An 18th-century Huguenot weavers' house in Spitalfields with characterful interiors by Rachel Allen

Buying an 18th-century house in east London’s Spitalfields – an area that now boasts some of the finest early Georgian homes in Britain – is no small commitment. Either it is a case of rectifying renovations, pre-listing, that may have stripped out original features, or a matter of living with these buildings in all of their creaky and slightly gloomy – often they were designed as live-work spaces rather than light flooded homes – glory.

Mercifully, the owners of this house – a brick mid-terrace on one of the area’s prime streets – found themselves in the latter camp. ‘The previous owners had done the heavy lifting, restoring the house to its original standard, finding reclaimed materials fit for the age of the building,' says Jesus Alvarez-Piñera, a business consultant, who bought the house in 2019 with his partner Tim. With Christ Church Spitalfields, a Baroque masterpiece by Nicholas Hawksmoor, towering above, this Grade-II listed house was built by Huguenot silk weavers in 1721 and retains many original features, including original panelling, floorboards, a wonderfully creaky staircase that snakes up its five floors and wonky ceilings. ‘It certainly makes life easier to have straight lines in all your rooms, but having the good luck of living in an old building like this means you can experience the way it was constructed,’ Jesus says. ‘How the wood panels warp, how a fireplace has settled to one side over the years – the passing of time has imprinted its charm,’ he adds.

Jesus, a knowledgeable collector with a particular interest in porcelain, has quite the eye for beautiful things, but he called on interior designer Rachel Allen to help him pull the spaces together and make a few judicious tweaks that preserved the charm of the building while making it a little more suitable for 21st-century living. ‘We wanted to respect the previous work and continue with the preservation of the building,’ explains Jesus. The pair had met when Rachel was working as the showroom manager at Robert Kime. ‘Jesus always bought beautiful things from the shop and so when he asked me to do his house, I knew it would be a joy,’ explains Rachel, who began work on the project almost five years ago. ‘Out of everyone I’ve ever worked with, we have the closest shared aesthetic,’ Rachel adds. At the time she didn’t realise quite how rare that was – after stints working for Rita Konig and Design Stories, this was her first project alone and the one that kickstarted her studio, which earned her a place on House & Garden’s Rising Stars list in 2024.

‘It was all very beautiful,’ recalls Rachel of her first encounter with the house, which consists of a basement kitchen, a ground floor sitting room and study and first floor drawing room and bedroom, with three bedrooms and bathrooms spread across the upper two floors. But it was also all rather dark – especially on a rainy day. To remedy that, Rachel set about a few sensitive changes in the basement; the enclosed staircase was opened up, allowing light to filter down from the glazed rear door on the ground floor, while glass doors were added at the back of the kitchen to bring as much light as possible in from a pre-existing light well. An incongruous chunky island was removed at the rear of the kitchen and – with the missing flagstones meticulously replaced with reclaimed originals – swapped for a round table. ‘Since this was the only bit of the basement that had some light coming in, it made sense to turn it into a place where you’d sit and enjoy breakfast,’ Rachel explains. The existing kitchen at the front of the basement was in perfectly good knick and just required a few small modifications to the units.