12 Alan Road Wimbledon
Peter Culley writes:
In October 2020, Mike - my uncle - sent me downstairs to fetch Timothy Brittain-Catlin’s recent book ‘The Edwardians and Their Houses’ and bring it back up to his deathbed. Mike particularly liked the book because it is as much about domestic life rituals at the time as it is about architectural style. Lying emaciated from a cancer caused by the asbestos rawlplugs he’d installed in the house right at the beginning of a lifetime’s work restoring it, my uncle, ‘Mike’, effectively charged me with the exercise I’ve taken on since to somehow safeguard the interiors from quite likely future demolition. On the day Mike died just a few weeks later, and before his body had left the house, the family and I decided I would embark on a process to support this directive. I interpreted this to be preparing the house to look at its best for what would soon be its sale, with the hope of attracting a sympathetic buyer. I wanted to build on the wonderful work both Mike and my aunt, Valerie, had undertaken, and their rather enlightened understanding of its significance at the turn of the 20th Century in a changing Britain. I adjusted the room arrangements and made some additions of my own to be referential of the task I’d undertaken, all the while feeling my uncle observing me with contempt and enthusiasm in equal measure. I found the process emotionally exhausting but cathartic. Looking into rooms from grand doorways reminded me of being a young boy doing the same, intrigued, slightly intimidated, and somewhat distanced. Midway through the exercise, my aunt who had by then moved out of London, and welcoming a next stage of life as a newly independent 88-year old woman (“this will be the first time I’ve ever lived away from home” she’d enthused in the run up to the change) was herself diagnosed - without any obvious prior signs - with advanced leukaemia and is now living out her last weeks. So the process became even more peculiar and important.“In the period they’ve lived at the house (just on 55 years) nearly all the other residences in this area, which together come usefully under architectural cartoonist Osbert Lancaster’s satirical title, ‘Wimbledon Transitional’, have had their interiors completely gutted multiple times by developers, city-boys and footballers. So Valerie and Mike’s instinct to preserve back in the late ‘60s, as they looked on at dropped ceiling, recessed downlight and bifold door horror, was in fact far from the conservative thing to do. The house is in the process of selling at full guide price to a buyer who made their offer on the first day of the marketing before they’d had a chance to visit, we think on the basis of these now rare, preserved interiors. Mike and Valerie had been right all along and somehow let their home outlast all the previously lauded ticky-tacky vacuous ‘remodels’ to finally come into its own right at the end of their lives.“Timothy’s summary is extremely useful for us to have at what is an abrupt ending to a home with all that entails and that I’ve known intimately all my life. It has been an important influence for me towards domestic architecture, veering as it does between the grand and the modest. The process will be the basis of a photo and text essay, using the photos over several days at the house in late January. I liked the weakened and delicate winter light.“I’m so pleased that we have been able to relay Timothy’s succinct praise of the house to Valerie, particularly as she made many of the rather brave wall colour choices (where we had tended to understand, as is often the case, that the male of the partnership was responsible). “The exercise is for me a good example of the power of design – intimate interior worlds in this case –to be cathartic and dignified, and potentially self-preserving. It’s also maybe been personally useful to embrace photography as an inherent medium in the consumption of the built environment where I’ve previously had some ambivalence (“how can all that hard work and spatial care be collapsed into just a few two-dimensional images?” etc). Overall it reminds me that older buildings, if treated with respect, come back with their own quiet forces and at their own pace.
Client: Michael and Valerie Allen
Photographer: Peter Culley
Peter Culley writes:
In October 2020, Mike - my uncle - sent me downstairs to fetch Timothy Brittain-Catlin’s recent book ‘The Edwardians and Their Houses’ and bring it back up to his deathbed. Mike particularly liked the book because it is as much about domestic life rituals at the time as it is about architectural style. Lying emaciated from a cancer caused by the asbestos rawlplugs he’d installed in the house right at the beginning of a lifetime’s work restoring it, my uncle, ‘Mike’, effectively charged me with the exercise I’ve taken on since to somehow safeguard the interiors from quite likely future demolition. On the day Mike died just a few weeks later, and before his body had left the house, the family and I decided I would embark on a process to support this directive. I interpreted this to be preparing the house to look at its best for what would soon be its sale, with the hope of attracting a sympathetic buyer. I wanted to build on the wonderful work both Mike and my aunt, Valerie, had undertaken, and their rather enlightened understanding of its significance at the turn of the 20th Century in a changing Britain. I adjusted the room arrangements and made some additions of my own to be referential of the task I’d undertaken, all the while feeling my uncle observing me with contempt and enthusiasm in equal measure. I found the process emotionally exhausting but cathartic. Looking into rooms from grand doorways reminded me of being a young boy doing the same, intrigued, slightly intimidated, and somewhat distanced. Midway through the exercise, my aunt who had by then moved out of London, and welcoming a next stage of life as a newly independent 88-year old woman (“this will be the first time I’ve ever lived away from home” she’d enthused in the run up to the change) was herself diagnosed - without any obvious prior signs - with advanced leukaemia and is now living out her last weeks. So the process became even more peculiar and important.“In the period they’ve lived at the house (just on 55 years) nearly all the other residences in this area, which together come usefully under architectural cartoonist Osbert Lancaster’s satirical title, ‘Wimbledon Transitional’, have had their interiors completely gutted multiple times by developers, city-boys and footballers. So Valerie and Mike’s instinct to preserve back in the late ‘60s, as they looked on at dropped ceiling, recessed downlight and bifold door horror, was in fact far from the conservative thing to do. The house is in the process of selling at full guide price to a buyer who made their offer on the first day of the marketing before they’d had a chance to visit, we think on the basis of these now rare, preserved interiors. Mike and Valerie had been right all along and somehow let their home outlast all the previously lauded ticky-tacky vacuous ‘remodels’ to finally come into its own right at the end of their lives.“Timothy’s summary is extremely useful for us to have at what is an abrupt ending to a home with all that entails and that I’ve known intimately all my life. It has been an important influence for me towards domestic architecture, veering as it does between the grand and the modest. The process will be the basis of a photo and text essay, using the photos over several days at the house in late January. I liked the weakened and delicate winter light.“I’m so pleased that we have been able to relay Timothy’s succinct praise of the house to Valerie, particularly as she made many of the rather brave wall colour choices (where we had tended to understand, as is often the case, that the male of the partnership was responsible). “The exercise is for me a good example of the power of design – intimate interior worlds in this case –to be cathartic and dignified, and potentially self-preserving. It’s also maybe been personally useful to embrace photography as an inherent medium in the consumption of the built environment where I’ve previously had some ambivalence (“how can all that hard work and spatial care be collapsed into just a few two-dimensional images?” etc). Overall it reminds me that older buildings, if treated with respect, come back with their own quiet forces and at their own pace.
Client: Michael and Valerie Allen
Photographer: Peter Culley