And they all lived together in a little crooked house

The Crooked House of nursery-rhyme fame has been through many incarnations in the past 600 years. Flora Watkins travels to the enchanting village of Lavenham, Suffolk, to meet its latest custodians

- Flora Watkins

Alex and Oli Khalil-Martin at home

WANDERING through the streets of Lavenham, with its colourful timbered houses leaning drunkenly at impossible angles, feels like stepping into one of the magical lands at the top of the Faraway Tree or the pages of Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose.

Among the higgledy-piggledy pink- and yellow-washed houses, the eye is drawn to the most marvellously wonky and charming of them all. On the crest of the hill on the High Street stands-or perhaps ‘staggers' would be more appropriate—the pumpkin-hued Crooked House. To the observer, it appears to be propped up by its neighbours, although it has stood here, sturdy and secure, since 1395.

During the past 600-odd years, The Crooked House—which recently appeared on the front cover of this magazine (January 12, 2022)—has gone through many iterations. Built as a merchant's house, it originally contained a weavers' workshop when Lavenham was at the centre of the medieval wool trade. In recent years, it has served as an art gallery, an estate agent's office and a tea room. It was in that last incarnation, four years ago, that Alex Martin, then in his early thirties and living and working in London, first saw the house when he came to Lavenham on a weekend away. "The moment I stepped inside, I thought, I want to live here one day—which, of course, sounded completely mad,' he recalls.

For years, Alex nurtured dreams of retiring to The Crooked House. Then, in 2020, it came onto the market. Soon after, the first lockdown arrived—and, suddenly, young professionals no longer needed to be tied to a desk in town. In a village so magical it has appeared in the 'Harry Potter' films and inspired nursery rhymes, it is delightfully apt that not one, but two fairy-tale romances ensued.