A STUDY IN DESIGN

A once graffiti-strewn block of student accommodation has returned to its roots as a beautiful Georgian townhouse

- Natasha Radmehr

As the daughter of a helicopter pilot, the interior designer Nicola Harding was never settled in one place for too long. “Moving from home to home, I was always trying to figure out that slightly intangible thing that makes somewhere feel like home,” says Harding, who studied theology at Edinburgh University before a career as a garden designer led organically to interior design. “My driving force has always been this overwhelming desire to create a sense of belonging. Not just fitting a client’s practical, everyday needs but addressing those deep-held fantasies we unwittingly accumulate over time. How we imagine putting the children to bed; the sense of relief felt when we come home after a difficult day; the Sunday lunch we’ve always wanted to throw for our friends…”

Such wholesome pursuits had been absent from this particular Grade-I Georgian townhouse for quite some time. When it was purchased by its music producer owner and his wife as a family home in which to raise their three children, it bore the mildly debauched signs of many years spent serving as student accommodation. The walls were graffitied with scrawls and scribbles, ceilings had been dropped, the rooms were subdivided and the exquisite period features were hidden behind stud walls and thick layers of magnolia paint. “It looked like a squat,” recalls Harding.