Restoring the building that housed Thomas Chippendale’s workshop, with consent for three apartments.
Transaction facts
| Service | Development and restoration |
| Location | Covent Garden, WC2 |
| Status | Consented; in progress |
| Consent | Three apartments — two one-bedroom and a two-bedroom duplex |
The brief
We bought the building several years ago as a straightforward investment. The ambition came later, once we understood what we were holding: a house on St Martin’s Lane that in the eighteenth century contained the workshop of Thomas Chippendale.
What we did
The scheme restores the historic fabric and extends where extending does no harm, with planning permission granted for three apartments: two one-bedroom and a two-bedroom duplex. Work of this kind does not run to a developer’s timetable. Every decision is taken twice — once for what it does for the building today, once for what it does to the building’s record — and the restoration sets the pace rather than the programme.
The result
The scheme is consented and in progress. Restoring Chippendale’s workshop is an honour we do not take lightly. Most development asks what a building could become; this one asks first what it already is, and the answer has shaped everything from the sequence of the works to the finishes we have chosen. Our own office is on the same street, which is not a coincidence — Covent Garden is where the firm has done its best work, and this is the building on it we most wanted to get right.