Surrey Homes | SH30 | April 2017 |Gardens supplement inside

Above left: The walls of the downstairs loo are covered
with framed photographs, prints, cards and letters with
personal meaning Above right and below: The original
1842 building was built as two tiny houses with a shared
staircase. On the landing two small runs of stairs face each
other – one original and the other copied for the extension
china treasures which are in everyday use – and the
provenance of both the crate and the table are keys to
the very interesting life Adrian and Sven have shared.
Sven is German and they spent six years living there, in the
city of Halle, twenty miles from Leipzig, while he was finishing
his studies. The kitchen table came from there. “We found it
on the street,” says Sven, laughing. “In Germany we have this
thing called Sperrmüll [NB capped first letter is correct for
nouns in Deutsch, jawoll, bitte] where large waste objects can
be left out on the street one day a month and we found this.”
“It’s fantastic,” adds Adrian. “You can get a calendar
from the council to tell you when it will be in each
neighbourhood and I would tour them…”
Sven shows me that the wooden table has a large drawer with
two large enamel basins set in it. “Once this would have been
the kitchen sink,” he says. “Now it’s perfect for preparing food.
When your friends arrive and you don’t want them to see the
mess, you just scrape it in to the bowls and close the drawers.”
Adding to the interest in this one piece of furniture – and
we still have the whole house to see at this stage – Adrian
57 wealdentimes.co.uk