English Eccentrics part 2 – Malplaquet House
1st June 2016
deVOL kitchens are popping up all over London since we opened our Clerkenwell showroom, our customers are so happy that we are now right on their doorstep. Clerkenwell is such a fab place for us, it’s designery, it’s cool, it’s not too edgy but certainly not too safe either so it really suits our customers. Just on the edge of Islington it is East End London with all its special bits, but it’s also peeping into the residential areas and the lovely houses of Barnsbury. You can park with relative ease and wander around the shops and cafes of Exmouth Market, just a moment from the showroom.
But for a fleeting moment we had ideas of moving to the Mile End Road, Stepney Green, well actually it was only me that had the idea and it was a little more than fleeting. I needed to see this incredible building for myself, luckily Robin our Managing Director is a scholar when it comes to old houses and he was happy to escort me to this Fantasy world. The property in question recently went on the market, it had come to my attention some months ago in a glossy magazine and I fell in love with the place just from the images, and thought how much I would love to visit it. So when Victor our lovely Estate friend in London sent us the details and said it was up for sale my mind began racing and I managed to organise a viewing whilst we were exhibiting at the Clerkenwell Design Week.
Welcome to Malplaquet House, English Eccentricity at its very best. A home of vast proportions tucked away behind a jungle of greenery and unassuming facade. Next to Topps Tiles and opposite Bet Fred it’s not the location we had dreamed of but once through the gates and inside it was like another world. Room after room of gloriously eccentric rooms, elegant and a little bit ghostly. The couple who bought the home several years ago have painstakingly renovated it to how it would have been in its glory days. No mod cons just original and slightly wonky rooms filled with delicate colours, out of this world art and collections of monstrous proportions.
I don’t want to rewrite the story of the two guys who bought this house and bought it back to life, because many more eloquent people have written delightfully about them, maybe try the Gentle Author for starters. A blog I did a while ago about this blogger, who vowed to write a blog about the East End for the next 20 years, has captured the story so well it’s silly for me to try and better it.
I just wanted to show you a few images and bring this house to your attention and tell you of the excitement it gave us as we looked around and took endless photographs to delight/bore our partners and colleagues.
I can assure you deVOL will be staying in Clerkenwell but I will treasure the memory of this visit to Malplaquet House. We are going to stick with Clerkenwell, its just perfect.
