Period DRAMA

A painstaking renovation has brought this 1725 former Huguenot silk weaver's house in London's Spitalfields back to life

- HANNAH NEWTON

Phillip Lucas's passion for history and culture can be traced back to a school trip to Bath's No 1 Royal Crescent. As a 13 year old, Phillip found himself hypnotised as sunlight poured through the bay windows on the first floor of the Georgian drawing room, highlighting the furniture. That moment inspired a lifelong love of the period.

Months after the trip, Phillip went to an antiques fair and purchased his first antiquea Victorian tea caddy - that he later discovered was Georgian. He was obsessed. 'Once collecting gets into your blood, you can never get rid of it. The chase and the magic of discovery is ceaseless,' he says.

To date, Phillip has restored four Georgian buildings. His current house is a 1725 former Huguenot silk weaver's house in Spitalfields and has been perhaps the most labour intensive, taking over a decade to finish.

Previously owned by an export business in the 1980s, the building was a mess of cables and AC units. Every beautiful 18th-century joist was cut to accommodate the many phone lines, kilometres of gloomy, stained olive carpets obscured the original floorboards, there was a Formica kitchen and urinals in the bathrooms. 'I underestimated the amount of work needed, but hindsight wouldn't have influenced my decision. It's an architectural gem. I put an offer in the day it went on the market,' says Phillip.