Cemetery Road

When we first turned up at this house, the front garden was a slab of cracked concrete with weeds coming through the seams and a broken iron stump where the old railings had been. Someone had painted a red shape on the path in spray paint years before. The bin was on the front and the rubbish was off the front. It looked like every other tired Victorian on every street round here.

The brief was simple. Make it look like it should. So that's what we did.

The wall went first. We took the lot down and rebuilt it in matching London stocks with red brick detailing, the way it would have been built in the 1880s. Sandstone pier caps on top, fitted to the right profile. The railings are cast iron, made to match the originals you still see further up the street. The gate hinges off the brickwork, not the railings, which is the way it was done back then and the way it should still be done now.

The path is encaustic tile — proper Victorian geometric, laid by hand. Not a sticker, not a printed porcelain copy, the actual fired tile in the original pattern. The threshold step is York stone, bedded properly, level the first time. The brickwork on the house itself was repointed where it had failed and left alone where it hadn't. You don't fix what isn't broken.

It took longer than a quick concrete-and-trellis job would have done, and it cost more. But it'll still look like this in fifty years, which is the point.