Tilde House brings a listed London home up to contemporary, sustainable standards

Tilde House's London neighbourhood, Canonbury in Islington, a conservation area since the 1960s, is a leafy district developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries around a Tudor tower once part of an Elizabethan manor house. Its streets are lined with semi-detached mid-Victorian villas, many with big gardens and views of the New River park.

Among them, Tilde House is a Grade II-listed property, and has recently been remodelled and extended by Neil Dusheiko Architects, the practice behind such projects as north London's Tree View House , a light-filled mews house renovation in Bayswater, and the Sun Slice House family home in Cambridge .

Tour Tilde House by Neil Dusheiko Architects

With deep roots in the neighbourhood, the Canonbury Yard-based architects were the perfect candidates for a brief that required both a complete architectural transformation and the safeguarding of the property’s essence and heritage.

Built in the early 1840s, the villa is listed in part because of its elegant neo-classical detailing. This, of course, has been left untouched, which is why from the street you’d be forgiven for thinking that the property is no different from its period neighbours.

Step inside, though, and the interiors, once dark, dated and cramped, have been transformed into elegant spaces that lead to a new extension containing a bespoke kitchen. Replacing a shabby 1980s blockwork addition, the bespoke kitchen extension, built along the same foundation lines using recycled materials from the original, features a full-height glazed screen that opens onto the garden.

It is framed by dark saw-tooth bricks laid in a vertical basket-weave pattern to provide a tonal and textural contrast with the original house. This motif continues in the herringbone flooring and paving that flows through the kitchen and into the garden beyond, stitching old and new together.

Bringing a 178-year-old Grade II-listed house up to current standards was not without its challenges, especially in terms of technical aspects and structural repairs. Working with local conservation officers, the architects were allowed to remove exposed pipework throughout the house, and incorporate an ensuite bathroom beneath the listed staircase.

‘Very much of the original house is kept intact and celebrated, so what we have added is quite hidden,’ explains Neil Dusheiko. ‘We were able to remove the existing rotten timber structure to the original single-storey outrigger and this allowed us to re-insulate and re-tile the existing roof.’

Historic homes are notoriously draughty, but the existing windows could not be upgraded, leading the team to install a secondary glazing. To improve the building’s thermal performance, they also sealed gaps around doors, windows and floorboards, and installed draft excluders on doors and windows.

‘Due to the absence of historic features in the dining space we were allowed to insulate the walls and so the linking space, containing the kitchen and dining room, is well insulated, reducing the need for too much heating,’ says Dusheiko.

Acting as a bridge between the original house, the contemporary extension and the garden, the dining room inspired a distinctive pleated roof design that folds and unfolds over the dining area and the kitchen.

Upstairs, new ensuite bathrooms are cleverly concealed behind crisp new joinery, painted in rich dark tones that change with shifting light throughout the day, and complementing retained and restored period features.

neildusheiko.com