Where “camp grandeur” meets English style

There’s something utterly enchanting about photographer Harry Carr’s garden maisonette, which rises over three storeys on a quiet private road in Highbury. A visual cornucopia of saturated tones, Pierre Frey fabrics, and carefully collected artworks, it’s hard to reconcile its current charm with the sorry state he first encountered, when it was a warren of poky student rooms with a kitchenette wedged beneath the stairs. Yet, looking past the tangled floorplan, he recognised those all-important “good bones,” and, together with sculptor and artist Christabel MacGreevy, began reimagining the space. The result is a colour-infused, soulful home that more than dabbles with a streak of Old English eccentricity.

As his characterful apartment comes to market with Aucoot, we visited Harry and his pug Issac on a bright November morning to hear about the radical renovation he undertook and the creative alchemy of collaborating with an artistic friend.

I wasn’t really aware of Aberdeen Park, but it’s an interesting little pocket of Highbury, in that it’s a private road and has a real mixture of architecture. When I first saw this place, it just looked extremely strange; all the doors were fireproof and it was being rented by people who didn’t know each other, but I could see it was in a good spot.

I loved the sash windows. They reminded me of the buildings in Cambridge, where I studied. There are lots of large Georgian buildings that overlook little parks like this. It’s also so quiet. There are no cars and there’s even The Highway Centre which is where visiting nuns stay. So I thought it was a really good space. And I had to take a leap of faith in terms of what I thought I could do layout-wise, even if I wasn’t 100% sure how easy that was going to be.

I’d go and see her flat and the way she painted the floors was very simple but also really unexpected, so I asked if she would help me with my place, and what started out as something casual turned into a full-blown project.

We ended up project-managing the whole thing and creating a palette for each room. I had a pretty strong sense, which was guided by these windows and the features I loved, that I didn’t want to follow the usual pattern. So many terrace houses, Victorian terrace houses especially, all have the same layout and while there are endless possibilities with them, I felt a bit uninspired by how formulaic they can be.

This building, being so quirky, really refreshed my thinking. Instead of looking at finished Victorian renovations and feeling like there was a set formula to follow, I focused on textures, colours, and details I liked. That made the process exciting. It wasn’t just going to be another Victorian house filled with nice things.

Yes, I didn’t want a visionary architect because we had really clear ideas. I wanted someone who could execute the plan and help. For example, there’s a tiny en-suite in my bedroom, and the architect we were working with told me, “Oh, you definitely can’t fit a shower and a full three-piece suite in there.” Christabel and I suggested adding an extra step to fit it in and then he said, “Yeah… I guess you could.” So things like that would happen.

Once I could see the rooms taking shape, especially my bedroom, you could really see that the rooms can take a lot of colour. Not just colour for the sake of colour, but real texture, and depth. It’s nice that they have that sense of grandeur. It was really fun putting in those curtains and blinds, which are a bit camp, but they’re such beautiful quality that you think, Why not? They instantly made the place quite memorable for people.

It’s a style that I think is quite popular, but I think Christabel has a great sense of balance. She treads a line that feels grown-up, not stuffy or overly stylised. Some versions of this look are lovely, but they can feel a bit stiff, a bit too self-conscious. I want my home to be beautiful and fun but also calm and functional – somewhere that works for all my moods.

Some of the interiors in that current wave have such a specific feeling that you can never tone them down; they’re always on. Whereas here, we’ve had dinners inside and out, and the house shifts with the moment. In spring and summer, the living room feels bright and light, but in the evenings it can feel almost like a gentleman’s club.

Thanks for showing us around Harry!

Aberdeen Park