A family home in Hackney, lovingly tended inside and out
Tom and Miria Harris – he the co-owner of the Marksman and Lasdun; she a designer of landscapes and gardens – have lived on this Victorian terrace for almost 20 years. “Hackney was a very different place then,” says Miria, but one that, unchangingly over the intervening years, has always felt like home.
The rooms’ current elegance belies the reality Tom and Miria had to grapple with when they moved in – with just a mattress and a chest of drawers – two decades ago. “It was a bit of a blank canvas,” Miria continues, “but we slowly filled the house with life and made it our home, with two cats and eventually two kids.”
The couple also made some prudent changes to the place, so subtle as to feel like they’d always been there. Moving the kitchen’s side door to the back was, Miria tells us, “a gamechanger”, giving them a view “straight through to the garden and my beloved roses”. Light touches followed over the years, before Tom and Miria converted the loft in 2018. It was around this time they redid the family bathroom and, working with friend and furniture designer David Blair-Ross, the kitchen. “I don’t think I could ever grow tired of that blue-and-grey chequerboard floor – though it was a labour of love putting it down…”
It’s rare in London to have a garden as peaceful as the one here – unsurprisingly, the result of careful consideration, much of which took place in lockdown. It was, Miria says, her “laboratory” when she was setting out as a designer, but the couple had never really invested in it. While the 2020 remodel means there’s less space for planting, that’s no bad thing – “there’s more space to inhabit, which makes it so much easier to look after and enjoy.”
The couple’s decision to leave the house is naturally bittersweet. “I’m hoping we’ll still be honorary street residents after we’ve left,” Miria tells us. “The community spirit here is so strong.” As well as their neighbours, they’ll miss the light here too. “The house faces east, so morning – when the light streams into the kitchen, the heart and soul of the house – is the best.”
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