Cemetery Road

When we first walked round, the front garden was a slab of cracked concrete with weeds coming through the seams and a broken iron stump where the railings had once been. Someone had painted a red shape on the path in spray paint years before. The bin was on the front; the rubbish was off it.

The brief was simple: bring it back to what it should be. So we did.

The wall came down first. We rebuilt it in matching London stocks with red brick detailing, in the bond and proportion the house was built in. Sandstone pier caps on top, fitted to the right profile. The railings are cast iron, made to match the originals further up the street. The gate hinges off the brickwork, not the railings — the way it would have been built in the 1880s.

The path is encaustic tile, hand-laid in pattern. Proper Victorian geometric, fired in the original way. The threshold step is York stone, bedded properly, level the first time. The brickwork on the house itself was repointed where the joints had failed and left alone where they 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. It will still look like this in fifty years, which is the point.