Sue: “Music is about small details coming together to form a harmonious composition, and I think of this house in the same way. If you pay attention to the minutia, all those details come together in the end to form a house that is a joy to live in. 

“Robin and I are resident musicians at the Royal Festival Hall and our place before this was a large loft space on Westminster Bridge Road, not very far away.

“Being able to walk to work is really important to us so when it was time to leave the flat we began looking around Lambeth’s Walcot Estate, which comprises small terraced cottages arranged around two garden squares from the 1830s. It’s not very well known, but there is a strong sense of community for those who do live here. 

“I got Richard over before we had even exchanged. I had seen a picture of one of the studio’s projects years ago in a magazine and I said to Robin, ‘If we ever do a full house renovation, it’s going to be with Paul Archer Design.’ I just loved the sense of light and space they had created in this glass box extension, and I always knew I wanted something similar. 

“I have vivid memories of sitting upstairs with Richard and talking it through. It really was pretty filthy back then, and we were sat on a rickety old sofa looking at how everything was falling apart. I said it would be a project for a good long while for us, so what we wanted to get right was the finish. We wanted it to feel robust and solid, with space and light maximised as much as possible.

“No one knew what an undertaking that would be. The house was pulling away front and back, so we had to replace all the joists, lay a new concrete slab and reinforce the stairs. It was stressful at times but I thought the worst thing would be to spend all that money and not get it right, so we really committed. 

“Sorting out the structure – work that is completely invisible now – gave us the foundation to create a single level on which to build a new infill extension, where the kitchen-diner is. It’s a north-facing space, but you would never know it with how much daylight comes in. Robin especially craves the light, and coming from the loft space, where we had three-metre-high windows, we were so thrilled to find that sense of airiness here.

“The kitchen floor runs out seamlessly to the garden and then forms a desk in the music studio we built. We never imagined it to be so beautiful; my original sketch was more like a wooden shed! But Richard really pushed the boundaries, and it’s created this warm, lovely space that looks especially beautiful at night when it’s lit up.

“We were so lucky because we moved in just before the pandemic started. It was a heartbreaking time because Robin had spent four years planning a year-long schedule of conducting and arranging music around the world. Overnight that disappeared, and it was never coming back. So he sat in that studio for months and did the most incredible arrangement of some Bach, which he has just finished recording with a label that loved it. That whole project came out of Robin having that studio, so it’s no understatement to say it saved him.

“This really has changed our lives. It has given us the things we need to function and be happy.”

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