.
“I looked after my parents and then when they passed I was a bit lost I suppose, so it seemed like a good time to do something completely different, and that was moving.
“It was a big decision but it meant I could be with the grandchildren,” says Osgerby, who acknowledges the move turned out to be a doubly good choice when the country entered lockdown.
She found a down-at-heel two-bedroom Victorian house around the corner from her son and set about putting her stamp on it.
A two-storey side extension by architect Aurore Baulier of Hackney-based studio Atelier Baulier is designed to bring much-needed light into the previously gloomy interiors and create soothing, dedicated spaces for crafting and writing.
Half-height pine partitions divide the space into three zones at ground level: a crafting area, a hallway and a shower room linking directly with the courtyard at the rear.
Sliding doors cleverly allow the spaces to be joined or separated from each other and the open-planned lounge, dining area and kitchen next door.
A small mezzanine set above the bathroom and accessed through the master bedroom offers a writing studio aligned perfectly with a pair of windows for contemplation.
“I had no fixed ideas about what I wanted, but I wanted more space because it was very small, very dark and I just needed to breathe,” she says.
“Aurore suggested a studio upstairs as a mezzanine writing room and it all just slotted into place. They’re discrete designated spaces, which work really well for me.”
The whole extension is bathed in light by an eight-metre-long skylight that slices through the roof, emphasising the height and making the space feel more generous than its 16 sq m. Baulier also added a sash window and stable doors to bring more light and air into the house.
Throwing open the stable doors in summer will frame a view to a pair of silver birch trees planted across the road through the Street Trees for Living scheme (streettreesforliving.org), a touching moving-in gift from Jay in honour of her late parents.
White-oiled floorboards, white-painted brick veneers and light wooden beams emphasise the light, while a deep blue lino at ground level anchors the space and matches the drama of the skylight.
When it came to decorating the house, Osgerby naturally picked out a number of Barber Osgerby designs, including a trio of large Hotaru paper lanterns that hang from the ceiling beams to draw the eye upwards. “I did want an element of drama and we get that in the beams, Jay’s lights and the floor colour,” she says.
The designers’ tilting Bodleian Libraries chair stands at the writing desk and Mutina Mews tiles in Chalk line the shower room. Here, fittings are thoughtfully positioned to one side to give a clear view out to the courtyard, which is filled with shade-seeking ferns, pot plants that can be moved to chase the light and an olive tree from her much-missed Oxford garden.
An old chimney forming one corner of the courtyard wall is a relic from part of the building, likely a laundry or bakery, cleared to make way for the extension.
Eager to get her green fingers on a little more growing space, Wendy has signed up to AllotMe, a programme that connects gardeners with unwanted gardens as a work-around for the decade-long waiting lists for London allotments.
Osgerby has now been living in her new home for a year, and has surprised herself by settling right in. “I didn’t ever dream that I’d be happy in London. But it’s quite different when you live here,” she admits.
“I’ve grown to — I won’t say I love it because I’m just finding my feet because the whole lockdown thing happened — but I do like it. I like Brockley particularly, it has so much going on.”
With social restrictions a little less strict, she’s now keen to tap into the area’s art, music and theatre scene. She says: “One of the things that Jay said to get me here is, ‘It’s fine, Brockley is full of old arty people like you, so you’ll fit in!’”
