Along with bungee-jumping, going on a cruise or reading another book by Dan “The Da Vinci Code” Brown, my immediate response to any plan that involves camping is: “You’d have to pay me.” But there is a certain kind of camping, if you do it in the right postcodes, that can get the money rolling in, making all that messing about on tiny gas rings well worth the bother.
“We camped here for a year,” says the owner of this now rather exquisite property. Sadhbh (rhymes with “five”) O’Gorman and her husband, Jason Tann, had the builders in for 12 months or so after they acquired Tower Cottage, in Belsize Park, on the road where — before their conscious uncoupling — Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin lived with their kids in two enormous houses knocked into one, with a smaller property next door for the staff.
Sadhbh used to see the beauteous movie star, blonde hair swinging, walking her kids to school in denim hot pants. That’s more or less the uniform for yummy mummies round there, but she’s sure it was definitely Gwynnie.
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The O’Gorman-Tann residence is not quite on a par with the stars’ mega-mansion, being “a cottage with a tower — insane”, Sadhbh says. Built in 1884, it was part of the estate of Sir George Barham, the man who brought pasteurised milk to London and founded Express Dairies. Paltrow, on the other hand, introduced the world to Vegenaise via her lifestyle website.
Anyway, when Sadhbh and Jason paid £830,000 for Tower Cottage, five years ago, it was a bit of a mess and had to be gutted and rebuilt. They stuck it out amid the dust, rubble and builders, briefly decamping only when the floors came out. Otherwise, Sadhbh claims: “We enjoyed it, in a way.” In any case, she wanted to be on top of the job.
She had “left the City, joyously” and retrained as an interior designer. Working with the architect Paul Archer (paularcherdesign.co.uk), she opened out the ground floor into one big living area and brought light and order to the upper storeys, a total living space of just under 1,100 sq ft. “Paul helped us to maximise the space, but I had to soften his edges with a few curves in the walls and doorways,” Sadhbh recalls.
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They did something really clever in the kitchen area, knocking down the leaky old conservatory and replacing it with a sloping glazed roof, with white-painted “fins” through the glass every 18 inches. The glass lets the light pour in and the fins temper that with shade.
There’s more smart stuff with the row of windows that slide into a space by the cooker, so you can lean out and pick herbs from the raised bed. That and a tiny limestone-paved courtyard behind a high, solid-panelled gate is all they have outdoors, but they make the most of it. The glass doors at the corner of the kitchen also slide into the wall, so on a sunny day the whole house can open up.
Otherwise, Sadhbh says: “I didn’t want to design the life out of this place. There’s a cottagey thing going on. I kept some textures and rough edges.” The kitchen units are sleek and topped with stainless steel, but there’s an original pine fireplace in the sitting area. The house has limed oak floors, a lot of white paint and the odd raw plaster wall. Upstairs, there’s white tongue-and-groove in the bathroom and, in the two bedrooms, as much storage as she could squeeze in.
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And the tower? It’s a tiny space, disappearing into the peak of the roof. It houses a dressing area and a wet room, with terrific views over London to the Gherkin and the ill-assorted City skyline.
Sadhbh, 44, reckons she and Jason, a media lawyer, spent about £250,000 on the transformation. So if they get the asking price of £1.75m, they could end up earning north of half a mil thanks to their year of camping. They are, inevitably, moving on to live rough in a new project.
They’ve had viewings by “mid-thirties professional women, sometimes with their parents helping to buy a nice, secure, cosy home”. I didn’t meet Jason, whose presence would probably butch the place up a bit, but it would make a lovely girly hideaway. Though I think Chris Martin is spending more time in LA these days, ladies.
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Tower Cottage, London NW3 £1.75m
What you get A refurbished two-bedroom cottage on Parkhill Road, in fashionable Belsize Park
What’s hot It’s designed and finished to an immaculate standard
What’s not The neighbourhood’s yummy mummies will not welcome competition
Who to call Knight Frank; 020 3815 3350, knightfrank.co.uk